09/08/2026
Charlotte C, you are a word smith and nailed the importance of supporting local businesses! Imagine for a moment if your town did not have a grocery store? If would be the catalyst of all the businesses closing and then the end of your beautiful town. If everyone invested a portion of their grocery money locally it would add up. Consider it as an investment in the future of your community.
Grocery prices are high. 🍎📈
Anyone who has stood in a checkout line lately, compared flyers or driven to Owen Sound to stretch a budget knows that.
After seeing some commiserating about local grocery prices online lately, I felt compelled to share a little of my own perspective.
It's a fact, some items are noticeably more expensive rurally, and some things are simply better bought in Owen Sound when you are already going. Families are struggling, budgets are tight, and no one should be shamed for shopping carefully.
But before we price-compare our rural grocery stores right out of existence, this conversation deserves a little rural perspective.
There are also very fair questions to ask about Canada’s corporate grocery system. Our frustration with grocery prices is not imaginary. But there is an important difference between questioning the national grocery system and aiming all that frustration at the local families and small businesses operating our rural stores.
Foodland is part of the Sobeys network, but our three nearby stores are locally operated by real people. The Hellyer family in Lion’s Head. The Peacock family in Tobermory. The Jellicoe's in Wiarton.
And beyond those three Foodlands, smaller grocery services are scattered throughout the communities along the First Peninsula.
These are not interchangeable corporate pins on a map. They are local employers, donors, sponsors, volunteers, coaches, parents and neighbours.
The Hellyer (Greig) family’s grocery business has served Lion’s Head for more than 115 years. When the fire closed their store in August 2023, Lion’s Head was left without a grocery store for the first time since 1934. I was included in the grocer-less masses.
Luckily, the store reopened only 9 months later.
And let me tell you... that was a VERY long nine months.
It turns out that a rural grocery store is about much more than the price of bananas. It is local food access. It is seniors being able to shop close to home. It is a forgotten supper ingredient on a February evening. It is dozens of local jobs. It is one less long, expensive drive into Owen Sound.
The Peacock family has operated the Tobermory grocery store since 1974, serving a community where the summer rush disappears dramatically once fall arrives, and yet they maintain availability and support to local residents year round. Even undergoing a massive relocation to better serve their customers as the downtown core became unmanageable.
Wiarton Foodland has also shown exactly what this kind of store can mean to a community. In one campaign, its staff and customers raised more than $9,000 in just over ten days for the Bruce Peninsula Community Food Bank.
And that is only one example.
Think about how often these stores are asked to support food banks, sports teams, schools, service clubs, fundraising tables, community events and families going through hard times.
They are asked because they are here.
Rural grocery economics are also very different from grocery economics in a city. An urban store can move an enormous volume of products every week. Our stores have to stock coolers, maintain equipment, honour discounts that completely dissolve their profits, coordinate deliveries, support staff and keep buildings running through the quietest months of the year.
The customers may leave after Labour Day, but the hydro bill does not.
Neither do the insurance, refrigeration, maintenance, wages or delivery costs.
That bustling summer store still has to be standing there for us on a snowy Tuesday in February.
I do not buy every single grocery item locally. I shop sales. I use my Scene points. I compare flyers. I stock up in Owen Sound when I am already there.
But I also remember that a trip to Owen Sound is not free. There is $9 in fuel each way, vehicle wear, time and the inevitable $47 worth of things I suddenly “needed” because I went to three other stores while I was there.
So when the price difference is manageable, I try to shop locally.
Not because price does not matter, but because price is not the only thing that matters.
As students return to school, seasonal staff leave and our businesses shift into fall hours, patience and support become even more valuable. Summer might fill the sails of our rural businesses, but local people are what carry them through the winter.
“I’ll shop there when I need it” only works if enough of us also shop there when we have a choice.
Our Foodlands in Lion’s Head, Tobermory and Wiarton, along with the smaller grocery services serving communities across the Bruce Peninsula, are important pieces of rural infrastructure, cleverly disguised as places to buy bread.
And we would miss them terribly if those lights ever went out permanently.
I certainly do not expect this to be universal thought, and I am not here to tell anyone how to spend their grocery budget. But maybe my Monday musings will help one or two people look at our rural grocery predicament from the other side of the checkout
Never hurts to look locally first. 🫶
