Grocery retailers responding to Buy Canada sentiment with more ways to identify local products

When your biggest competitor has had its brand immortalized by Andy Warhol, it can be tough to convince customers to give your soup cans a second look.

But the co-founder and chief executive of BCI Foods Inc. – a soup manufacturer based in Saint-Hyacinthe, Que. – is hoping that trade tensions between Canada and the United States will be an opportunity to better compete against Campbell’s, the number-one player in the market. Both his Aylmer and Primo soup brands are made in Canada and packaged in steel cans also made here.

“We really want to take advantage of this moment in marketing. Canadians are already embracing a ‘Buy Canada’ initiative,” CEO Daniel Cousineau said in an interview. “We just need to make it more obvious to them.”

As the date approached for U.S. President Donald Trump’s threatened 25-per-cent tariffs on all Canadian imports to take effect, retailers over the past week have seen customers making an effort to buy Canadian products. Social-media posts have been circulating with lists of brands Canadians could choose to support in lieu of American products.

Monday’s announcement of a one-month reprieve from those tariffs has not cooled some shoppers’ drive to choose more homemade products. The effect is being felt in the grocery aisles, where people make their most frequent purchasing decisions.

“We are seeing this behaviour, big time, in our stores across the country, across every single region,” Pierre St-Laurent, chief operating officer for Sobeys parent Empire Co. Ltd., EMP-A-T said in an interview.

It is common for grocers to have signage pointing to locally grown produce, or Canadian brands. Now, Empire stores are adding more shelf tags sporting Canadian and provincial flags, to identify those products. Some stores will also advertise them on digital screens and on “end caps,” or end-of-aisle product displays.

“We will leverage every single communication channel we have in our stores to help customers to make those choices,” Mr. St-Laurent said.

Grocery retailer Metro Inc. MRU-T is moving ahead with similar efforts, despite the 30-day pause.

“In the coming weeks and given the circumstances, we’ll be working to optimize the visibility of local products – in-store, online and on our various promotional tools like the weekly flyer – to make them easier to find for customers who want to prioritize them,” Metro Inc. spokesperson Marie-Claude Bacon wrote in an e-mailed statement.

At Cedars & Co., an independent food market with two locations in Ottawa, operations manager Marilyn Dib has been making signs to point shoppers to products with “Made in Canada” and “Product of Canada” designations – each of which has different requirements for Canadian content in the product, and for manufacturing. More signs will go to the printers on Wednesday.

“People are concerned about buying American products. In fact, they’re leaving it on our shelves,” Ms. Dib said.

Cedars & Co. is now marking down American products in order to clear them out and replace them with Canadian goods. One example is Bob’s Red Mill, a line of organic flours and other grains that is among the store’s best-selling brands. Ms. Dib plans to replace it with Canadian alternatives from Anita’s Organic Mill, Cuisine Soleil, Mountain Path Organics and Kinnikinnick Foods. Rather than stocking rice from Lundberg Family Farms, Ms. Dib plans to buy more from Manitoba-based Floating Leaf Fine Foods.

“There are a lot of Canadian manufacturers that are ready and willing to supply us,” she said.

While some suppliers say it’s too early to tell whether the sentiment will translate into increased product orders, they are encouraged to see awareness growing around Canadian brands.

On the weekend, Mr. Cousineau of BCI Foods sent e-mails and text messages to senior leaders at Canada’s largest grocers, for whom he manufactures private-label soups, saying the company is prepared to increase production if they see demand grow.

“It makes me giddy, watching this,” said Peter Neal, co-founder of Richmond Hill, Ont.-based Neal Brothers Foods, which makes products in Canada such as cheese puffs, barbecue and pasta sauces and salsa. “We know that people are walking into a supermarket being a little more conscious of their purchases, and that’s remarkable to me.”

Neal Brothers is based in Canada, but some of the company’s products are made south of the border, such as tortillas (they are in talks with partners to move production to Canada.) Mr. Neal also co-owns Jonluca Neal, which distributes U.S.-based products in Canada such as sparkling water brand La Croix, as well as Canadian products such as dairy-free cheese maker Nuts for Cheese. He worries about the impact on both his U.S. partners and Canadian employees, if tariffs do move forward following the pause, and if Canada retaliates.

He is not alone. For Canadian manufacturers that rely on U.S. ingredients or manufacturing for their products, the prospect of tariffs is harrowing.

“Even our manufacturer is Canadian, they just happen to have a facility in the U.S.,” said Shelby Taylor, founder and chief executive officer of Chickapea, a line of gluten-free pastas sold in the U.S. and Canada, which are made with chickpeas and yellow peas.

She has received questions from customers in recent days about why her product is not made in Canada, and explains that the formulation requires special equipment that is different than a typical pasta extruder. “It would be ideal at some point to move our Canadian product to Canadian manufacturing, but that’s just not possible for all companies. Manufacturing doesn’t exist for every kind of product here.”

Ms. Taylor hopes that consumers will also be willing to support Canadian-based companies like hers, even if their supply chains are tied to the U.S. – which is not unusual in the industry.

“You have to look at it as supporting all Canadian businesses,” she said.