No Frills

Darius Rucker.

Uh, my, my, uh, my experience in Hootie & the Blowfish is literally as a grocery clerk at No Frills, and they would just play the song ad nauseam over the, uh, over the, you know, the speakers.

I feel for you in that moment.

[laughs]

So that's used here in Canada at stores like, it's used here in Canada at stores like Fortino's, which is a grocery store.

No Frills, which is another grocery store.

Shoppers Drug Mart, which is a pharmacy store.

um now i'm going to ask it hey meta what can i use this optimum gift card for what can i use this oh it stopped on me meta please repeat what is this up Hey Meta, stop.

I just had to stop it so I can talk to you guys.

So it gave me, it told me that It told me that it's used for any PC Optimum partner stores, so Fortino's, No Frills and Shoppers are the main ones.

And it's a reward card, so you just tap it when you go there and you can earn rewards points.

So, that's awesome.

What has been nice is how quickly we've seen Buyers, I guess this is an example of threatening to vote with your wallet.

get on top of the people that used to get away with shit here so one of the things that happened in the last couple of weeks is that weston so we have in canada basically a couple of companies that own most of the spaces in in canada whether it's telecommunications whether it's grocers and stuff like that and weston is the big company for for grocery chains here like If you look at a grocery store, whether it's a Loblaws or No Frills or Independent Grocers or Shoppers Drug Mart, like sort of the big chains here.

They own the

supply chain as well.

Yeah, maybe.

Well, sometimes when you look at, I don't know who does it, but at No Frills they have like, you know, the mustard flavored tuna or the spicy Thai tuna.

They've got all these different flavors and some of them are the dill tuna.

And I look at all of them and go, who comes up with these things? And I'll grab one from time to time and they don't taste awful.

And then also I would say consumers are also, again, making choices even within the stores they go to.

So let's say in the case of being at a discounter like Loblaw, which owns No Frills and Maxi, we've heard from management that consumers in areas like beef, which have been seeing high inflation, It's trading down from steaks to ground beef, for example, so going into more entry level cuts or even the case of fresh produce trading out of fresh vegetables into frozen vegetables.

So consumers, they are still making some substitution choices to contend with inflation.

So given that background, do companies and brands still hold pricing power or has the game changed a little bit more towards volume?

People are s- s- post photos online, folks.

I saw a great photo in, of a, a No Frills in Sault Ste.

Marie, where the American apples were sitting there and all the Canadian apples were gone.

Uh, another place that had, uh, they were, they were selling the, the American corn at, like, a 69% discount, and it still wasn't selling.

There's obviously different kinds of retail.

There's your gym, there's your grocery store, the Loblaws deal, the No Frills deal at Village was very important for the center as far as driving foot traffic.

But we think that people are craving in-person interactions.

We see that with most of our retailers.

Village just needs some sweat equity and some work and putting in the phone calls.

But retailers are looking to open, and we're confident that once they open, shoppers will come.

The No Frills is open now.

It's full every day.