More ugly fruit and vegetables coming to Loblaw stores across Canada

TORONTO – Ugly food often means a pretty profit.

How Canadian grocery chains are tapping a brand new market with ‘ugly’ fruits and vegetables

They’re a unique shape and they may have a blemish or two, but it’s what’s inside that counts, according to IGA Quebec’s campaign to market a variety of odd-looking vegetables and fruit whatsoever from the province’s 290 stores.

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At least, that’s the bet Loblaw is making using its ugly duckling line of produce aimed at shoppers looking to save money on the sky-rocketing cost of fresh foods.

The company launched its Naturally Imperfect line last March, offering ugly apples and potatoes to Ontario and Quebec shoppers as part of an effort run that later expanded to select stores in other provinces.

More types of cheaper, but blemished and misshapen, produce will soon be accessible across the nation, the company announced Wednesday.

“It really went well far above what our expectation was,” said Dan Branson, the company’s senior director of produce.

“I think it really spoke that Canadians are available really looking for some options around driving value to their weekly shop and having greater accessibility to that eating healthily product of worth.”

Based on the program’s success, Naturally Imperfect will now include unsightly peppers, onions and mushrooms for consumers in Quebec and Ontario.

Meanwhile, Loblaw’s Real Canadian Superstore, Your Independent Grocer and most No Frills stores in B.C., Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba started stocking less-than-perfect apples and peppers Wednesday, and Atlantic Superstore and Your Independent Grocer locations within the Atlantic provinces started stocking Naturally Imperfect apples.

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The line’s produce is now also available at the Independent Grocer and Real Canadian Superstore in Whitehorse, Yukon.

The uglier version of a vegetable or fruit costs up to 30 percent less than its good looking counterpart.

That could be attractive to consumers who’ve been smacked with sticker shock on the produce aisle over the past year because of the low Canadian dollar and other factors, including shortages the result of a drought in California.



Between January 2015 and 2016, Canadian food prices rose four percent, statistically Canada’s consumer price index. But fruit and vegetables showed a few of the biggest increases, shooting up 12.9 and 18.2 per cent respectively.

In your fourth quarter of 2015, Loblaw’s internal food inflation outpaced the CPI’s 4.1 per cent jump, according to the company’s financial statements.

And while it has were able to pass most of this cost to the consumer, shoppers started choosing cheaper products when some foods surpassed a certain price point, president and executive chairman Galen Weston said throughout a business call with investors a week ago.

Consumers, especially those in Alberta in which the economy is struggling, have flocked to Loblaw’s discount offerings, he explained.

Branson said Loblaw looks to deliver great value whatever the economy, but thinks by using the way in which things are the offerings might be benefiting Canadians a lot more than when Naturally Imperfect was first launched.

It plans to expand this program much more within the coming months.