The week ending July 12 was a non-holiday week, but did bring better prices in the meat department along with more consumers shopping for food. As COVID-19 cases are rising across many states, several rolled back the re-opening of restaurants and businesses. In some cases, the rollback prohibits in-restaurant dining altogether, in others, dine-in capacity was more restricted — much like late March and April. The reversal on restaurant openings along with rising consumer concern over COVID-19 is likely to shift dollars back from foodservice to food retail once more.
Taking all this into account, the elevated everyday demand resulted in a 21.4% increase in dollar sales versus year ago. Non-holiday weeks had been seeing some erosion in gains, but this represents a five percentage point increase from the latest non-holiday week, which was June 28. This also became the 17th week of double-digit gains since the onset of the pandemic. While higher prices drove much of this gain, volume increased as well, at +7.7%. This was the highest volume gain during a non-holiday week since mid April. Unit purchases in the meat department increased by 16.2 million, or 8.1%, over the week of July 12 versus last year, while volume increased 7.7%. This points to more, but smaller, packages sold.