Tangram

"Bristol" will be along shortly.

Souvy

The supermarket sector in Canada is largely dominated by three companies: Loblaws, Metro and Sobey's. They operate stores under those names as well as a variety of other banners, which are very often not nation-wide. They tend to cover the whole spectrum. Loblaw, for example, has Loblaw stores, which are high-end, as well as Maxi/No Frills, which are discount. They are much cheaper than the flagship stores but still not cheap.

MillieF

Could I just pop into this post and ask who or what is Atlantic Superstores? They seem to be big in NB - I saw lots of ads for the co-op but didn't come across the shop. I wasn't over keen on Sobeys, but liked the Atlantic Superstore.

Souvy

It's part of Loblaws.

MillieF

Many thanks Souvy, I had a suspicion you may know.

Former Lancastrian

errrr Canada Safeway might be considered as a fairly large player

Joolschweetie

Shopping was a shock coming over here....

Be prepared to obsessive compulsively leaf through the flyers every Thursday and dash to at least 4 different supermarkets every Friday in the hope of catching the deals before they sell out. Have you ever seen 2 elderly ladies fighting over the last tin of Quality Street on sale in Shoppers?! It ain't pretty...

Look for coupons (smartcanucks.ca) and use them. Over here people tend to wait for an item to go on sale and then stock up on it - it's just a different mindset you get used to. Bizarre at first but now a way of life!

Some banks/credit cards accumulate grocery points so use them! Both of us bank with Presidents Choice and the rewards system is great - we've had loads of 'free' groceries with them

Oh and buy a cheap breadmaker & ingredients - bread for some reason is crazy expensive and this has worked out way cheaper for us.

Spot the girl with the low-paid, part-time job....

Souvy

I forgot about them. They're too far west of me. I've never seen one.

ireland2canada

No, but I did witness people having a domestic in No Frills. They were flinging watermelons at each other.

snowcandy

You are quite right about a different approach to grocery shopping. I have a quick scan through the flyers and then make a note of which stores have items we regularly buy on offer, then just stock up on those, usually cheese, margarine, juice, baked beans, etc. The discounts are usually substantial on these items, often 50% off.

We buy all our meat at Costco once a month, again big savings here. I just portion it all up and freeze so there's always something for supper.

You could get quite obsessive about couponing but IMHO I don't think there are that many coupons out there to save you big bucks...and it gets boring after a while.

I recently bought a breadmaker, a Breadman, for about 80 bucks (was $150) in Canadian Tire because I was fed up of buying crappy, sweet tasting and expensive bread here. I make a batch of bread rolls for packed lunches every other day and "artisan" loaves. It has paid for itself in about 6 weeks.

I have starting cooking more meals from scratch since moving here and my collection of nice "coffee table" cookery books has at last been put to good use

Dave n Ailsa

I thought living in Canada, requires a car

dbd33

Not Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal.

Former Lancastrian

No major city requires you to have a car as most have adequate transit systems. some cities are fortunate enough to have LRT systems and metro systems (ie trains subway).
As the OP will be in BC I believe then she will not have to endure standing at a bus stop in minus 40C temps waiting for a bus that may or may not arrive.

scribe123

When staying in Canada for a few weeks we shopped at a No Frills and whilst it won't be top quality and probably less that we are used to here in England, we thought it would be ok to shop there.

We found some things way more expensive than we are used to* (see note below), but some things we considered a bargain. Overall we figured it balanced out slightly cheaper than our current weekly shop.

* I used the exchange rate for that comparison which really doesn't mean anything. You have to compare real terms against your income here and what would be your income in Canada for a similar job... but even that is flawed as a certain profession may not have the same status in Canada, and therefore not pay the same.

Cost of living comparisons are very difficult to do accurately.

dbd33

No Frills is outside my frame of reference, if it's a commodity item we want to be cheap; orange juice, tyres, Toblerone, it comes from Costco. If it's an item of interest, cheese, bacon it comes from the market. I can see dirty people in pyjamas, spitting and throwing things at each other in the street, I don't need that at the shops.