One of Canada’s biggest grocers is expanding its grocery price freeze during the busy holiday season.
In an email statement to Daily Hive, Empire Company — the parent company of Sobeys, IGA, Foodland, Thrifty Foods, and FreshCo — confirmed that it has expanded its price freezing to the totality (approximately 20,000) of its packaged items between November 2023 and January 2024.
Empire spokesperson Andrew Walker noted that it’s been a common practice for the company to freeze prices on approximately 90% of its packaged goods during this time of year.
“This is a meaningful step-up from prior years and has resulted in cancelling price increases on approximately 1,700 additional products initially planned to occur during this timeframe,” said Walker.
The announcement comes after Canada’s industry minister, François-Philippe Champagne, and Minister Chrystia Freeland met with the heads of Loblaw, Metro, Sobeys, Walmart, and Costco to discuss skyrocketing grocery prices in September.
During the meeting, the grocers agreed to work with the federal government to stabilize food prices in Canada.
“Each grocer has already identified an initial series of actions that will be implemented in the coming days and weeks,” reads a government press release from October 5.
“Canadians can expect to see actions such as aggressive discounts across a basket of key food products that represent the most important purchases for most households, price freezes, and price-matching campaigns.”
In his statement to Daily Hive, Walker said Empire has taken the federal government’s concerns “seriously” and has done “everything possible” requested by federal officials during their October meeting.
Walker added that Empire has plans in the works that will continue to stabilize food prices at its stores past February.
“These additional efforts focus on providing the best value to Canadians to cover a broad range of needs and we are confident they will drive meaningful impact while we continue to closely monitor the gap between food inflation and CPI (Consumer Price Index) to ensure it narrows,” he stated.
According to Canada’s latest CPI report, the country’s inflation rate cooled to 3.1% in October, as grocery prices continued a trend of slower year-over-year growth.
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