Quebec's corner stores: disappearing neighbourhood heroes coping with government attack

   Depanneurs are, as the name suggests, a huge asset to a neighbourhood, offering convenient, environmentally-friendly shopping until late at night. They offer a friendly, social experience for shoppers who can buy from someone who knows them and is part of their community. And yet, the Quebec government has chronically made life miserable for depanneurs with wrongheaded policies have hurt the bottom lines and wiped many out of business.

Reward your local depanneur

   The total number of depanneurs plummeted in the mid-90s when government turned a blind-eye to smuggled cigarettes. Smokers managed to get their nic-fix from black marketeers for a cheaper price and as a result many corner stores went broke: the 11,500 depanneurs in Quebec in 1988* has now been reduced to just 5,800. 

   Corner stores cope with an endless onslaught of government regulation that you are possibly unaware of. For example, traditionally to get a license to sell beer or wine, you've got to show proof that over half of your business is derived from items other than alcohol. 

   Logically, government should ease up on the rules and instead encourage depanneurs because they are an environmentally-friendly alternative to people who want to live without cars. Most people in the city can walk to a corner store within about two minutes and that same cannot be said for larger grocery stores, which invariably require some form of polluting motorized transit.  

   But government does not seem it this way.  

   They have yanked video lottery terminals from such places, even though the typical VLT player is an elderly person who wants an excuse to get out of the house and linger. But the occasional demonic gambling fiend has given the VLT a bad name. A simple solution could easily be found, for example, such machines should only be operable with a special card, which expires when you lose too much money.  

   Then there was the powerwall ban of 2005, in which depanneurs were forbidden from displaying a giant wall of cigarettes behind the cash. Tobacco companies paid those stores between $1,000 to $6,000 a year for such displays and the government did nothing to cover that loss, or those incurred by their ongoing battle to fight smoking. 

   And Quebecers are drinking more booze than in the past, but beer sales have only remained stable while wine and spirits are way up. But corner stores are not being permitted to enjoy the fruits of that bonanza. They are not permitted to sell hard liquor and their wine selection is legally limited to wines bottled in Quebec, generally considered to be of a lower-quality. 

   A study came out a few years ago noting that one quarter of Quebecers were buying their groceries at the corner store. This news was greeted with shock and abhorrence, as people assumed that those consumers were malnourished. 

   Instead we should have applauded that news, as depanneurs are closer to their customers, both personally and geographically, government should instead have encouraged the depanneurs to keep selling their wares, but encouraged them to supply healthier food. 

   Depanneur owners have a weak lobby. They are busy working and don't speak great French or English anyway. 

   The group that fights for them, the Quebec-City based AMDEQ is well-intentioned but chummy with the provincial government, as it has heavily promoted language courses for depanneur owners, not something which is directly linked to profits.

   Some shoppers might feel that the mark-up on items in a depanneur is a bit high, but paying a few cents more for eggs and rewarding a person who is in your community who offers necessities at a spot near your home until late at night is good karma. 

   Besides, travelling to a more distant, lower-priced grocery store will cost you in money and time and gas anyway, so feel good about patronizing your local corner store. 

   I'd recommend, meanwhile that depanneurs organize schemes to encourage shopper loyalty, for example they could start a computerized reward-point system that gives you a free lottery ticket, or something of that ilk, for every certain number of dollars you spend in such establishments. 

*Toronto Star July 30, 1988 F-7