Coles supermarkets now have new purchasing rules due to coronavirus panic buying as of 14 March 2020

As the situation around Coronavirus continues to develop, we believe that everyone in the community should have access to their share of grocery items, particularly the elderly.

Following the toilet paper restrictions introduced last week we have seen compassion from customers respecting these limits.

Our team members and suppliers have also been working as hard as possible delivering more products to stores every day and stocking shelves as quickly as possible. I would ask all customers to continue to respect and support our team members, particularly if a product is unavailable or the checkout queues are longer than normal.

To continue to allow everyone the opportunity to purchase staple items, we will be implementing a couple of further changes throughout our stores:

1.   From Saturday we will limit the purchase of pasta, flour, dry rice, paper towels, paper tissues and hand sanitisers to 2 items per customer. We will also be introducing some additional limits on certain items in each store. These can vary between stores, so please visit your local Coles for more information.

2.   From today we will be temporarily suspending our change-of-mind refund policy to discourage over-purchasing. If you have already purchased additional items you no longer want, please look at donating them to community organisations or neighbours who have been struggling to purchase them during this time.

Further information on Coronavirus can be found at www.health.gov.au

Thanks for your ongoing support and patience in these unprecedented times. We will get through this together!

Best wishes,

Steven Cain

CEO, Coles Group

The ACCC had addressed Coles misleading advertising about its in-house baked bread and rolls - now it's time for someone to look into product quality

 Two slices from a Coles loaf in which approx. one quarter of the slices had hollow middles, July 2013
A problem which exists to varying degrees to this day

AdNews 18 Jun 2014:

Coles has been cooked by the Federal Court and found guilty of misleading consumers with claims its bread and rolls were baked in-house despite being shipped frozen from overseas.

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission launched action against the supermarket giant last year after consumers – led by former Victorian Premier Jeff Kennett – began to question the veracity of the claims.

Coles had claimed that because the baking process had been completed in ovens in store, the promotions of being baked fresh in store were acceptable.

The bread and roll ranges were promoted at Coles’ supermarkets with in-house bakeries as ‘Baked Today, Sold Today’ and in some cases ‘Freshly Baked In-Store’.

Federal Court Chief Justice James Allsop handed down his judgement this afternoon and the retailer now faces potential substantial fines for each of the breaches of the Trade Practices Act.

In his judgment, Chief Justice Allsop said “It is not the place of the court to provide an advice … as to how Coles might sell bread that has been par-baked from frozen product … A start would, however, be to make it tolerably clear to the public that the recent baking was the completion of a baking process that had taken place sometime before, off site, and that 'freshly baked' actually meant the completion of the baking process of frozen product prepared and frozen off site by suppliers.”

ACCC chairman Rob Sims said that Coles behaviour not only mislead consumers placed smaller businesses that baked their bread on the premises at a competitive disadvantage.