Thursday, December 3, 2009

Chaos in Rimi over cheap sugar offer in Estonia


Yesterday, Rimi opened its newest and largest discount store in Mustamäe, the XL Säästumarket.

As a special offer for the opening, sugar was proposed at EEK5 (€0,3) per kilogram. In many other European countries, this kind of offer would have been completely ignored - probably a couple of cooks would have been interested to buy a couple of kilos.

However, in Tallinn, people ran into the shop (luckily no one was injured!) to fight over the cheap sugar! In only 20 minutes after the doors were opened, customers had purchased 4 tons of sugar!!! The rest was wasted since many packages were damaged in the chaos...

One elderly purchased 12 packs, i.e. 120 kilograms of sugar. Knowing that the European average consumption of sugar is approximately 34kg/year/person, this person bought sugar for more than 3 years!

Other popular products were sparkling wine, vodka, beer and honey.

It could sound funny but this kind of purchase (probably to sell to neighbours later) is a tell-tale sign of social and economical unrest.

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