Grocery prices are on the rise across Canada—so is grocery theft. For some, it’s a way to save—others say it’s revenge against retailers

By Hailey Ford

Disclaimer: A source in this story is a past contributor to The Eyeopener. They had no involvement in the editing process of this story.

Daniel* takes his small selection of groceries to the self-checkout. He scans one item—then another. He moves one more past the dark glass surface of the machine, mimicking the motion. This time, however, the sound of the acknowledging beep is replaced with silence. Daniel places this item with the rest. He eventually finishes his transaction and pays for most of the food he’ll be taking home. 

At the time—when he was still a first-year student at Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU)—this was a routine occurrence. Paying about $1,750 a month in rent, he found himself falling short of what’s needed to cover his living expenses—including food. He had a job, but by the end of the month, his account would be running dry. A student making minimum wage would need to work around 23 hours a week just to cover rent at his rate.

Daniel found himself in an all-too-common situation among Canadians today: high expenses and an income that isn’t enough to cover it. According to a January poll from the Royal Bank of Canada, 50 per cent of  Canadians are spending their entire income on essential bills and expenses, with over a quarter spending more than what they have. Daniel, like many others, was forced to make difficult calls on where to spend. 

He was afraid of overdrafting his bank account—and the interest he’d have to pay for doing so. Faced with this choice, Daniel made a call he considered rational given the situation—steal a few grocery items here and there and save a few bucks on one of his biggest expenses.

“I was ashamed but you got to do what you got to do sometimes,” he says. “I didn’t feel good about it. You want to feel like you can make ends meet and take care of yourself.” 

Whether it’s ethically permissible to steal a loaf of bread to avoid going hungry is a classic philosophical question—it’s even the plot of Les Misérables. However for some students—including those at TMU—stealing food isn’t just a hypothetical to be pondered in lecture halls, it’s a real-world conundrum caused by an ever-increasing cost of living.

Coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic, the price of groceries has skyrocketed, increasing at a rate higher than other goods, according to the Bank of Canada. The 2025 Canada’s Food Prices Report states that overall, grocery prices were projected to increase three to five per cent in this year alone. For some items, like meat, that number rises to as high as six per cent.

Food banks in Toronto and across Canada are also seeing large increases in visitors. The Daily Bread Food Bank recently released its annual report on poverty and food insecurity in Toronto. They state that one in 10 Torontonians are reliant on food banks. Three years ago, that number was one in 20. Many food banks have also had to reduce service, with the need being greater than the resources available. 

Students are particularly vulnerable when it comes to grocery prices. On top of food, they also need to pay for other necessities like tuition, transportation, hygiene products, housing, phone bills and emergency expenses. The money adds up quickly. For some, the choice becomes going hungry, going into debt or stealing. Sometimes all of the above.

Oliver Bullington-McGuire is a third-year sociology student at TMU and a member of Toronto Food Not Bombs, a grassroots organization that distributes free food to Torontonians every Sunday at Allan Gardens. He says many people are feeling pinched by high grocery prices and the group seeks to fill this gap.

“I know that I personally know more and more people who are having trouble sourcing food,” he says.

Much of the organizations’ items are donations from community members or businesses—usually recycled or reclaimed food, meaning items which would have otherwise been thrown away.

“About 90 per cent of the food we give out is donations and a lot of that comes from businesses,” he says. “We find what’s still good out of the older things to make sure that it can be distributed.”

In Canada, grocery chains throw out an estimated 1.31 billion tonnes of food each year, according to Greenpeace Canada. Bullington-McGuire says if the big retailers donated their leftover product—rather than disposing of it—a lot less people would go hungry. 

“I’m assuming [the big chains] are throwing out way more than we’re getting. If that was given out, that’d be probably a game changer,” he said.

In March, the Toronto Police Services and Crime Stoppers launched a joint campaign to combat organized retail crime. According to a 2023 CBC article, shoplifting losses were $5 billion in 2023. Now, in 2025, that number has grown to over $9 billion. 

