Time-pressed consumers find it difficult to identify, find and shop with retailers offering alternatives to Canada’s major grocery store groups, while wishing to do so, a Consumers Council of Canada study found.
Nearly half of consumers think independent retailers deserve help to better compete with Canada’s major grocers, and deserve attention and support ahead of new foreign-sourced competitors.
The Council has been studying consumer perspectives on the grocery marketplace, most recently focusing on alternatives to the major grocers and consumers views on choosing alternatives.
Mobilizing Consumer Protection at the Grocery Store: A Role for Independent and Alternative Grocers is based on a review of published information, questionnaire responses from the thousands of participants in the Council’s Public Interest Network, consultation with a group of consumer advocates and academic experts, and a national web panel survey of 4,500 Canadians conducted for it by Environics Research.
That web panel survey found independent and alternative grocers have a major trust advantage with consumers compared to larger grocers. Nearly 8 in 10 (77%) of respondents trusted local or independent stores to be more honest about product claims than major grocers (50%).
That trust advantage does not lead to a patronage advantage. Just 25% of respondents said they use independent or alternative grocers as their main place to shop. Asked what might lure other shoppers to switch to an independent grocer, the leading responses were prices (43%) and location (27%). The main benefits of independent groceries were quality/freshness (22%) and affordability (21%). Respondents thought having more alternatives to major grocers would help keep prices competitive.
The Council found in the current marketplace for groceries that consumers continue to experience rising prices and unsettling price volatility. Consumers continue to be concerned governments have not prioritized their concerns about grocery shopping.
Consumers find marketplace information beyond the basics to be limited, often inaccurate and difficult to trust. They are interested in buying ‘local,’ ‘Canadian’, and from ‘independent’ stores, but find this challenging among false or confusing claims.
They look forward to progress towards a national unit pricing requirement and standard, with an expectation by most that this goal can be met in six months to a year, so they can more easily compare prices within and among stores. The report investigates the adoption of electronic shelf labels and the opportunities they could offer to improve service to consumers, if the risks to consumers they could enable are managed.
Most consumers trust local, independent grocers to identify and provide products from local suppliers, and they consider these grocers’ carefully curated inventories an advantage. Consumers find it hard to find out about independent grocers, whose marketing communications are not always competitive with those of larger businesses. Independent grocers report that for financial reasons they commonly result on word-of-mouth or incidental discovery by consumers to become known.
Independent grocers often turn to locally produced products because they cannot out-compete major grocers in obtaining low prices from what can be oligopoly suppliers.
The Council found many reports of Canadians seeking to take a share of their food acquisition outside of the retail grocery sector for financial reasons.
The report also examines grocery supply challenges and online retailers.
This latest report complements an earlier one – Mobilizing Consumer Protection and Empowerment at the Grocery Store: The Shopping Experience at Major Grocers – released in 2025 by the Council.
The Consumers Council of Canada has received funding from Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada’s Contributions Program for Non-profit Consumer and Voluntary Organizations to assist this work. The views expressed in this report are not necessarily those of Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada or the Government of Canada.