Inside Scoop on BUTTER

Ah, butter. I remember, thee.

What I don't remember is the last time I bought a brick of the stuff. Seriously.

Unsalted butter is one of the most difficult commodities to get your hands on nowadays, even if you're willing to pay through the roof. I've seen upwards of $7 a brick or more.

It's dairy's cauliflower.

Salted butter prices aren't so bad, but just look at how full the shelves are, no one wants salted butter.

The company I work for buys from Costco, so we're getting it for $3.57 per brick which is actually really good. But what about those of us who don't buy 50 pound boxes at a time?

Well, rumour has it the price is supposed to finally break in April or May. Phew! I sure hope it's true.

At work we did call the CDC (Canadian Dairy Commission) and asked why the price is so high, and the answer is so convoluted and confusing, I can't even reiterate it. My understanding was something stupid like, we sell to Americans who buy at one price, and then we buy it back but the Americans jacked up the price. That was my understanding. It sounds so incredibly stupid and couldn't possibly be correct, like why are we buying our own dairy back? Or is it that we sell our dairy, but buy American dairy? I truly do not understand.

Whatever the reason, relief is apparently coming soon.

In the mean time, shop smart!

UPDATE FEBRUARY

I found out that the CDC only buys butter once a year for all the distribution centres they sell to. Apparently they didn't buy enough and that's why butter is so expensive, because all the butter in the grocery stores is not butter sold by the CDC. It's from other sources that don't offer the low price to distributors that CDC offers. So the crisis is going to be over soon because CDC will be ordering sometime in the next month or two (I think).