I've been getting them for $8 per bag at Canadian Tire for a while too. They lowered their prices from $10.99 per bag partway through the summer; last year, Canadian Tire was selling them for $9.99 per bag and I was annoyed at the 10% year over year price increase. I noticed that CT also lowered the price of Maple Leaf lump charcoal from $21.99 per bag to $19.99 per bag, which is good since that's my favourite lump charcoal. Oddly, back in April for about two weeks, the Canadian Tire in St. Catharines had Royal Oak briquettes on for $8 per bag. I discovered this when I was down there checking out the road layout before having a driving test so I stocked up since the store near me at home was charging $10.99 instead of $9.99 at that point, so $8 was a nice deal. Then after the driving test, I went to stock up again and saw that their prices had jumped from $8 up to the same $10.99. Who knows how long this pricing's going to last for?
royal oak briqs on for 8 bucks for a 16.4 lb bag.
I missed out on checking this out …. However, I was just in Canadian Tire, and they were $8 for a 15.7 lb bag. Picked up two.
Weird how it's such a small variation in weight from bag to bag and different store chains.
Not sure if this is store-wide, or just an in-store clearance.
This is deliberate retail sleazery trickery. The purpose of slightly the bag size between store chains so that they're ever so slightly different is so that you can't comparison shop identical products - since they
aren't exactly the same - and take advantage of the "we beat our competitors prices" promises that so many big box store chains make. That's why large chains who can order enough from any given manufacturer get slight packaging or model number changes so that they don't actually have to beat anybody else's prices since the exact same thing isn't available anywhere else. Future Shop used to be be guilty of doing this all the time, getting custom runs of computers and printers and monitors and having their own slightly different model numbers put on by the manufacturers (remember installing HP or Epson printer drivers on Windows and having to pick from a mile long list of model numbers that were almost exactly the same? - that's why).