Shopper Loyalty Is Earned

There, it's done. Or rather done with. The habit of almost twenty years of shopping at one supermarket. Sometimes an experience requires more than one element. If a chain like Food Basics prides itself on its pricing, and figures that this is enough to keep people coming, to ensure that its clients are ready to return week after week, when only the prices beckon, and the quality of the produce is miserable, they're in line for feeling the pinch of shopper rejection. It took long enough with me, to be certain.

The location is convenient to our house, but then there are a whole lot of other options as far as handy location is concerned. I always balked at paying the higher prices for goods of similar value, or even brand names that sold for far more at a so-called conventional supermarket than Food Basics that prides itself on its 'basics' quotient. Somehow, over the years, they succumbed to the realization that people appreciated the opportunity to buy more pre-prepared foods, so there goes the 'basics' label.

On the other hand they also contended that the 'basics' referred to fewer choices, but quality ones. But then they could very well find the shelf space to display a greater number of choices if they were consistent in that claim, and bypassed the opportunity to stock and sell non-food items like apparel and gadgets and just stick to comestibles. But they, like all other supermarkets, find it enhanced their bottom line to give consumers these options, absurd as they seem to be.

I had written to the chain, expressing my disgust over the lack of care in stocking shelves, where rotten fruits and vegetables were too often in evidence, and stale-dated products, and a lack of availability of advertised specials on occasion. It all came together on one memorable occasion when in a space of two weeks' time, I had to discard food that expired before their expiration date, so to speak, and advertised specials of fruit on display were all in a state of gentle decomposition.

My dissatisfaction was passed on to the manager of the store. And he dutifully telephoned me the following day. To express his personal exasperation that I had emailed my discontent to the chain management, rather than go directly to him. To which I responded that I had spoken with him directly on occasion when I felt there was a need to. And on those occasions I had the distinct impression that he was disinterested. I had not been favourably impressed with his bin-side manner, to put it mildly.

We'd always shopped together, for our food, my husband and me. But for those almost-two decades when I was a reliable Food Basics shopper, I shopped alone; my husband detested the place. Witnessing my distress, and taking into account the many times he would shop on his own at alternate supermarkets for quality products, he recommended that I give up shopping at the disappointing venue, and we would henceforth shop together at another supermarket.

We began to do just that. And the fun has returned to food shopping. I'll not look back. It's nice to have confidence restored in the quality of the food I put on the table. And having a far larger choice of products is just fine with me. We're paying more, but we can afford it, and we don't mind. Canadians, in fact, pay relatively little, compared to those in other countries, for their food. We are extremely fortunate.