About 35% of Presidents Choice and No Name Brands are now listed as “prepared in Canada”
The website for Real Canadian Super Store or Loblaws or Atlantic Superstore as it is known in different areas now has a filter to search for products “prepared in Canada”. Prepared in Canada means that at least something in the products preparation is being done in Canada, this could be as little as packaging wholesale lots into retail size containers, but it could be as much as baking something made with Canadian grain.
I suspect that with such a large company and large product range that they don’t know the Canadian content for all their products and are using this vague listing as a result, but somewhat Canadian is still better than not Canadian at all. I’m highlighting information on their two house brands President’s Choice and No Name, which have around 1100 and 400 prepared in Canada products available respectively. Of note this is only about 35% of items listed under each brand, brands which consumers might have assumed were 100% made in Canada.
The bad news here is that about 65% of President’s Choice and No Name products have no Canadian content, but the good news is we now have a list of about 1500 more products that do have Canadian content under these two brands.
The other big point to highlight here is that neither the parent company nor the brand ownership determines if a product is made in Canada, product of Canada or prepared in Canada. Both President’s Choice and No Name are Canadian brands but the majority of their products are not made in Canada whatsoever. Let’s support the Canadian workers involved in the production of these roughly 1500 items, but don’t support the Canadian executives that made the decision to produce the majority of their products outside of Canada.
President’s Choice and No Name are important brands as they are widely distributed across Canada, through a confusing retail network operated by Loblaws, under names like Maxi, Real Atlantic Superstore, Real Canadian Superstore, Loblaws, T & T Supermarket, Zehrs, Fortinos, SuperValu, Valu-mart, Freshmart, Your Independent Grocer, No Frills, and Wholesale Club. Some of these stores are franchised, particularly No Frills, which means some profits are likely staying in your local community.
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