Days after city lawmakers advanced landmark legislation that would impose sweeping new regulations on how digital coupons and grocery deals are offered, the sponsor of the San Diego ordinance is clarifying its intent and narrowing its focus.
The city council on Monday unanimously voted in favor of an ordinance stating that “any grocery store that offers digital discounts to consumers for the purchase of goods must make physical coupons for the digital price available to consumers upon request,” with “digital discounts” defined as any form of coupon, rebate or price reduction available only online.
That raised the prospect that every grocery retailer in the city would need to have hundreds or thousands of printed versions of every digital coupon they offer, in every store, available on demand. It also raised the possibility that stores would find it impossible to comply, and quit offering digital coupons within the city limits altogether.
The ordinance must undergo a second reading at an upcoming council meeting before it can take effect. And now its sponsor is clarifying its language.
“This ordinance is about transparency and fairness at the grocery store,” San Diego city councilmember Sean Elo-Rivera told Coupons in the News. “It does not regulate websites or apps. It simply ensures that if a digital discount is advertised in-store or in a weekly ad, it must also be available in a non-digital format.”
So rather than requiring a paper version of every available digital coupon that a grocer offers, the ordinance will pertain only to digital deals specifically advertised by a grocer.
People with knowledge of the process say additional language to that effect will be added to the ordinance before its next reading and before a final vote in the coming weeks.
It’s a compromise that is more likely to please all sides in the ongoing debate over the “digital divide.” The California Grocers Association had warned that the original ordinance as written “would actually reduce access to discounts for San Diegans, not expand it.” In a statement issued after Monday’s vote, the group said the ordinance “would make special offerings like loyalty programs — which fairly reward a store’s best customers — unworkable.”
A measure that’s narrowed in scope would also closely mimic what happened in New Jersey, the very first jurisdiction to consider legislation aimed at helping the digitally-disadvantaged and disengaged gain access to digital-only grocery deals. The original version of that state’s proposed law would have required any retailer offering a digital coupon to offer “a paper coupon of identical value.” Subsequent revisions changed that phrasing to require that stores offer an “in-store alternative” for those who can’t access digital deals or clip digital coupons themselves.
That measure, and several others like it, has not advanced to a final vote. San Diego’s measure is very close to doing so. And given its unanimous support among councilmembers, and the clarified language that should make it more workable for retailers, it’s looking increasingly likely that it will become the first measure of its kind to become law in the country.
Consumer World founder Edgar Dworsky first called attention to the growing trend of grocery store circulars featuring discount prices in bold text, with only the fine print disclosing that you had to activate the deal or clip a digital coupon in order to get that price. His campaign to offer those same deals to elderly, low-income or other shoppers without digital access or know-how was taken up by several state lawmakers, but it morphed along the way to mandate “paper copies of all digital coupons,” which is not what Dworsky and his supporters had called for.
Now that San Diego’s ordinance is set to more closely address the problem Dworsky was highlighting, if it does become law, it would appear to be mission accomplished, in at least one city. “What a great move by the city council in San Diego to help all those digitally-disconnected shoppers now be able to take advantage of the savings on groceries that have not been available to them until now,” Dworsky told Coupons in the News.
If the San Diego ordinance had gone in the books as originally written, there may have been a host of unintended consequences. As it stands, if a clarified ordinance goes into the books in the coming weeks, grocers in San Diego may need to start looking into in-store coupon kiosks, or training customer service staffers to help shoppers load digital offers to their accounts.
And if San Diegans consider the measure to be a success, then this first-in-the-nation measure may not be the last.
Image source: Publix
This updated version of San Diego’s digital coupon legislation is a step in the right direction toward bridging the digital divide. By focusing only on digital deals advertised in-store, the revised ordinance strikes a balance between ensuring fairness for non-digital shoppers and avoiding burdensome requirements for grocers. This narrower approach should help retailers comply without jeopardizing their digital offerings, all while addressing the needs of digitally disadvantaged consumers. It will be interesting to see if this approach becomes a model for other cities struggling with similar issues. However, there’s still room to explore how such policies could be implemented nationwide, especially with the increasing shift towards digital-only deals in grocery retail.