If “America’s Finest City” can legislate how grocery stores offer digital deals, why can’t one of America’s most progressive cities?
San Diego is nicknamed the “finest city,” but some local lawmakers have taken to calling it the “fairest city,” weeks after it began requiring retailers to offer non-digital alternatives to digital-only grocery deals, to benefit elderly and other shoppers who lack digital access or aptitude. Now, some who’ve seen what San Diego is doing, are wondering whether their city can do the same.
Like San Francisco. In the first sign that San Diego’s measure is inspiring others to take similar steps, lawmakers in the California city have received a proposal urging them to consider “digital deal” legislation of their own.
“Please follow the lead of the city of San Diego and address the discriminatory practice of digital coupons,” a constituent has urged the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, in a letter received by the Clerk of the Board and sent to the ten current supervisors for their consideration. “In a time when grocery prices are what they are,” the letter continues, “don’t allow corporations doing business in San Francisco to treat the elderly and poor in this manner.”
There’s no guarantee that the supervisors will take up the suggestion. But with Los Angeles already considering the possibility of pursuing similar legislation, it appears that the idea of regulating how digital grocery deals are offered is starting to spread up the California coast – and could ultimately spread even further.
It was, after all, the concerns of a single constituent that was said to have inspired San Diego’s ordinance. “I actually learned about the issue from my dad through his frustrations at the grocery store,” city council member Sean Elo-Rivera said when he proposed his Grocery Pricing Transparency Ordinance back in March. “Digital-only discounts shut out seniors, working families and low-income households, forcing them to pay more for basic necessities.”
The resulting ordinance, which took effect October 1st, mandates that grocery stores offer alternative ways for shoppers to access digital deals that are advertised in stores and in their weekly circulars. Digitally-savvy shoppers can still activate those offers on the store’s website or app, but others who lack the ability to do so must be given a way to get the same deals – whether in the form of paper coupons, in-store coupon kiosks, or simply by asking the cashier for the lower price.
Shoppers and lawmakers in Los Angeles, San Francisco and beyond might want to be careful what they wish for, though. Those who are inspired by San Diego’s success might also want to learn from their mistakes.
Most grocers doing business in San Diego are indeed providing alternatives to their advertised digital-only deals, as the ordinance’s sponsors say they intended. But questions about the way the ordinance is worded and how it will be applied have led one grocery chain to eliminate the majority of its digital coupons altogether, which the sponsors say was not their intent. Each side is blaming the other, in a standoff that has yet to be resolved.
So more grocery deals for everyone is a goal that more cities might be inclined to get behind. Fewer deals for anyone is not. It will be up to whatever city pursues legislation next, to make sure they can achieve the former without resulting in the latter.
