Froyo? Yeh!!! But it's too cold...

Today, I went to Yeh! Frozen Yogurt situated at 1651 Sainte-Catherine West.  This is the Yeh! Concordia location.

Now, I don't know about you, but in my part of the world, it is starting to get into the winter temperatures...  And even though I like ice cream and frozen yogurt, I tend to get it less when it is freezing outside, than when it is sizzling outside, when it is summer.

I am no economist, but my experience is that when the weather is cold outside, there are fewer sales of ice cream and frozen yogurt.  The demand is just not there...

The incident occurred today at this location.  A few months ago, they got rid of their iPod loyalty program, which was a program where people would put in their cell number and accumulate loyalty through the number of visits.  They replaced this with a card loyalty system.  First of all, we are now killing trees, which I don't appreciate and secondly, this was started because certain owners of Yeh! are whining about how with this old system, clients could spend money at one location, gather their stamps and then redeem them at another location, so this would be unfair to the owner who ran the other location.

So today, I got some frozen yogurt.  Since it was windy outside and a tad cold, I got a little bit off frozen yogurt as a dessert.  When I inquired about the stamp for the loyalty program, I was informed that apparently this stamp would only be given for purchases of $3 or more.  This was news to me, as I have bought from other locations, and possibly even this one, for less than $3 and gotten a stamp.

The way that the new loyalty program works is that you have to buy frozen yogurt ten times before you can redeem it for a $5 coupon.  Let us do a bit of math:

10 purchases of $3 (min.) each = $30 spent before you could redeem $5 on your next purchase - where you don't get that as a stamp.

For the store to break even, let's try to figure out how much of a purchase would be required...

$5/10 purchases = $0.50 (or 50 cents) each.

So, theoretically, at 50 cents/purchase, they would break even.  This is of course excluding the fact that the price that is being charged to the client already includes a huge markup...  Do you know what Yeh! charges for their product?  They charge by mass...  At 59 cents an ounce of yogurt, which does not include tax.

The point I am trying to make is that there's a point where I don't agree with businesses being greedy and screwing out their clients.  I mean, sure, they don't have to offer a loyalty program, but putting a minimum charge for customers to spend before they get a stamp?  That's just plain greedy and pretty low.

So, I am happy to say...  Yeh!  I won't be heading to this particular location anytime soon.  I would encourage others to try other alternatives to frozen yogurt out there...  The quality of Yeh!'s yogurt is not what it used to be.  I feel that it has been going downhill, especially this location, and that this location is getting too greedy, too uppity and too big for its breeches.

BCE Buyout

So, it looks like the Supreme Court of Canada has OKed the buyout of BCE (Bell Canada). What businesses are left in Canada that are still Canadian?

Tim Horton's is no longer Canadian, they were bought out by Wendy's. That's a major symbol of Canadian business.

Piece by piece, we are losing our Canadian foothold in business. That's my opinion anyway.

But Youpidou! That's great news for shareholders. Yeah, wonderful. Your stock increases in price, and you may gain about $5000, but you've pretty much just sold your soul to another country. However, when do shareholders care about Canadian identities? It's about money money money for them anyway.