Emily Johnson expressed her concern on Reddit at the end of last year over the rising cost of food in Canada.
She was obsessed with one grocery store in particular: Loblaw, which has about 2,500 locations and is Canada’s largest food retailer.
Her LoblawsIsOutofControl Reddit forum was flooded with images of groceries being sold for what seemed like outrageous prices—C$40 ($29.36; £23.06) for 1.4 kilograms of chicken, for example.
Shortly after, Ms. Johnson and other activists united to initiate a nationwide boycott against Loblaw, citing their frustration with the discrepancy between escalating food costs and unprecedented profits.
With his frequent appearances in Loblaw advertising and his reported yearly compensation of C$8.4 million, the grocery store’s former president Galen Weston—who has defended the profits—became the de facto face of food inflation in Canada as resentment mounted.
Some even started selling T-shirts with a parody “Roblaw$” logo, to which the grocery store filed copyright infringement accusations.
The boycott, which started in May and is scheduled to go indefinitely, has since generated a national dialogue about Canadian grocery prices and the reasons why a business like Loblaw is still profitable.