This has led many grocers to implement increasingly aggressive anti-theft precautions like locking carts, metal gates, plexiglass barriers and security cameras—all of which have become more present in grocery stores. Sobeys is even piloting body-worn cameras on security staff in some of its stores. Some Canadian retailers have even taken to removing self-checkouts altogether.

However, police-reported statistics place all shoplifting under $5,000 within the same category. There’s no distinction between the small-scale theft common to students and the organized retail crime making headlines. It’s unclear how much of the rising numbers comes from large-scale theft and how much is those trying to make ends meet.

Zach* walks down the aisle of a grocery store. He picks up a chocolate bar and pauses as if he’s heard a notification buzz or has suddenly remembered that he needs to look something up. He reaches into his pocket for his phone, covertly trading it for the chocolate bar. 

He finishes gathering the rest of his purchases, pays and walks out of the store. The chocolate is still in his pocket, unpaid for, but not forgotten.

Zach—a first-year TMU student—is one of the many young Ontarians who can’t find a job. “I can’t even land a minimum wage interview,” he wrote in a text message to The Eyeopener. 

As of September 2025, the youth unemployment rate in Ontario sits at 17.3 per cent. Among students, that number rises to 23.2 per cent, meaning that nearly a quarter of young students are without work. 

“The job market is unforgiving and inflation is not stopping,” he says. “Meanwhile, profits have never been higher.”

Though he says he hasn’t shoplifted in some time, when he did it was only from big-name supermarkets. In Canada, three companies dominate: Loblaw, Metro and Empire Company, owner of Sobeys.

According to Loblaw Companies Limited (Loblaw), the company’s 2025 second-quarter revenue was $14.672 million, a 5.2 per cent increase from 2024. Both Empire Company and Metro reported a net earnings increase of around nine per cent in the third fiscal quarter of 2025.

Zach isn’t the only Canadian upset at the grocery giants. In spring of last year, a movement to boycott Loblaw stores gained traction, with some choosing not to shop there until what they saw as ‘out-of-control’ prices subsided. At its peak, 18 per cent of Canadians said they or someone in their household were participating, according to a poll by market researcher Leger.

According to Eric Dolansky, an associate professor of marketing at Brock University, perceptions of fairness play a large role in what consumers think is an acceptable price to pay—and whether they’ll pay it.

He says shoppers judge prices on what’s called an ‘internal reference price’—the figure we think something should cost. When the price goes beyond this, consumers start to ask why. 

“When we encounter a price that is too different from that reference or outside of that range, then it can cause a problem for us,” he says. 

Dolansky says rising grocery prices are largely due to real factors out of retailers’ control, and rising profits can be attributed to people spending more since the pandemic. 

According to the Bank of Canada, things like poor crop yields fueled by climate change, trade barriers, exchange rates and the incoming tariffs have all contributed to inflated prices. However, this doesn’t stop some consumers from pointing to price-gouging as the sole culprit. Dolansky says this is one way shoppers make sense of prices that fall outside their reference point—true or not—that grocers must be ripping them off.

He says consumers always have options other than stealing.

“If what a company is offering—not just the actual physical product—but everything involved in buying it—their stance on whatever issues, the kinds of products they carry or where they set up or how they pay their employees or anything like that is not acceptable to you, in almost every case, you don’t have to buy the product,” he said.

Miles*, recent university graduate and now-TMU staff member, navigates through a chain grocer. As he moves through the store, some items go into his basket, others into his bag or pockets. 

Unlike Zach and Daniel, Miles says his motivations are only half about affordability—the other half is anger.

Miles puts the blame for high prices on price-gouging. As a whole, grocery prices in Canada have been increasing faster than the inflation rate, according to Statistics Canada.

“I feel like you can’t be upset when people are shoplifting, when the game has kind of set people up to shoplift,” says Miles. “So you’re just playing part of the game.” 

