When Marie-Ève Breton first opened a grocery liquidation store more than a decade ago, shoppers turned up their noses at imperfect produce and food nearing best-before dates.
But as food prices have soared in recent years, she saw sentiment among shoppers shift drastically.
At Quebec-based Liquidation Marie Inc., dented cucumbers, slightly bruised bananas and discoloured broccoli aren’t a turn-off to shoppers anymore. Canned foods inching closer to their best-before dates or with slight production defects for a fraction of the price are attractive. And trays of a dozen eggs for 88 cents fly off the shelves.
The deals are so enticing, sometimes customers ask Breton to place limits on how many of each item customers can buy “because everybody wants to have it,” she said.
Their interest comes as food price growth continues to outpace the overall inflation rate in Canada, pushing many shoppers to hunt for deep discounts on groceries, even if it sometimes means foregoing top quality.
That, in turn, has fuelled growth for many liquidation grocery businesses. Unlike typical grocery stores, liquidation supermarkets buy overstock inventory or food with minor defects from large-scale manufacturers or wholesalers at a discount and then sell it to consumers at similarly lower prices.
Today, Breton owns 12 Liquidation Marie stores in the Greater Montreal Area and nearby towns. More than half of those stores opened in the last three years, in tandem with surging food inflation.
And she’s not stopping there. “At the end of the year, I plan to be at 18 or 19 stores,” Breton said.
Clearance food wholesaler Stratford Outlet is also in growth mode. It began selling to retail customers from its existing wholesale facility but soon realized that space wasn’t enough to keep up with demand in both retail and wholesale.
“We couldn’t afford to keep taking space away from our wholesale, which is our bread and butter,” said Charles McGregor, vice-president of the Stratford Outlet in Stratford, Ont. The wholesale business sells liquidated food products from large manufacturers such as Kraft Heinz and PepsiCo to other retail liquidation stores across the country.
When the bigger location with freezers and a checkout counter opened its doors to consumers last year, it was greeted by an overwhelming number of shoppers, McGregor said.
“Our lineup extended around our building and (it) was five hours to get into our facility,” he said. “And it just keeps growing.”
McGregor recalled receiving a letter from a customer who travelled two hours from Barrie, Ont., to shop at the store.
“She was so happy, so grateful because she did a cost analysis against if she went to a regular grocery store. That same order (of $300) would have cost her $800,” he said.
With rising inflation, households are estimated to be paying $22.96 more per month on groceries — up 4.6 per cent from a year ago, according to a report released by Dalhousie University’s Agri-Food Analytics Lab last month. Almost half of those surveyed were looking for discounts when shopping for groceries, the report said.
Southern Ontario-based Grocery Outlet has seen the higher appetite for deep discounts.
“Our business is such that when economic times are difficult, we tend to be busier than ever,” said Carolyn Boiani, co-founder of the Grocery Outlet.
Her customers aren’t just young families looking to stretch their budget but also those wealthy enough to own a Bentley.
”(It’s) anybody looking to save a few dollars on their grocery bills, which frankly is pretty much everybody these days,” she said.
Her chain has 14 locations in the Greater Toronto Area and the surrounding region. Two of them opened last year.
While rising prices have driven most of the demand for liquidation grocers, some consumers have also become open to these supermarkets because they’ve learned how to better assess a product’s safety.
Best-before dates tell consumers when a product is at its peak freshness and aren’t the same as expiration dates, which apply to a much smaller array of food products. (The Canadian Food Inspection Agency says food items beyond expiration dates should not be bought, sold or eaten.)
“Our saying is best before doesn’t mean bad after,” McGregor said.
Shoppers at liquidation grocers have to get used to seeing products nearing best-before dates and realize these stores won’t always carry everything you’d find at a big-box competitor. Something you find at the liquidation supermarket one week also might not be there the next.
“Our selection changes based on what we’re offered from the vendors because we’re getting it at a discount,” Boiani said. “I don’t get to choose necessarily what I want.”
The Grocery Outlet doesn’t sell fresh produce but offers a range of canned and frozen grocery items — chicken, lasagnas, pizzas, French fries and other family-friendly meals — most of them coming directly from manufacturers.
Shoppers have found a way to work with the lack of choice.
“People will come in and they’ll have a look and they’ll make their purchases,” Boiani said. “Then they’ll go and fill the rest of their basket at No Frills or Walmart or one of the other discount banners.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 15, 2026.
