COVID-19 Working Paper: The Impact of COVID-19 Pandemic on Food-Away-From-Home Spending

Keenan Marchesi and Patrick W McLaughlin

No 327337, Administrative Publications from United States Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service

Abstract: This paper summarizes national changes in the frequency and dollar amount of U.S. consumers’ food-away-from-home (FAFH) purchases during the COVID-19 pandemic. The analysis draws on frequently updated proprietary data sources to measure national FAFH trends in average monthly spending and the weekly number of store transactions. Both spending and transactions at restaurants fell substantially following the onset of the pandemic and remained below pre-pandemic levels more than 1 year later. Differences in the decline in spending and transactions across restaurant types and mealtimes are notable. Although restaurant restrictions loosened across the country in the first half of 2021, visits and spending have been slow to recover to their pre-pandemic levels.

Keywords: Consumer/Household; Economics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 28
Date: 2022-03
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/327337/files/ap-100.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:uersap:327337

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.327337

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Administrative Publications from United States Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by AgEcon Search ().