So

What to write today?

I could springboard off Jim Kunstler's latest jeremiad, but to be perfectly honest I've had about enough of recessions, depressions and stimulus packages for this week (and it's only Monday).

I could write about those Australian bushfires...yike. Too hot.

I could write about my beloved Leafs, and their prospects at the trade deadline and draft--but I don't even feel like talking hockey today.

*Sigh*

I could write about the skyrocketing prices of things in my store. Yeah, there's the ticket. 

There's a story in heavy rotation today about the startling differences in price on various foodstuffs, not just across the country but across a province and in some cases a city.

I have no defense.

Our milk is now $5.09 for a 4L three-bagger. This is, from what I've been able to determine, the highest price in the city, if not the southern half of the province. Customers are fuming mad and I can't really blame them.

 

The price of milk is adjusted every Groundhog Day by the Canadian Dairy Council. For two or three years we held the line on prices, losing more and more money each year as the difference between cost and retail widened. Last year, because of the spike in oil prices, the cost shot up sometime in July, and we had little choice but to raise the retail from $4.49 to $4.69.

Then Wal*Mart decided to start playing games.

There's an unspoken agreement in the grocery industry, or at least there was, that you don't fuck around with staple pricing. Milk, butter, eggs--y'ever notice that until recently these things never went on sale? Wal*Mart changed the game by dropping the price on all three staple items, and because the rest of the industry is unduly terrified of Wal*Mart, we all followed suit. So my milk went from $4.69 down to $3.97...lower than it had been for a couple of years. The butter went from $4.49 to--get this--$2.97.  Suddenly my tiny dairy cooler became suffocating. And we were losing our shirts--each bag of milk cost us $5.45. Homo--closer to $7.

Our head office recognized the situation, eventually, and stopped putting "we won't be undersold on milk" in our flyers. The instant that happened, we put the price to $4.87--matching our only local grocery competition, a Zehrs down the road. 

Then up went the price again on February 2nd. This time a flurry of emails went around as we tried to maintain a balance between remaining competitive and throwing money away. Eventually we were instructed to "match our local competition 100%".

(If this directive sounds familiar, it's because it's S.O.P. at every gas station in the country. The only difference is the gas prices change at least once a day. At least milk prices should stay stable for months.)

We're one of the most isolated Price Choppers in the chain. Virtually every other store has to contend with a No Frills, or a Food Basics, or (heaven forfend!) a Wal*Mart. We've just got that Zehrs, and they're not exactly known for their knock-your-socks-off pricing. So we're at $5.09, same as them, and short of explaining how each bag now costs us $6--which nobody cares about--I'm kind of at a loss as to what to say. 

You'll still find holdouts at $3.97...the drugstores, mostly. But I'm not supposed to tell you this. All I can do is apologize.

Sorry, folks.