{"id":112112,"date":"2018-03-19T08:45:06","date_gmt":"2018-03-19T12:45:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/depquebec.com\/?p=112112"},"modified":"2018-03-29T18:38:51","modified_gmt":"2018-03-29T22:38:51","slug":"presto-wholesale-club-quebec-depanneurs-best-kept-secret","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/depquebec.com\/en\/presto-wholesale-club-quebec-depanneurs-best-kept-secret\/","title":{"rendered":"Presto \/ Wholesale Club: Quebec Depanneurs’ Best Kept Secret"},"content":{"rendered":"

Every day, it’s the same.<\/p>\n

Even though DepQu\u00e9bec<\/strong>\u00a0features more than 60 retail banner fact sheets, one in particular stands out by being way more consulted than the others.<\/p>\n

This banner is none other than Presto – Wholesale Club<\/a>, from Loblaw, also operating the well-known banners Provigo and Maxi in Qu\u00e9bec.<\/p>\n

Why is there so much curiosity for this banner among all others? DepQu\u00e9bec<\/strong> wanted to find out.<\/p>\n

After Costco, which operates 22 wholesale clubs in Quebec, Presto – Wholesale Club<\/a> (or just Wholesale Club since the Presto brand seems set to disappear) is the second chain of wholesale clubs with eight locations all in Quebec major cities.<\/p>\n

Owned by Loblaw, Wholesale Club<\/a> looks similar to Costco but differs in a lot of ways at the same time. And a lot of what make Wholesale Club<\/a>\u00a0unique also appeal to convenience store owners.<\/p>\n

To find out more, DepQu\u00e9bec<\/strong> recently paid a visit to a nearby\u00a0Wholesale Club<\/a> and reports its findings below.<\/p>\n

Enjoy the visit!<\/p>\n

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LaSalle, in the western part of Montreal Island. Here is one of the eight Quebec Wholesale Club, most of which are located in major cities such as Sherbrooke, Trois-Rivi\u00e8res, Quebec City, Montreal, Gatineau and Laval.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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First surprise when arriving: the parking lot is literally empty. Strange. We are Friday at lunch time and all the Costcos in Qu\u00e9bec are already packed with loads of customers. But shopping in an empty store is ideal and this reinforces our feeling that we are truly dealing with a well kept secret.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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The concept is aimed at restaurant operators, food retailers and regular consumers alike. This makes a rather heterogeneous offering with, for example, these huge 20 kg bags of sugar which undoubtedly could help a restaurant operator but are of no interest for convenience store owners. As for the consumers, one would have to be really thrifty to buy such large quantities.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Ditto for canola oil, available in 16L format. For someone operating a french fries stand, excellent! Otherwise, let’s move on to the next section.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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In addition to large formats (larger than at Costco in general), Wholesale Club offers discounts on multiple purchases on a lot of products. For example, these 2.84L Heinz pizza sauce cans retail at $5.97 per unit, but only $5.47 when you buy two or more … a substantial 10% discount.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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The warehouse type alleys are very similar to Costco, with the difference that there are 10 times less people.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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The selection of chewing gum is impressive and this is one of the important items for convenience store owners. Wholesale Club also organizes Open House Days focused on different categories of products – including gum – in which manufacturers reps are on-site with specials such as: take 10 and get one free.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Second attraction for convenience stores: the beverage offering. When purchased in good quantity, prices are highly competitive with most major distributors’ offering.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Another c-store interest is snacks. Wholesale Club offers the possibility to buy them in cases, perfect for resale.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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It is also possible to buy tobacco for resale at Wholesale Club, but since the two largest manufacturers, ITL and RBH, have both adopted the direct delivery method, prices offered by third parties are no longer as interesting. Only JTI continues to rely on distributors to deliver its products and offers through their intermediaries attractive prices if purchased from wholesalers. Also, it was possible some time ago for a c-store owner to enter the cage and pick up products but in recent weeks, following an inspection of the Health Department, Wholesale Club no longer allows anyone to come in.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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You do not have to be a member to buy and consumers are getting their money’s worth. They can buy quality meat at a good price but only if they buy in big quantities, such as these pieces of over $ 100 each.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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We thus met several regular customers attracted by the low prices.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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In the bakery section, it is possible to buy small quantities but the prices do not really seem that much lower than elsewhere.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Finally, on the beer side, prices seem a little lower, but not much, from Maxi, the other Loblaw banner that probably offers, in Quebec, the best prices when it comes to special rebates.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Wholesale Club also offers many benefits that make life easier for convenience store owners: the prices of in-store products are posted online (unlike Costco), it is possible to order online for a super-fast in-store pickup and stores open earlier in the morning to accommodate busy owners.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Every day, it’s the same. Even though DepQu\u00e9bec\u00a0features more than 60 retail banner fact sheets, one in particular stands out<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":112113,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[223,1750],"tags":[799,243,245,1601,1021,1397,1602],"class_list":["post-112112","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-newsdep","category-profiles","tag-costco","tag-loblaw-en","tag-maxi-en","tag-presto-en","tag-provigo-en","tag-provigo-en-2","tag-wholesale-club"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/depquebec.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/depsselectclub.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/depquebec.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112112","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/depquebec.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/depquebec.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/depquebec.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/depquebec.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=112112"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/depquebec.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112112\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/depquebec.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/112113"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/depquebec.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=112112"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/depquebec.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=112112"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/depquebec.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=112112"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}