The last full week of August saw the smallest increases since the start of the pandemic across virtually all departments. Prior months had also shown weak final week of the month sales and, in this case, the results were further influenced by a much earlier Labor Day in 2019 that fell on September 2. That means the sales results of the week ending August 30th 2020 went up against the 2019 Labor Day sales. Labor Day has always been a massive holiday week for grocery — making it a much harder holiday to beat than ones that had more of a split retail versus foodservice nature in typical years, such as Mother’s Day. Additionally, sales were negatively affected by more extreme weather events, impacting large parts of Louisiana and Texas.
The net effect for the meat department was the first single-digit increase versus year ago since the week of March 15, at +1.5%. While at first glance this may seem like a disappointing gain, it is important to remember that this year’s everyday demand managed to beat last year’s holiday demand during one of the biggest grilling weekends of the summer. At the same time, the 1.5% increase in dollars was driven by inflation with meat volume down 6.0% versus year ago. Prices continued to drop in favor of the consumer, with an average of $3.76 per volume across all meats during the week of August 30 versus $3.80 the week prior. The week of August 30th 2020 had 6.3% fewer transactions compared to same week year ago when Labor Day drove an increased engagement.