An Ontario grocery chain said they are seeing an “unprecedented” surge in customers after a recent TikTok revealing the company’s low food prices went viral.
In the video, Barbosa can be heard advising her 55,000 followers to shop at The Grocery Outlet if they want “the cheapest items.”
She then films herself shopping, featuring items such as a party-sized package of Oreos for $2.99 and a 150g package of hot salami for $1.99.
In an interview with CTV News Toronto Wednesday, Carolyn Boiani, co-owner of The Grocery Outlet, said the video has prompted a boost in foot traffic, and that she’s had to up her staffing levels.
“We're running as fast as we can right now,” she said. “We just hope that people have patience with us because we are seeing unprecedented traffic.”
Boiana founded The Grocery Outlet alongside her sister in 1998.
The company purchases products from manufacturers that are, in most cases, produced for a different intended client, Boiana said – those products may fall short of specifications, have been overproduced, or contain imperfections.
“When we started our company, we started off as primarily a bakery outlet,” she said. “But we soon realized that pretty much every major manufacturer has products that, for whatever reason, are off-spec.”
Boiana pointed to the example of a packaged bakery pie – “A lot of times, it's pies that with seepage where the pie filling looks a little messy,’ she explained.
“It'll taste fine but it just doesn't look as pretty as what they want, so when they're selling it at a major grocery chain for $7.99, they want a perfect-looking pie, but we can sell that pie for maybe $3.99 and it's got seepage.”
On average, Boiana said The Grocery Outlet sells products from 30 to 70 per cent off.
“Most of our products we try to sell around 50 per cent off but it depends on the item, so sometimes things are 90 per cent off and sometimes things are 20 per cent off,” she added.
In recent years - even before BailsBarbosa's TikTok drew considerable publicity - Boiana said she's witnessed an uptick in traffic, largely due to increasing food costs in Canada.
"We haven't always seen the crunch that that people are experiencing now," she said. "When expenses rise for people, they start looking for other ways to save money because they are just simply feeling the squeeze."
Coming up on her 25th year in business, Boiani said she’s “incredibly proud” of the company she and her sister built.
“I genuinely believe that a lot of the products, if we weren't selling them, would end up in a landfill and it's a tremendous waste of resources, and money to have so much food being wasted that could be sold,” she said.
“[The Grocery Outlet] allows us to get good quality food into people's hands that would have been wasted, so were incredibly proud of it.”
U.S. President Joe Biden arrived Thursday evening in Ottawa for a whirlwind 27-hour visit expected to focus on both the friendly and thorny aspects of the Canada-U.S. relationship, including protectionism and migration on both sides of the border.
Canada and the United States are negotiating a deal that could see asylum seekers turned back at irregular border crossings across the border, including Roxham Road in Quebec.
Amid renewed questions over the pervasiveness of alleged interference by China in Canadian elections and affairs broadly, opposition MPs voted Thursday afternoon to affirm a parliamentary committee's call for the federal government to strike a public inquiry.
A majority of Canadians have seen a mistake on their grocery receipts in the last year, according to a new survey conducted by Agri-Food Analytics Lab at Dalhousie University.
An asteroid discovered just last week will pass closer to the Earth than the orbit of the moon this weekend, an occurrence so rare it happens only once in a decade, according to NASA.
The number of Canadians receiving employment insurance benefits are at record lows and down 44 per cent from last year, new figures from Statistics Canada show.
Two Kanien'keha:ka (Mohawk) sisters from Montreal are on a mission that is close to their hearts: to save their ancestors' first language by developing video games young and old can play.
Zellers has opened the first of 25 new locations within Hudson's Bay stores across the country. The Canadian retail chain launched 12 stores in Ontario and Alberta Thursday, along with a new e-commerce website.
For the first time, the owner of a building in Old Montreal has responded to questions about the fire — through his lawyer — addressing allegations that the building was unsafe.
The political class at the National Assembly has condemned the 'violent' and 'hateful' remarks that columnist Gilles Proulx allegedly made about Quebec solidaire MNAs during Richard Martineau's show on Qub radio in recent weeks.
The new provincial budget features items specific to southwestern Ontario, including a new English public elementary school in London, Ont. that will serve 556 students and include 88 licensed childcare spaces.
A young Strathroy, Ont. man believes there's a promising way forward in the effort to fight his disease. But, he's being told, right now, that path isn't open to him. Friends and family are stepping up to try and make a case for Kyle McPhee to receive immunotherapy treatments.
The ‘Catch the Ace’ jackpot is still up for grabs in Hagersville. There was no winner Thursday night so the total prize money is now an estimated $1,526,067.
The resurrection of Zellers is officially underway with the Cambridge location opening its doors to eager shoppers who lined up ahead of the store's official reopening.
The co-owners of a new liquidation store in North Bay, Samuel Quesnel and Chloé Boivenue, say they want to bring a treasure hunt shopping experience to the city.
U.S. President Joe Biden arrived Thursday evening in Ottawa for a whirlwind 27-hour visit expected to focus on both the friendly and thorny aspects of the Canada-U.S. relationship, including protectionism and migration on both sides of the border.
Emergency crews responded to a call for a stabbing on Hartsmere Drive, off Stittsville Main Street, at approximately 7:45 p.m. Thursday. Two police cruisers guarded the parking lot of the Trustee M. Curry Park late Thursday evening.
The Conseil des écoles catholiques du Centre-Est has announced plans for a four-day school week pilot-project this fall, becoming the first school board in Ontario to offer families a shortened school week schedule.
After a year-and-a-half without, the Windsor-Essex County Health Unit (WECHU) says it’s narrowing in on hiring a permanent chief medical officer of health.
When the permit to construct a replacement span for the Ambassador Bridge expired in the summer of 2022, many thought that would bring an end to a 20-year saga of boarded up homes in the city’s west end.
The quick thinking and immediate actions of two people are credited with possibly saving the life of a Midland councillor after he collapsed at a meeting Wednesday evening.
Investigators with York Regional Police issued Canada-wide warrants for two men who they say are involved in the Richmond Hill attack on Ontario woman Elnaz Hajtamiri weeks before she was allegedly abducted.
The Tim Houston PC government remains firm in their promise they'll fix the health-care system by spending more taxpayer money on health than any previous government before.
Potato farmers on Prince Edward Island are taking the federal government to court due to the decision to restrict the movement of P.E.I. seed potatoes.
The Alberta Energy Regulator has cited an energy company for causing a series of earthquakes, including the largest recorded tremblor in the province's history.
Manitoba First Nation police have arrested a man connected with a shooting on March 19 on Long Plain First Nation that resulted in the community going on lockdown.
Manitoba’s labour force is growing at a rate to supply enough workers for available positions into 2026, according to the province’s labour market outlook.
Following a court appearance Thursday, a B.C. woman facing more than 20 charges – including manslaughter – in connection with alleged druggings of men who used escort services was remanded into custody.
The man killed in West Vancouver earlier this week was a retired urologist who was involved in several legal disputes over valuable real estate, CTV News has learned.
The Alberta Energy Regulator has cited an energy company for causing a series of earthquakes, including the largest recorded tremblor in the province's history.
Left: thegroceryoutletcanada/Instagram, Right: bailsbarbosa/TikTok
