COVID-19 Working Paper National Trends in Food Retail Sales During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Findings from information Resources, Inc. (IRI) Retail-Based Scanner Data

Patrick W. McLaughlin, Alexander Stevens, Xiao Dong, Carolyn Chelius, Keenan Marchesi and Matthew MacLachlan

No 333527, USDA Miscellaneous from United States Department of Agriculture

Abstract: This report summarizes national trends in the level and composition of food retail sales associ- ated with the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. The analysis primarily uses weekly retail-based scanner data that span the start of the pandemic through March 13, 2022. For the first 2 years of the pandemic, between the declaration of the national emergency concerning the pandemic on March 13, 2020, and March 13, 2022, real food retail sales increased by roughly 10 percent compared to pre-pandemic levels. These increases were especially driven by sales of meat products (including beef, pork, and seafood), although the relative composition of food retail sales roughly returned to pre-pandemic makeup as of March 2021. Real food retail sales during the second year of the pandemic, between March 13, 2021, and March 13, 2022, were 6.6 percent higher compared to pre-pandemic levels. While total nominal food retail sales varied across States, changes in national-level nominal sales largely explain changes in sales over time within each State. Changes in real food retail sales generally mirrored changes in the number of transactions taking place at food service establishments, but during March and April 2020, real food retail sales rose faster than the rate at which the number of food service transactions fell.

Keywords: Consumer/Household Economics; Demand and Price Analysis; Institutional and Behavioral Economics; Public Economics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 37
Date: 2022-12-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/333527/files/ap-108.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:usdami:333527

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.333527

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in USDA Miscellaneous from United States Department of Agriculture
Bibliographic data for series maintained by AgEcon Search ().