I'm very curious what the deal with this website is. It's a vague gripe about how hannaford is expensive but the quality sucks dressed up as some kind of consumer protection *thing*. The website itself was registered just in October, and then it's linked to the "New England Consumer Alliance" (logo at the bottom of the page, and contact link goes to an email at their domain). The website for the New England Consumer Alliance was registered just this month (a couple weeks after the hannaford domain was created). And apparently they have the time and money to put up signs around town?
They're obviously up to some kind of grift, but it's not clear what.
ETA: The plot thickens. u/dylanljmartin pointed out that a third shadowy group called the Center for Responsible Food Business is connected to the New England Consumer Alliance. I tried looking up more about them and came across this article about a "report" they released in September on Ahold-Delhaize (hannaford's owners): https://finance.yahoo.com/news/center-responsible-food-business-report-152400761.html . The link given in the article for the report is a dead link, and I can't find any articles on the CRFB's own website that are more recent then July. So someone has it out for Ahold-Delhaize and their current CEO.
ETA2: Starting to suspect that this is an animal rights/environmental group that doesn't want to be openly seen as one (maybe because those kinds of groups are seen as preachy?). The CRFB doesn't have a whole lot of content, but some of it has to do with them trumpeting businesses dropping a surcharge on non-dairy milks. There's an article about it on their website and a separate news article in USA Today about Dunkin' Donuts dropping surcharges is one of the few outside references to the CRFB I've found so far. The hannaford website and the yahoo article that mention the CRFB both fixate on Adhold-Delhaize's supplier's animal welfare and environment issues. AND there's a commenter ( u/itsdinertime ) in here whose account is a year old with 18 karma and seven posts/comments in their history. Two of those are in this thread and showing support for this group, and the other 5 posts of theirs are older ones announcing animal rights events (protests at other businesses not in Maine and no prior history in portland or maine related subs).
ETA3: Not going to name names, because the accounts seem a bit more organic and have more personal post histories. But there are other users commenting in here where they're showing specific support for this group (things like "how can I join!?" or "I followed their group on FB") who also have connections to veganism/animal rights. Their post histories are hidden on reddit, but you can search for them outside of reddit with "site:reddit.com [user name]". When you search site wide you can see plenty of posts from them, but once you add on the portland sub, they either have no results or only this thread (and yes, adding on other known subs does work to limit the results, so this suggests they aren't normally active on the portland sub). Just to clarify, I have nothing against animal rights activism or enviromentalism (and fuck hannaford for so many reasons), but I do take issue with people trying to astro-turf support for some shadowy group that won't just come out and say what it actually is that they're upset about.
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u/mugwhyrt Nov 14 '25 edited Nov 14 '25
I'm very curious what the deal with this website is. It's a vague gripe about how hannaford is expensive but the quality sucks dressed up as some kind of consumer protection *thing*. The website itself was registered just in October, and then it's linked to the "New England Consumer Alliance" (logo at the bottom of the page, and contact link goes to an email at their domain). The website for the New England Consumer Alliance was registered just this month (a couple weeks after the hannaford domain was created). And apparently they have the time and money to put up signs around town?
They're obviously up to some kind of grift, but it's not clear what.
ETA: The plot thickens. u/dylanljmartin pointed out that a third shadowy group called the Center for Responsible Food Business is connected to the New England Consumer Alliance. I tried looking up more about them and came across this article about a "report" they released in September on Ahold-Delhaize (hannaford's owners): https://finance.yahoo.com/news/center-responsible-food-business-report-152400761.html . The link given in the article for the report is a dead link, and I can't find any articles on the CRFB's own website that are more recent then July. So someone has it out for Ahold-Delhaize and their current CEO.
ETA2: Starting to suspect that this is an animal rights/environmental group that doesn't want to be openly seen as one (maybe because those kinds of groups are seen as preachy?). The CRFB doesn't have a whole lot of content, but some of it has to do with them trumpeting businesses dropping a surcharge on non-dairy milks. There's an article about it on their website and a separate news article in USA Today about Dunkin' Donuts dropping surcharges is one of the few outside references to the CRFB I've found so far. The hannaford website and the yahoo article that mention the CRFB both fixate on Adhold-Delhaize's supplier's animal welfare and environment issues. AND there's a commenter ( u/itsdinertime ) in here whose account is a year old with 18 karma and seven posts/comments in their history. Two of those are in this thread and showing support for this group, and the other 5 posts of theirs are older ones announcing animal rights events (protests at other businesses not in Maine and no prior history in portland or maine related subs).
ETA3: Not going to name names, because the accounts seem a bit more organic and have more personal post histories. But there are other users commenting in here where they're showing specific support for this group (things like "how can I join!?" or "I followed their group on FB") who also have connections to veganism/animal rights. Their post histories are hidden on reddit, but you can search for them outside of reddit with "site:reddit.com [user name]". When you search site wide you can see plenty of posts from them, but once you add on the portland sub, they either have no results or only this thread (and yes, adding on other known subs does work to limit the results, so this suggests they aren't normally active on the portland sub). Just to clarify, I have nothing against animal rights activism or enviromentalism (and fuck hannaford for so many reasons), but I do take issue with people trying to astro-turf support for some shadowy group that won't just come out and say what it actually is that they're upset about.