Tariff impact felt at Winnipeg grocery stores

Grocery stores are now seeing item shortages and price hikes due to tariffs. Jeff Keele reports.

The Sobeys on Kenaston Boulevard in south Winnipeg is letting customers know how tariffs are impacting what they can stock on their shelves.

A sign has been placed on the space which normally hold Bick’s Pickles, saying they are not available.

“Bick’s Pickles are currently unavailable as an unfortunate impact of tariffs. We are pleased to offer a selection of alternatives for your shopping convenience,” reads the sign.

Downtown Family Foods manager Brayden Halayko said he’s not surprised to see the sign about the pickles at his larger competitor.

“It wouldn’t surprise me if you started seeing more signs like that,” said Halayko.

Halayko said tariffs and counter tariffs are causing some shortages and price hikes.

“Anything from about $1 all the way up to $10, $12,” he said. “When the new stock started to come in is when we started to notice hikes in things like orange juice, yogurts, anything that would come from the United States.”

Several grocers and retailers have put maple leaf labels on shelves to highlight Canadian products. Loblaws announced in May it was identifying items impacted by tariffs with a letter T.

In a statement to CTV News, Loblaws said they work with suppliers to find as many alternatives to products sourced in the U.S. subject to tariffs.

“In a full supermarket, there can be more than 80,000 products, of which about 6,000 (or less than 10%) have been directly impacted by tariffs,” reads the statement.

CTV News reached out to Sobeys for a comment on the Bick’s Pickle sign, and we are awaiting a response.

Sylvain Charlebois, director of the Agri-food Analytics Lab at Dalhousie University, is not entirely sure why Sobeys is having a pickle problem.

“Does it mean that they can’t actually price the product properly? Is it about access? What is it about? Is this a political move? is this like the T at Loblaws,” said Charlebois.

Still, Charlebois said tariffs are taking a toll.

“If you go to the grocery store right now in Winnipeg, you’ll see coffee prices are much higher because of counter tariffs.”