Loblaw, Sobeys, Metro and Costco sell about 67 cents of every dollar Canadians spend on groceries, by a USDA estimate. The four biggest US food retailers sell about 35 cents.
Never heard of metro, but suppose I should respect save on foods more
Wow four whole supermarket chains? That’s double Australia, where we have just two.
I’d wager it’s more or less the same structural reasons as Canada though.
Canada was founded on careful, conservative protection of landed elites. So, yeah, same story.
This is simply the result of Canadian cities with overly anti-small business policies. The fact that you can’t just run a business anywhere, or that you require to have a license from the municipal/city, or even have a permit for a sign out on the street, have a permit for x style of signage, etc. all for the sake of the look-and-feel of a city… is anti-business. It puts barriers in front of lower budget mom/pop stores.
Go out of North America, and you’ll see that when overbearing policies are removed, small businesses thrive, cost of goods go down , and more variety are available to the consumer.
This extends beyond just the grocery market.
Those are all reasonable and necessary restrictions though, not sure why you think they’re burdensome. Things like accessibility, traffic, public safety, etc are part of operating a business.
Part of operating a brick and mortar business yes, but digital is largely unregulated.
Brick and mortar then largely gets captured by large corporations and main Street gets hollowed out.
Public safety is important! But municipalities should be approving permits same day and making processes as simple as possible, and use standardized non bespoke rules.
Accessibility… also important! But there should be more carve outs for small operators. It’s one of those things that sounds nice but has actually caused things to be less accessible. Having an empty closed store front is the opposite of accessible.
100% this. A lot of local town regulation is implemented under a guise of community protection and wellbeing. Then in practise it displaces local businesses and replaces them with big corporate setups that can navigate the new rules more easily. They’ll fine someone for not installing a ramp, but not provide that same ramp to the local park.