The boss of Iceland has spoken out amid soaring prices across supermarkets in the UK as the cost of living crisis continues to bite. The managing director of supermarket chain Richard Walker issued a warning on Good Morning Britain over a rise in a "worrying" new trend.
He joined Ed Balls and Susanna Reid on the ITV news programme on Tuesday (July 12) where he was quizzed on the problems the UK faces over the mounting cost-of-living crisis.
Mr Walker was quizzed on the Tesco vs Heinz price dispute which saw the supermarket giant have baked beans, ketchup and tomato soup pulled from its shelves after Heinz stopped supplying the retailer in a pricing row. The dispute between Tesco and Kraft Heinz began at the end of June after the US giant tried to boost the prices it was charging the UK's largest supermarket.
But Tesco confirmed last week that it had "reached an agreement that will see the full range of Heinz products return to Tesco shelves and online". Referring to the now-resolved pricing row, Mr Walker said that Iceland doesn’t have the same negotiating power as Tesco and so "can’t bully [brand owners] and kick them out".
"But we are trying to persuade them to lower their profit expectations so that they continue to have viable business models in the future," he added.
Mr Walker also said soaring food costs have sparked a rise in shoplifting and aggressive incidents across Iceland stores, reports the Liverpool Echo. He added: "I get the serious incident reports every week of aggressive behaviour that goes on in our stores and unfortunately it is going up because people are struggling."
Susanna was taken aback by the worrying rise and quizzed Mr Walker on how supermarket staff deal with shoplifters. He explained: "We're not the police and we do have security guards in some stores, but they will give a written warning or ban the customer from the story if they get aggressive."
Iceland has launched a series of initiatives to help ease the cost-of-living crisis for shoppers. The supermarket chain reduced the threshold for free delivery and has frozen the price of hundreds of £1 value lines. And GMB viewers following the show on Twitter praised the supermarket chain for taking action to help shoppers.
@bestchester276 said: "I really like the boss of Iceland and he isn’t afraid to come and answer questions." Jasmine commented: "I like the boss of iceland...atleast he's trying.." David added: "Very impressed by the boss of Iceland."
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