George Weston Ltd.’s bread business is getting squeezed, and a big part of the problem comes from an unlikely source: its Loblaw grocery arm.
Struggling with declining fresh bread sales, the Weston family’s food company is racing to catch up with the fast-changing trend of consumers switching to alternatives such as flat breads and gluten-free offerings.
But at the same time, the bakery giant is grappling with perhaps a deeper dilemma. Because it owns Loblaw, the country’s largest grocer, rival discounters – including Wal-Mart Canada, Costco Wholesale and Dollarama – don’t like to give their business to Weston. And discounters are growing faster than conventional supermarkets.
“There’s obviously a decline in the traditional grocery channels,” Jairo Senise, president of the company’s Weston Foods division, said last week. “And there is growth in the alternate channels, but we’re under-represented there and that’s obviously something that we are continuing to try and address.”
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