Canadian grocers make $3M per year from penny-rounding: UBC study

Grocery store owner Gilles Robin works on his fruits vegetable display in Breakeyville, Que. on Nov. 28 2006. (Jacques Boissinot / THE CANADIAN PRESS)

VANCOUVER -- A young researcher at the University of British Columbia says grocery stores across the country are cashing in on the demise of the penny.

Economics and mathematics student Christina Cheung has written a paper that says Canadian grocers are making $3.27 million per year from penny-rounding.

Ottawa announced in 2012 that it would phase out the copper coin, and as a result, cash purchases would be rounded up or down to the nearest five-cent increment.

The 19-year-old spent more than a month of her spare time documenting more than 18,000 prices at grocery stores, then used a computer simulator to create "baskets" with various items and determine whether shoppers or stores were benefiting from penny-rounding.

She says the impact is minor for Canadian consumers, but grocery stores across the country each collect about $157 per year from rounding on cash transactions.

Karl Littler with the Retail Council of Canada says the group disagrees with Cheung's findings because her methods do not reflect real grocery baskets and do not take into account the impacts of taxes on bill totals.