Appetite for a bargain: Rising food costs fuel boom in discount grocery

With the cost of living soaring, Ron Robinson is determined to save wherever he can — starting with his grocery bill.

It’s why the Montreal man shops at Liquidation Marie, an ultra discount grocery chain where prices can be as much as 50 per cent less than a regular grocery store.

He recalls purchasing steaks for about six dollars each.

“If you go to a big box store, you’re going to pay maybe $20, $25 for a pack of three,” Robinson told Cost of Living.

He’s not the only one chasing these bargains. Liquidation-style grocery stores are rising in popularity across the country as Canadians grapple with high food costs.

There’s Bianca Amor’s Liquidation Supercentre, for instance, which has grown to 17 locations across Western Canada in 25 years, and in southern Ontario, there’s The Grocery Outlet, which now has more than a dozen locations.

As for Liquidation Marie, founded in 2012, the Quebec grocery chain has more than doubled its locations in the last year alone. Co-owner Marie Eve Breton says she plans to open another 10 in 2026, for a total of 18 across the province.

Breton says the secret to her store’s super low prices isn’t really a secret at all. Like any other liquidator, she says they buy unwanted food products from major retailers at steep discounts and resell them to consumers at rock-bottom prices.

A liquidator may have a contract with Walmart, for example, says Breton. “They remove the product on the shelf. It’s not because it’s no good, but they have to get rid of the stuff.”

That “stuff” could be surplus or mislabeled items, she says, such as a bottle of ketchup missing a barcode or a box of discontinued chicken patties. Every day the stock looks different and so do the shelves. 

“I compare with Winners because sometimes people come, they see something and if they come an hour after — no more,” said Breton. 

The unpredictability has hardly deterred consumers. Breton says her stores welcome an average of 30,000 customers each week, and the Facebook group where she posts bargains has grown to more than 139,000 members.

‘You cannot cut rent’

As for what’s driving the appetite for these stores, Dr. Yu Ma, a marketing professor at McGill University, cites the current economic climate. 

In the last five years, grocery prices have shot up by more than 27 per cent, according to Statistics Canada.

And with inflation squeezing household finances these last few years, Ma says many families are living paycheque to paycheque and searching for ways to make their money go further.

“You cannot cut power, you cannot cut rent or mortgage payments,” said Ma.

“I think the easiest thing to cut is grocery spending, and food is becoming so expensive…