Much ado about a veggie tray
Sometimes the local community groups online are just a gift that keeps on giving. Currently, many people in the city are up in arms about this $44.99 veggie platter at Metro (TikTok vid). Like! Most! Hysterical! Social Media! Posts! This video is simultaneously true and also misleading.
If you put on your thinking hat, you realize that while what she is staying is correct – a 2.7KG pre-prepped veggie tray is $44.99 – a few tricks of the eye and mind are happening here. Thankfully, you can just pop online and search for the veggie tray and find it on the grocery store’s website. Here it is, with similar trays for comparison:
What people don’t seem to realize is that in our heads we all are imagining the medium tray because that is the tray that is a> most available in the stores; b> the one more commonly purchased. It also doesn’t help that they make the trays fit into the same size of square in the photos on the website, even though in person they vary. Every potluck I have been to features the medium veggie and/or fruit tray so it is the most ubiquitous and almost every grocery store sells the same one. So it is a bit of a trick of the eye which you can notice when she puts her hand down on the tray briefly: it is much larger than the medium size.
If you run the numbers, the veggie tray costs you $1.67/100g. If you look at grape tomatoes alone, they are $1.76/100g and carrots are probably the cheapest at $0.79/100g. Both of these are easy to toss onto a tray (which also costs money) unlike the celery, broccoli and cauliflower that requires processing which costs labour, also not factored into the dramatic balking at the price*.
I think the funniest part about VEGGIETRAYGATE is that if you lay out all of the trays beside each other – like I have in the image above – you can see quite clearly that you get a better selection/value of veggies, with dip, for $1.47/100g. So in my head that is the biggest scam of this entire debacle: buying more in bulk is costing the consumer more money! Along with Shrinkflation, this is one of my biggest pet peeves because it is designed to use our minds and habits against us.
It doesn’t help that Canada also has a long history of bread price fixing and a tumultuous relationship with the qu’ils mangent de la brioche Weston family that can’t seem to stay out of the spotlight for very long much to the chagrin of their PR folks, I am sure. These are their veggie trays which are very similar:
I am also not arguing that grocery prices aren’t high – after 10 years of almost no inflation we seem to have had all of the inflation in a short time span and it hurts, especially for people with the lowest incomes**. I also get that not everyone wants to drill down and do the math on the unit price – but also: the f*ckin’ unit price is right on the sticker! If you are going to be BIG MAD about something than at least be BIG MAD about it truthfully. Personally, I am more than happy to pay $24.99 for a selection of 8 types of veggies and some dip if I am pressed for time and off to a potluck event. A pre-washed and pre-cut tray of veggies packaged up for easy transport isn’t a necessity either. You can just make your own or you can vote with your dollars and just walk away.
I spend $50 easily on drinks when I am out. It seems to me that $44.99 for 2.7kg of veggies is a way better deal.
*Minimum wage is $16.55 in Ontario
**Hilariously, the OG video was taken in one of the richest suburbs in my city