Quebec’s provincial government will spend $14 million over the next three years on a marketing strategy to boost purchases of Quebec food products.
The strategy, branded “Le Québec dans votre assiette!” (loosely, “Quebec on your plate”) is based on three points: encouraging Quebec consumers to consider buying Quebec products in general when buying groceries, supporting marketing efforts for those products and improving producers’ access to distribution networks.
Agriculture Minister Laurent Lessard said in a release that the province is not asking consumers to consume more, just to consider reserving a larger share of the space in their grocery baskets for Quebec products.
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If each Quebec consumer were to buy another $30 of Quebec-produced food each year, that would translate after five years to over $1 billion in purchases, Lessard noted.
Of the funds pledged, $11 million are expected to go toward promotion and labeling for Quebec foods, while $1.7 million will go toward entrepreneurs’ joint marketing efforts and improving their understanding of food markets and marketing and another $1.3 million is to go to help companies access distribution networks for their food products.
The strategy will include a publicity campaign, directed at consumers, to start in spring 2008.
