So far, the 2020 pandemic-affected holidays have seen strong sales performances. Without exception, Easter, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day and Memorial Day boosted the elevated everyday demand even higher to achieve astounding gains versus year ago. Independence Day was no exception. Meat prices were still elevated and several states rolled back their relaxation of pandemic social distancing measures. In many cases, this involved stricter in-restaurant dining capacity limits. This could have prompted everyday demand to increase for the week ending July 5 along with the holiday demand.
Independence Day is a much tougher holiday to beat year-over-year sales given the high focus on grilling versus eating out in regular years. However, the 2020 holiday resulted in a 17.9% increase in dollar sales versus year ago. This was the 17th week of double-digit gains since the onset of the pandemic. And while higher prices drove much of this gain, the holiday brought meat volume growth too, at +4.1%. The dollar/volume gap continued to improve to 13.8 points. Expectations for the holidays were smaller gatherings and unit sales support this assumption. Unit purchases in fresh meat increased by 8.4 million, or 5.2%, over the Fourth of July week versus last year, while volume increased 4.1%. This points to more, but smaller, packages sold.