The Competition Bureau of Canada has also indicated that margins have grown, which can mean that companies are raising prices more than their increase in costs. They state that the growth is modest but meaningful. However, even if margins remain the same, higher costs still mean greater profits.

In spring 2025, Loblaw was caught in a 14-year price-fixing scheme in which the company had orchestrated artificially-higher bread prices with others in the industry. The company has since been forced to pay out $500 million to consumers who purchased bread from Loblaw in the last 20 years.

It’s things like these that lead Miles to believe grocers don’t have good intentions. 

While Daniel considers grocery theft to be an unfortunate necessity, Miles sees it as an ethical decision, both retaliation and protest. 

“I only steal from big stores. I don’t steal from independent stores, because that money is actually going to someone’s livelihood,” he says. “These companies are just really horrible.”

On one shopping trip, Daniel does his usual half-scan. The soundless movement doesn’t typically attract attention and he’s never been caught, questioned or challenged before. But this time, a teenage employee walks towards him and repeatedly presses a button on the machine. 

“I think it may have been like a volume adjustment button,” he says. “I don’t know if he thought that the volume was low, or if he was hitting something else to signify that there was an issue.” 

He finishes scanning, turning the rest of his trip into a performative version of a proper transaction. Daniel looks back through the groceries in his cart, acting as if he’s checking to see if anything has been missed. “I think I actually did go back and scan those items, because I was worried.” 

He never went back to that location. 

Students who’ve been caught stealing may not even know it. Zahra*, a TMU student who works at a Loblaws, says she’s instructed not to approach shoplifters and to ignore any shoplifting she may see. “It’s not worth it,” she says.

According to her, the store has its own loss-prevention staff who monitor for “suspicious stuff,” observing and reporting it. She says they don’t step in unless it’s a pattern or very obvious. Beer and smaller grocery items like bread, cereal and snacks are what she sees stolen most often. 

“I’ve never shoplifted,” Zahra says. “I think stealing isn’t right but I do understand that some people do it out of desperation or need.” 

All theft under $5,000 in Canada is technically categorized under the same umbrella. A person convicted could be fined up to $5,000, face up to two years in jail or both.

Paul*, a TMU student who works at a Metro in the east end of the city, says customers who are caught stealing will have their photo taken from the security footage and taped to the front desk. 

During his training, he was told it’s store policy to never go near someone they see shoplifting—and importantly, never lay a hand on them. Staff are just supposed to call either a manager or the police and let the perpetrator walk out. 

On one trip, Miles picks up a block of cheese from the shelf. He doesn’t take much care to hide what he’s doing as he puts it in his bag. After leaving the store, he’s stopped by a middle-aged man wearing everyday clothes. 

“I have video, I have pictures of you,” the man says to Miles. “I saw you put that stuff in your bag.” 

Miles says this was the only time he’s ever been caught. He says he just walked away, with the man yelling that he was banned from the store. He went back a week later with no issues. He’s still not sure whether this was actually an employee or someone just trying to scare him—he was nervous either way.

“It did kind of shake me. I stopped stealing for a little while,” Miles says, adding that he’s afraid of being recognized. “If they’re like ‘oh, we know you. We’ve seen you stealing things at the store. We know your face.’”

Daniel says he no longer shoplifts. He’s found a cheaper place to live—meaning he’s no longer quite so strapped for cash. 

“I’ve been tempted. I haven’t done it, though,” he said. The little bit of extra flexibility in his finances has let him find new ways to legally handle his money troubles. “I might have to eat incredibly cheap but I can at least make sure I keep the lights on.” 

For Daniel, it was never about moral principle or a fight against price-gouging grocers—it was simply a way to get by. The prices were high and he couldn’t pay—as simple as that. 

“I could get the bread and the cheese but couldn’t get the meat. So, you know, sometimes I’d have to get some at a heavily discounted price, so to speak,” says Daniel. 

“I wish I could say it was conscious political rebellion and class solidarity or something, but honestly, I just couldn’t afford it.” 

*Sources’ names have been changed for privacy reasons. The Eye has verified these sources.