Post-panic shopping, the real effects of Covid-19 on US Grocery Chains
Recent ‘Future Proofing’ research by Bord Bia in response to the Covid 19 pandemic has revealed some intereting food trends.
As everyone has descended on the home, pleasing people through food is a priority. Cooking has become a focal point of households’ day in a way that hasn’t been the case for many years. As long days stretch out for consumers, cooking is especially important to make the day exciting and interesting.
There is also a consumer behaviour called ‘shielding’. Consumers are shifting to protection for their insides and outsides.
Google searches featuring the term food, immune and system have spiked since mid-March. As the crisis has deepened consumers have moved to any source they can to find ‘new’ ways to boost their immune system.
Indicators tracker in Ireland, in April 2020 revealed that 29% of Irish adults are now eating healthier for ‘improved immunity’.
That figure jumps to 37% among all under 35 year olds. Clearly, healthy eating for immunity has as stronger appeal amongst the valuable millennials cohort.
Grocery stockpiling is a well documented outplaying of the need to protect ourselves that has been seen across Europe, serving as a means of comfort, control and reassurance for consumers. However, there also more subtle manifestations of this with consumers seeking reassurances regarding food safety, something that for many was taken for granted.
The foundational work by Theodore Maslow on the hierarchy of needs puts safety behind physiological needs, one might argue that the safety need is for now, at least temporarily, paramount.
With this background, it is interesting to see how fresh produce retail sales back up this research, with bumper retail sales reported by Kantar for the three months to the 16th of June, compared to the same period last year.
Overall, fresh produce sales are up 19% by volume and 21% by value, in a period which covers most of the lockdown.
This is a substantial increase, and reflects more cooking at home, more cooking from scratch, and a desire to eat as healthily as possible.
Fresh produce has all the health credentials needed for an immunity boost. It also grounds eating in traditional and reassuring ingredients, the foods our parents gave us because they were good for us.
These increases may not be sustained at these levels, as people return to work and less meal preparation is done at home, but some of the gains will be retained.
The Bord Bia quality mark on fresh produce has no doubt been a boost for Irish produce, that extra bit of reassurance that the highest stands have been adhered to in the production process.