Kevin Libin: Pour some ketchup for the victims of the French’s revolution

Posted by: privatefinancetips in BLOG, Economic Status Mar 27, 2016

Stuff the freezers with only McCain pizzas!

Ketchup connoisseurs face a very different Canada today. There’s more danger that topping your fries having a splatter of Heinz could earn a dirty look from a fellow diner. Perhaps even a lecture from an Ontario busybody ready to tell you just how you’re insufficiently patriotic. After this week’s social networking hounding of Loblaw supermarkets into restocking French’s ketchup, which managers had initially judged inadequately profitable, any Heinz fan might be a target. Your ketchup preferences matter little towards the greater cause of the Leamington, Ont. farmer, where French’s buys its tomatoes but Heinz does not. “Remember,” wrote John Romanelli, leader from the French’s Revolution, declaring victory on Facebook yesterday, “all of the actually had nothing to use anything except Canadian jobs and creating Canadian jobs. Something we ought to all fight for.”

As with every patriotic frenzy, it is the symbolism that means something most. American-owned Heinz, as it happens, employs far more Canadians than does Reckitt Benckiser, the ecu owner of French’s. And both companies combined don’t employ anything close to the number of individuals who work with Canadian-owned Loblaw, a company that was just made a little bit less profitable by Romanelli and his fellow revolutionaries. The grocer, in the end, is extremely attuned as to the consumers wish to pay for. “Customer preference was the single reason the product was taken off our shelves,” said Loblaw spokesman Kevin Groh, Wednesday, “and the only reason it is back.”

Stack high the cracker shelves with Dare Bretons. Stuff the freezers with simply McCain pizzas. Let Habitant pea soup wash within the canned goods aisles.

But it appears customers actually had little related to it. Their votes were counted when Loblaw ran the numbers on French’s profitability to begin with, and also the verdict was clear: Not worth the shelf space. But local boosters like Romanelli got wind of Loblaw’s decision and took to social networking with demands the store re-stock French’s ketchup for nationalistic reasons. He was joined by hundreds more Facebookers and tweeters. Part of Ontario’s Liberal government, Mike Colle, quickly jumped on Romanelli’s bandwagon and threatened to lead a boycott against Loblaw if it didn’t restock French’s ketchup. Thoroughly mau-maued, the retailer had little choice but to offer its surrender inside a fight it had not even signed up for.

Romanelli appears to have been born to raise a bit of hell. He’s referred to as a labour activist, but also, he passes the name “John Tard,” like a person in the former hardcore punk band the 3Tards. It was a band known not just for its vulgar lyrics, but evidently had a knack for developing a spectacle, too, staging mock live births and circumcisions on stage. Maybe promoting local tomato growers is recognized as punk these days, but French’s is bottled in Ohio. Loblaw’s house brand, President’s Choice ketchup, buys plenty of Canadian tomatoes, too, they also buy American tomatoes. Does PC, given its product sales, buy more Canadian tomatoes from Canadian farmers in total than the purely Canadian-tomatoed, Ohio-bottled and never particularly popular French’s ketchup? Such questions are best left to those within the scientific-technical intelligentsia class, not the punks and populist politicians around the on the frontline from the cause.

Their objective is not to contemplate, after all, but to aggressively advance the ideal that Canadians ought to be met with grocery items that are seen to advertise Canadian workers. Stack high the cracker shelves with Dare Bretons. Stuff the freezers with simply McCain pizzas. Let Habitant pea soup wash over the canned goods aisles. For dessert, allow them to eat Deep n’ Delicious cakes, Jos Louis and Eat Mores. Yes, which will mean fewer jobs for Canadians employed in the processing plants, factories and logistics companies that handle the more popular imported products. And grocers, facing displeased customers, will certainly have to downsize their workforce. But those layoffs would be the price we should purchase protecting Canadian jobs.

Perhaps the difference between ketchups is not so different, and thus one may not use whatever harm in forcing Loblaw to advertise French’s over other ketchups. One taster interviewed by Bloomberg Businessweek last year, as French’s was hitting the U.S. market, reported “It’s very very much like Heinz- a bit more liquidy and fewer creamy…I’d totally fail a Coke versus Pepsi challenge of these.” But if the two are indistinguishable in Canada, it does raise the question of whether our tomatoes are worth growing whatsoever. They often cost more than American tomatoes, which explains why Heinz pulled out from the Leamington tomato game in 2014. They are not seen as more flavourful. Ontario farmers growing tomatoes which are pricier but offer no taste benefit over countries that have a stronger specialized advantage (in the U.S., that would be Mexican labourers) could be a less-than-optimal use of our labour and land. Normally, buyers will be the ones to inform us that. But Romanelli, Colle and also the social media mob decided to commandeer the message.

Until this week’s turmoil, many Canadians were probably unaware there is a condiment war going on Body so intense it’s hard to know whether these grassroots campaigns are legitimate, or maybe French’s has had some hand in all of this. French’s was last year lured in to the ketchup market, that is significantly bigger than the mustard space where it’s dominant, and where there’s less competition from dijons, grain mustards, honey mustards and, now, Heinz, that also recently launched its own mustard. Ketchup sales in Canada alone count double the ones from mustard – whose seed, it so happens, Canada is the largest producer and exporter of on the planet. So, when we actually want to support Canadian farmers, how come we even eating ketchup, let alone allowing stores to promote it? Perhaps it’s time the people’s cause looked for a brand new enemy. Let’s now find those betrayers who eat fries without mustard.