Town hall meeting on grocery store discounts held in Rancho Bernardo

By Oct. 1, grocery stores in the City of San Diego will need to provide alternative means for all shoppers to access digital coupons, such as printed versions, through an in-store kiosk or a barcode with cashiers.

This applies to grocery stores in Rancho Bernardo and Carmel Mountain Ranch.

“This is about closing accessibility gaps while letting grocers continue offering promotions,” said Melinda Forstey of Serving Seniors, who moderated a July 30 town hall meeting at San Diego Oasis’ Rancho Bernardo center on the city’s new grocery store ordinance.

Among the participants were San Diego City Councilmembers Sean Elo-Rivera and Marni von Wilpert, who co-authored the ordinance. They emphasized that it was about fairness. Seniors who are not tech savvy and low-income residents often do not have a smart phone, which is required to use store apps to access digital coupons, they said.

Von Wilpert, whose district includes Rancho Bernardo, told the estimated 75 attendees that San Diego is the first city in the nation to pass such an ordinance.

The current version is a revision of an ordinance the City Council passed earlier this year requiring printed coupons at the stores, von Wilpert said. When grocery lobbyists said that was too difficult due to the high number of products on sale and a waste of paper, the council changed it to allow alternative access, such as through a touch-screen kiosk or barcode cashiers can scan.

“The stores themselves can figure out how they want to honor it, but it must be an easy and accessible way to do it when you are at the point of sale,” von Wilpert said. “The same thing for loyalty club members. … They are putting a digital barrier up, saying even if you are a loyalty club member you have to put in your phone number and download the app and get the digital coupon.”

Stores can ask customers to be a loyalty club member, but will not be able to say their coupons are digital only.

“The idea here is not to punish grocery stores. … The idea is just to offer the same equal access to discounts to everybody,” von Wilpert said.

The new version also includes a 15-day right to cure period, which means stores have that long to reimburse customers before being open to legal action.

“If a grocery store is found to be violating the law by having digital-only barriers, they have 15 days to reimburse the customer and change it. If they don’t then they can be sued by the district attorney or the city attorney who is empowered to enforce the law,” von Wilpert said.

Because of the council’s changes to the ordinance, it now has the support of the San Diego Chamber of Commerce and the grocers’ association, she said.

Those exempt are quick service businesses, such as gas stations and 7-Eleven stores. It also does not apply to paid-membership stores, such as Costco.

Elo-Rivera said he started looking into the situation after hearing complaints from his father. At first, he brushed them off to his father not knowing how to use his smart phone. But his father persisted for months.

“One of the reasons his frustration was growing was because he thought it was not just about not getting the discount he wanted … but he thought there was some deception involved as well,” Elo-Rivera said. “He didn’t understand why there couldn’t be a little more assistance in helping him access the coupon.”

When his sister said she was also experiencing difficulties accessing discounts, Elo-Rivera said he decided to research the issue. That was when he discovered the AARP had been saying there was a discount access problem too.

“For years the AARP has been advocating to make it a more fair system,” he said.

In other states, such as New Jersey, New York and Illinois, community response to the efforts was excellent, he said. “But then the (grocery store) lobbyists dropped in and squashed it in the end,” Elo-Rivera said.

So he approached von Wilpert to help him create the ordinance.

Von Wilpert said the second biggest complaint she hears from constituents, after roads, is San Diego’s high cost of living.

“When we are talking about groceries, these are necessary things. These are not luxury goods. Everybody needs to buy food,” she said.

“Imagine the heartbreak when going to the grocery store and you see the person ahead of you getting discount after discount and you walk up and say you want the same coupons that they got and the cashier says, ‘Where’s your smart phone? Did you download the app? Did you clip the digital coupon?’”

After hearing about the issue, von Wilpert said she decided to try for herself and had a hard time figuring out a grocery store’s app.

“It would take me a while to go through it with the cashier, who told me everyone has problems with this,” she said. “That’s when we decided we should take action here at the city.”

The issue is important because higher prices mean low-income customers can purchase less.

“We’re talking about a tech barrier to become a food barrier,” said Bob Prath from AARP California. “It’s first about a level playing field … for all consumers.”

For about 40% of those on Social Security, it is 90% of their income, Prath said. According to AARP surveys, their priorities are first shelter, then medical needs, food at a reasonable cost and last utilities, if they have any money left over.

“This is about an item needed for health and it is a vital item,” Prath said. “It is up to us to do every little thing to make food affordable.”

Forstey said in San Diego 2 out of 5 older adults — 40% — are struggling to meet their basic needs of food, housing and transportation. She said Serving Seniors focuses on older adults living in poverty and sees that after they pay rent, seniors are living on $10 or less per day.

“That means every single dollar, every cent counts,” Forstey said, adding they often cannot afford a smart phone or Wi-Fi access.

Prath said he has heard from seniors who have learned about the new requirement and say they plan to start shopping in the San Diego since it does not apply to stores in other parts of the county, such as Poway and 4S Ranch.

Prath said it could lead to other cities enacting similar ordinances.

Von Wilpert said she will be approaching the county Board of Supervisors to see if they want to make the ordinance countywide.

Elo-Rivera said he has already seen signs in some Ralphs stores announcing there are papers with the digital coupon codes. All customers have to do is pick up the paper and hand it to the cashier.

He said customers should be vigilant because not all store employees are fully aware that everyone has this option. Elo-Rivera said he tested the system only to be told by a cashier that the paper option is “only for old people.” That is not true, he said.

Rancho Bernardo resident Carolyn Stables and her husband, Gordon, said they attended the meeting to learn more.

“My personal opinion is that stores make it far too difficult to shop,” Carolyn Stables said. “Think of the time wasted downloading the app, then the coupon and if it is not applied at the register properly then you have to tell the cashier. … This could be five, 10, 15 minutes (to fix). … It is a waste of time and frustration to people who aren’t as obsessed as I am (to get the discount), who just brush it off and walk away.”

As a retiree, Stables said she has the time to get a price fixed, but others do not.

“It’s a degree of difficulty and hoops to jump through,” she said. “It’s got to be simpler. Why not get the price on the shelf?”

Poway resident Jackie Smith said she has never shopped with coupons, but is now interested in going to grocery stores in Rancho Bernardo.

Smith said all the hassle should not be necessary. “Why go through all these loops? Why not give the same price to everybody?” she said.

Rancho Bernardo resident Vienna Peterson said she did not know about the kiosk option or when the ordinance began.

“I wanted to come because I know a couple people who are older, like I am, who have problems with the pricing system because they are not very techy,” Peterson said. “I also came for me. It is not fair that a product has three different prices.”