Taking care of business also means following the rules. Produce Planet pulled a fast one on the weekend, customer confidence suffers.

By Pepper Parr

BURLINGTON, ON   July 3, 2012  Following the rules and convincing your customers you can be relied upon is part of running a business.  Produce Planet did all the things a small independent is supposed to do – except for that following the rules part.

Alex Iabs  needed to let people know he had fresh fruit and vegetable from local farms available on his shelves and he put out almost as many signs as an election candidate would along the sides of Guelph Line south of Upper Middle Road to draw traffic to his store on Mount Forest.

One of the bigger supermarkets called the city’s bylaw office to complain.  The bylaw office called Alex Iabs and said the signs could not be set up on the side of the road.  The city could have fined Alex Iabs but instead just explained the rules and expected him to follow those rules. Alex Iabs then hired young boys  to hold up the signs.  That was legal.

So far so good.

City hall told the merchant signs like this were a no, no. Why then would a merchant break the rules? what else would this merchant do?

But over the weekend Alex Iabs put the signs back out on the road side with no one holding them up.

Alex Iabs knew that was against the bylaw but he also knew that there was no one at city hall on the holiday Monday to take a complaint call.

Slick you might say.

The message to me was that Alex Iabs would do whatever he had to do to drive traffic to his store.  If putting signs out without young boys holding up the signs was something he thought he could get away with – that he would do.

The message to me was that this is a store that wants to sell me the food I am going to put in my stomach; I don’t feel as confident or as supportive as I used to about Produce Planet.