Bakery to offer free bread in exchange for bread price-fixing $25 gift cards

A bakery in Kamloops, B.C., is offering customers fresh-baked bread in exchange for the $25 gift cards some large grocery stores are giving out in response to the bread price-fixing scandal. The bakery will then give the gift cards to local charities. 

"It was an opportunity that I saw for us to get people to come through the door, people that may or may not have been here before, people who are starting to doubt the validity of what they're being told about the food that they're buying and what they're paying for it," said Robyn Haley, co-owner of Erwin's Fine Baking. 

"It's a great way to collect those gift certificates and give them to the groups that we support."

Loblaws, which has been at the centre of the illegal bread price-fixing scandal, is offering $25 gift cards to customers as an apology for its involvement in the scandal.

B.C.-based Save-On-Foods — though it was never part of the bread price-fixing scandal — has also offered customers a $25 gift card as a "shopping incentive."

Haley saw this as an opportunity to introduce the community to a local business that makes fresh bread every day. The bakery will give out a punch card for five loaves of bread for each $25 gift card it receives. 

"The processing aids that go into those frozen baked breads are really unhealthy," she said. 

"People don't understand the difference for their health or in the value of what they're getting."

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Erwin's Fine Baking supplies day-old bread and buns to the local First Nations Housing Authority and the JUMP program, a drop-in centre that provides meals to low-income and homeless people in Kamloops.

Haley said she's also considering contributing donated gift cards to a local school breakfast program.

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Erwin's Fine Baking announced the initiative Wednesday and feedback on the Facebook post has been positive so far. Haley isn't sure how many cards they will be able to collect or how the whole idea will go over with the community, but she sees it as an opportunity to educate people on the food they eat.

"It's going to be very interesting to see if people respond to it," Haley said. "I hope the whole situation makes people step back and look at the dynamic of the food industry."