During the final week of May, meat and poultry supply remained tight but demand continued to be elevated. Retail demand stayed well above last year’s baseline even as restaurants around the country started seeing improvements in reservations, transactions and continued elevated engagement with takeout. At retail, purchase limits remained in place for many popular cuts. Prices stayed mostly stable week-over-week but remained up significantly compared with year ago. Despite the supply pressure, dollar sales grew 18.7% the week of May 31 versus year ago and volume grew 2.8%.
Year-to-date through May 31, meat department dollar sales were up 24.4%, boasting double-digit growth for 12 weeks running. This reflects an additional $6.0 billion sold versus the same time period in 2019. Year-to-date volume sales through May 24 were up 16.7% over the same period in 2019, reflecting an additional 1.2 billion pounds of meat and poultry sold versus the same time period in 2019.