The first week of May, overall meat sales jumped to their highest levels since March 22, at +51.3%. Hot dog sales  remained highly elevated as well, at +36% versus the same week last year. American households continue to turn to hot dogs as a convenient and kid-friendly solution with many more at-home meal occasions. The week ending May 3 marked the ninth week of multi-digit year-over-year sales gains for hot dogs versus a virtually flat performance in 2019. While dollars increased 36%, volume sales increased 19% over the week of May 3 versus the comparable week in 2019, according to IRI. The 17-point gap between volume and dollar sales is unchanged from last week.

Type
National brands make up 97% of total hot dog sales and grew dollar sales 36.2%. Beef hot dogs represented nearly 65% of total hot dog sales and grew the most, at +44.1%. Nine weeks of double- and triple-digit increases, particularly during Easter week, and going up against Easter 2019 sales, points to a much higher everyday demand following the initial stock-up purchases.

Source: IRI, MULO, 1 week $ growth versus year ago

The surge in sales numbers shows shoppers are in the market for all pack sizes, large and small. The most common pack size is eight hot dogs, representing 50% of all sales, which explains the somewhat lower growth rate. Larger pack sizes of 10 and 24 counts have been doing very well these past few weeks, once more pointing to an increased everyday demand and interest in value packs.

Source: IRI, MULO, 1 week $ growth versus year ago

Two months after the world of grocery retailing saw its first signs of COVID-19 affecting food purchases, grocery patterns continue to evolve. Following two panic buying weeks in mid-March, consumers are shifting to fewer, but bigger, trips and shopping at different times, buying different items and buying at different stores. All this affects the performance of the bakery, dairy and deli departments — in some cases in a positive way, in other cases negatively. Dairy has emerged as a sales powerhouse ever since the onset of coronavirus in the U.S. and the week of May 3 was no different. While the packaged baked goods aisle is doing well, the limited service/assortment and/or shutting down of bakery and deli counters across many stores have had severely negative impact on sales of deli prepared and in-store bakery, particularly indulgent bakery items. 210 Analytics analyzed the IRI weekly sales findings, made possible by IDDBA.

For the week ending May 5, both deli cheese and meat (random weight) came in ahead of the comparable week in 2019. Deli cheese continued to have double-digit increases, whereas deli meat dropped back down to the gains seen in late March and early April. While still down, deli-prepared (random weight, and some limited private label UPC) also seems to be settling in to a new sales pattern, about 35% down from last year’s levels. In addition to changed traffic patterns, it is important to note deli-prepared offerings remained limited or closed down for most retailers.

Deli Meat
During the first week of May, random weight deli meat sales had very similar sales results as it did the first week of April in the high single-digits. Volume sales were up 1.7%. Patterns relative to grab-and-go versus slice-to-order counter sales remained the same as seen in prior weeks. While service counter sales made up 68% of deli meat sales this week, sales were down 8.2%. Sales for service counter deli meat that has been previously sliced for grab-and-go, but still sold non-UPC, was up 69.0%. But not everyone is a fan of this solution, as seen on CCF. “I get that you are social distancing by having deli meats pre-sliced and prepackaged. But… now we have to root through all of the packages to find an amount we want. So all of the packages get touched by everyone looking. If you would have the deli service counter open, one person would slice meat and cheese and hand me my package. Less contact!” A very content customer shared, “I was so happy that you went back serving sandwich meat to your customers. You have the best deli among all other stores and I like to see the deli meats that I am buying.” Customer comments on package size variety for the reasons of budget, household size and variety also continued to come in on CCF.

Meanwhile, pre-packaged, UPC-ed refrigerated lunch meats continued to outperform random weight deli meat, with dollars up 14.9% and a higher increase for volume sales as well. However, the difference compare with prior weeks was much diminished.

Source: 210 Analytics/IRI