“In December, we saw consumers moving around much more than any other month during the pandemic,” said Jonna Parker, Team Lead Fresh for IRI. “But come February, trips and basket size trends moved back to the patterns that we saw throughout most of 2020. Trips fell below 2020 levels in February, whereas the spend per trip remained highly elevated. This means food spending remained home-centric, which benefits produce as part of many breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacking and beverage occasions.”
Sales of all food and beverage related items remained elevated from January’s strong increase of +12.0%. February sales increased 11.8% over the weeks ending February 3rd through February 28th versus the same weeks in 2020. Both months are up significantly from a subdued December (+8.1%).
February produce department sales for the five weeks ending 2/28/2021 increased +10.1%, excluding online-only and delivery e-commerce sales that would have been significantly higher than in 2020. Fresh produce added $483 million versus the comparable period in 2020. As seen throughout the pandemic, frozen fruits and vegetables had the highest growth, but are also the smallest sales of the three temperature zones in retail.
“February had two holidays, Super Bowl and Valentine’s Day, where we typically see a significant part of the dollars go to foodservice,” said Joe Watson, VP of Membership and Engagement for the Produce Marketing Association (PMA). “While restaurants are starting to reopen in many states, retail still saw an above-average boost with many grocers offering meal solutions for Super Bowl entertaining and Valentine’s Day at home.”
Fresh produce generated $5.3 billion in sales during the four February weeks. This reflects $169 million in additional fruit sales and $314 million in additional vegetable sales in February 2021 versus a year ago.
Fresh share
In 2019, fresh produce sales represented 80.8% of total fruits and vegetables sales across the store. That share fell as low as 76.9% during the first quarter of 2020, pulled down by the March panic buying weeks when many dollars were diverted to frozen and canned. The fresh share briefly recovered in the second and third quarters but as the number of new COVID-19 cases spiked once more in November and December, the fresh share once more dropped to 77.7%. February 2021 showed a slight recovery of the fresh dollar share to 79.1% — a percentage point higher than January.
Fresh produce dollars versus volume
Fresh produce dollars have been outpacing volume since the onset of the pandemic — pointing to inflation as well as more premium purchase choices from consumers. In February 2021, the gap between volume and dollar gains widened to 3.0 percentage points, up from 1.6 in the fourth quarter of 2020.
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For more information:
Anne-Marie Roerink
210 Analytics LLC
Tel: +1 (210) 651-2719
Email: aroerink@210analytics.com
www.210analytics.com