Already a strong grocery holiday during regular times, expectations for Labor Day grocery sales were high and reality did not disappoint. The holiday fell a week later than in 2019, which helped further boost the results in departments across the store, including the meat department.
Following its first single-digit gain since the onset of the pandemic last week, the meat department bounced back strongly. For the week ending September 6, dollars gained 18.2% over year ago levels during one of the biggest grilling weekends of the summer. Volume gains jumped into double digits as well, at +11.4%. The week of September 6th had 11.2% more transactions compared to same week year ago. These results were positively influenced by the off-timing between the 2020 and 2019 holidays. However, if we were to compare the holiday weeks against one another directly, the 2020 performance remains impressive, up 15.9% in dollars and +8.5% in volume.