Our local Coles Inglewood is convenient, well lit, and good parking…and the staff are friendly and efficient. So this post is not personal to them…
But I am buying less and less from Coles because in my opinion they are doing less and less to support local producers.
The Milk is what everyone knows about. $2 for a 2 litre milk is cheap, but at what cost to our local milk producers? And once they have squeezed them out of the market, destroyed them basically, they can put the price up to whatever they want.
And what about cheese and butter? I am struggling to find non-Coles brand cheese or butter on the shelves, they are shoved away from main view, and the Coles brand Cheese is taking up about half the shelf space, which is a lot. Furthermore, the Coles brand is the only one on special! This principle of pushing out the name brand local producers for the generic Coles brand is spreading to all dairy products.
Coles branded coffee, snackfood, biscuits, canned fruit and other canned goods…all slowly replacing the brands we are used to buying and trust.
Its insidious, its cynical…and I would say its close to being immoral.
I wish I did not have to go to Coles at all, because I wouldn’t.
Agreed. I have become more conscious of it all since moving to the country. It is just so important to support the local producers because so many of them are selling up and moving on… and then that effects everyone else in the smaller towns.
So who says you have to?
Don’t go!
At the end of the day, the globalisation of the market must mean that everyone pays the same price (very low) for all goods. Sounds good.
But, the corollary of this is that everyone, eventually, gets the same wages.
This is the prelude to $2 a day for us all.
And in such a market (world) there is of course no compassion for the country or region that faces a drought, or a tsunami, or whatever. You are valuable while you produce. If you can’t, there is no mercy.
We are on the way to being valued only for our production. But we are walking willingly into that future – dazed by our feelings of desire which we call “need.”
I’m not very keen on Coles either.. they do not support our local producers. I’ve noticed that Beerenberg products are disappearing quick as well.