Israel – Alon Israel Oil Company subsidiary Blue Square Israel today published its financial report for the first quarter of 2009, two days after Standard & Poor’s Maalot downgraded the company’s bonds. Israel’s second largest supermarket chain reported lower sales, mainly due to the recession and the haredi (ultra-orthodox) boycott of the Shefa Shuk brand stores, which began in February 2008.
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Blue Square posted $421.4 million revenue for the first quarter, 3.1% less than the revenue for the corresponding quarter of 2008. Supermarket same store sales fell 7.1%, due to the conversion of stores to the Mega Bool hard discount format.
The decrease in sales was offset by the opening of eleven new stores during the 12-month period and increased sales by BEE Group compared with the corresponding quarter, and which benefited from the proximity of the Passover holiday this to the end of the first quarter.
Yup, this is evident that you can’t benefit from desecrating the shabbat.
If you look at comparable statistics for other retailers during this same recessionary period and normalize the results to account for new store openings and the number of selling days in the reporting period, the changes were statistically insignificant. Stop trying to make it sound like these religious fanatics have any meaningful affect on the results. Blue Square is owned and managed by ehrleche yidden who carry heimeshe products with only the best chasideshe hasgaca. They stay open because the large percentage of their customers want them to be open on shabbos. If it was not economic, then they would close. EY is a democracy and it would be unlawful to require them to close. As it is, some of the demonstrations against the stores are borderline illegal and some of the protesters should be arrested if they trespass or harass those of us who want to shop on shabbos.
It is illegal in many cities in the US to be open on Sunday. This includes Paramus NJ. If it can be in the laws of a democratic country as the US it surely can be in tv democratic country of Israel. 😉