How to save $100 on your groceries

As a consumer, it is difficult to avoid stacking up several different rewards cards or phone apps from various retailers.

It seems like every retailer, fast food and grocery chain now has its own loyalty program in some form.

These loyalty programs offer frugal customers free products or discounts as a means of retaining their business. Although reward programs are not a new concept, they have become increasingly pervasive within our shopping experience.

I remember back when Canadian Tire came to Chemong Road, there was a grand opening event that involved a money-blowing machine where customers could win a chance at grabbing as much Canadian Tire “money” as they could.

Canadian Tire’s reward program, being the oldest loyalty program in Canada, has of course changed since its inception in 1958.

Adapting to a digital age, Canadian Tire began using a digital format for its rewards program and has further expanded to include its sister retailers such as Mark’s, Sport Chek and Party City.

A few months ago, the Scene Points program, which was initially created in partnership between Cineplex and Scotiabank, expanded on where you can earn points and what you can do with them.

Empire Company Ltd. has become a co-owner of the ScenePlus program. You can now earn and redeem points for groceries at Sobeys, FreshCo, IGA and Safeway.

This is certainly the right step for Empire as a major competitor, Loblaw Companies Ltd., has had a successful loyalty program for years now. It is good for Cineplex, too, having more options for the 11 million ScenePlus members, as it tries to recover from the impacts of the pandemic.

Comparing all these programs is difficult as it depends entirely on your own shopping habits. Personally, the ScenePlus program offers me the greatest benefit based on where I shop.

Of course, using any rewards programs you can, hunting down all the points possible, is entirely feasible too.

Gone are the days of rewards programs feeling rewarding, though. Even Canadian Tire’s base rewards earnings have declined over the years. With the impacts of inflation, these loyalty programs feel more like a necessity to survive instead of offering a rewarding experience.

Since January, I have been able to redeem a total of $100 worth of free groceries through the Scene program.

It might not seem like a lot, but it certainly helps when some weeks are harder than others. I’m still kicking myself for missing out on a few chunks of points, too.

That fear of missing out is a big part of drawing people to these rewards programs. If you are buying groceries anyway, why not earn the points to get something back? The entire purpose of loyalty programs is to entice consumers to shop at one chain over another.

So, here is the problem that I see. I am only one person out of 11 million other members of the ScenePlus program. If I have managed to earn and redeem $100 of free groceries over the past three months, and assuming that I may reasonably be able to earn the same for the remainder of the year, that would be $400 in free groceries in a year.

What happens when all the other, or even half of the ScenePlus members do the same? If 5 million members redeem $400 in a year, should we expect that companies are going to just eat those $2 billion in lost revenue?

Is this just the cost of doing business for them, to be written off? Or will the prices of goods rise to recoup the cost of these loyalty programs?

Are we really getting free groceries when the cost of our grocery bills has been rising?

As consumers, we are damned if we do and damned if we don’t utilize rewards programs.