They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. So if other cities or states want to pass their own laws based on San Diego’s new “digital deal” ordinance, that’s just fine with city council member Marni von Wilpert.
“Other cities are already looking at it, which is great,” she told a group of constituents yesterday. “I’m really glad that we got to be the first in the nation to do this.”
von Wilpert made her comments at a town hall meeting called to discuss the city’s new Grocery Pricing Transparency Ordinance, which was signed into law earlier this month. She and her colleague Sean Elo-Rivera were joined by representatives from several local senior citizen advocacy groups, speaking to a full crowd of local residents who were invited to learn how the measure “impacts your shopping experience and what to do if you’re not getting equal access to grocery discounts.”
Representatives from local grocery stores were not in the room. But the council members had plenty to say about them.
The ordinance, which takes effect on October 1st, will require grocery stores to offer alternative ways for digitally-disconnected shoppers to access “digital-only deals.” Several states in recent years have proposed similar laws. And several grocery retailers have since pre-emptively complied, installing in-store coupon kiosks, or printed digital coupon “scan sheets,” so shoppers who don’t have the ability to activate those digital deals at home or on their phone can get access to those deals in the store.
Now, offering that access will be mandatory in San Diego, which has become the first community in the country to pass a digital deal law. And doing so wasn’t easy, the measure’s sponsors said.
“We looked at some of the policies that had been attempted to be passed in other states,” Elo-Rivera said. “Each time these efforts had been made, the community response was excellent, and then the lobbyists dropped in and squashed it at the end.”
“Let me tell you a trick we used,” von Wilpert said, giving the crowd a glimpse into how the legislative sausage is made. Back in April, the city council pushed through an imperfect version of the ordinance that would have required stores to provide paper versions of every digital coupon they offer. Retailers howled in protest, saying “you’re going to end coupons!” von Wilpert recalled.
But getting that original version passed, she claimed, was a calculated move. “Once we had that leverage to say, all right, if you don’t come to the table and help us fix this, the original law is going to go into place,” that “made the grocery stores come to the table.” Together, they worked out some changes, including eliminating the paper coupon requirement. “So we were very smart in how we didn’t give up on our goal,” von Wilpert concluded.
While he was willing to work with retailers, “I was a little less sympathetic to the arguments being heard,” Elo-Rivera said. “When they said things like, we’re just going to take coupons away, that was a threat. They were trying to threaten us. Basically what we had hanging over our heads is, every grocery shopper in San Diego being told that ‘big bad Sean and Marni are the reasons why you don’t have any coupons.’ And that was a completely unnecessary way of responding to the policy.”
Whether due to von Wilpert’s more conciliatory approach, Elo-Rivera’s more confrontational approach, or some combination of the two, local retailers appear satisfied with the ordinance’s final version. The California Grocers Association previously told Coupons in the News that it appreciated the council members’ “willingness to seek out a middle ground that serves the community and its grocers.”
In answering audience questions, the council members did clarify some ambiguities in the ordinance. If digital deals are only available to members of a store’s loyalty program, von Wilpert said, the store can require you to sign up in order to request the deal. And while the ordinance could be read as applying to any digital coupon that a grocer offers, Elo-Rivera emphasized that the intent is to regulate digital discounts that are advertised in the store, and not any and all digital coupons that happen to be available online.
“The most important thing for you all to know is this – that if there is a price that’s offered in the store digitally, you have a right to that price by some other means,” Elo-Rivera told the crowd.
Serving Seniors President & CEO Melinda Forstey, who moderated the town hall, noted that “two out of five older adults in San Diego are struggling to meet their basic needs… so that means every single dollar, every single cent, counts.” Many of the seniors her organization serves “can’t afford to have access to a cell phone and to Wi-Fi. So that is why we are 100% behind this initiative.”
Enforcement of the ordinance is now two months away. After October 1st, “if a grocery store is found violating the law by having digital-only barriers, they have 15 days to reimburse the customer and change it,” von Wilpert explained. “And if they don’t, then they could be sued by the district attorney or the city attorney who’s empowered to enforce the law.”
And seniors and others in the community should consider themselves empowered to make sure retailers are complying with the law. “We’re going to need folks to be out there and educating the stores a bit,” Elo-Rivera said. “If you see practices that are deceptive, that is a really important thing for us to know about.”
Most grocers in the city are not yet complying, and most have not publicly explained how they plan to. They have a couple of months to come up with something – and San Diego’s seniors will be watching, to make sure they do.
Image provided by Serving Seniors
