During the second week of May, overall meat sales jumped 41% following two weeks of 50% gains. Hot dog sales remained highly elevated as well, at +31% versus the same week last year. With more at-home meal occasions and more mouths around the table, hot dogs are the perfect answer for many American households looking for a convenient, protein-packed and kid-friendly solution. The week ending May 10 marked the tenth week of multi-digit year-over-year sales gains for hot dogs versus a virtually flat performance in 2019. While dollars increased 31%, volume sales increased 15% over the week of May 10 versus the comparable week in 2019, according to IRI. The 15-point gap between volume and dollar sales is down slightly from last week.

Type
National brands make up 97% of total hot dog sales and grew dollar sales 31.0%. Beef hot dogs represented nearly 65% of total hot dog sales and grew the most, at +37.2%. Ten weeks of double- and triple-digit increases points to a much higher everyday demand following the initial stock-up purchases, which prompts great cross-merchandising opportunities for hot dog buns, sides and condiments.

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 49% 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

Deli — Continued Mixed Results
Mother’s Day week brought good results for both deli cheese and meat (random weight) — on par with the prior week. Deli cheese continued to have double-digit increases versus the same week in 2019, whereas deli meat increases have mostly been trending in the single digits. While still down, deli-prepared (random weight, and some limited private label UPC) is slowly but surely recovering a few points each week and now about 33% 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
With the exception of the last week of April, random weight deli meat appears to be settling in to a sales pattern that sits about five to seven percentage points above the same week in 2019. During the week of May 10, random weight deli meat grew 5.0% in dollars and 1.1% in volume. 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 off -12.8%. Sales for service counter deli meat that has been previously sliced for grab-and-go, but still sold non-UPC, was up 55.0%. But not everyone is a fan of this solution, as seen on CCF. “I didn't realize that I could not get deli service like I usually do. I like my deli meat sliced a special way. I had to get what was already sliced and packaged. If safety measures are taken, I do not understand why the deli couldn't do business as usual!” Customer comments on package size variety relative to cheese, deli meat and deli prepared items 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 13.9% and a higher increase for volume sales as well. Here too the week of April 26 was an exception to an otherwise fairly steady trend in the high teens.

Source: IRI, Total US, MULO, 1 week % growth versus year ago, includes all UPC pre-packaged lunchmeat regardless of potential store location or placement

Meat alternatives have seen high gains, but lost share during pandemic
Meat alternative (fresh plus frozen) sales have seen tremendous gains throughout March, April and the first two weeks of May. Sales gains versus the same week in 2019 have been in the double-digits for 11 weeks running. Year-over-year sales gains peaked during the first of the two panic buying weeks with an increase of 157.8% versus the same week in 2019. Since, there have been small fluctuations, but sales gains have been around 70% ever since the last week of March. Volume sales have had a strong performance as well with gains peaking the second of the two panic weeks, at +144.3% versus the same week in 2019. Volume sales gains have trailed dollar gains since the onset of COVID-19 and the gap has widened in recent weeks. For the week ending May 10, the volume versus dollar gain gap stood at 13.2 percentage points — signaling inflationary pressure.

Despite robust sales gains each week, meat alternative dollar sales are a fraction of meat department sales. This means percentage gains are based on very different sales numbers and reflect very different absolute dollar gains.

Since the onset of the pandemic-related changes in grocery patterns, the meat department has seen an additional $5.0 billion in sales, versus an additional $100.3 million for plant-based meat alternatives.

Source: IRI, MULO, nine week dollar and pound growth

As a percentage of the total (meat department plus plant-based meat alternative sales), the share for plant-based alternatives stood at 1.50% during March 1. Because of the absolute gains in meat dollars, the market share for plant-based alternatives has since dropped to a low of 1.18% during the week of April 12 and stood at 1.27% the week ending May 10.

The volume share for meat alternatives shows a similar pattern. Despite percentage gains being higher, the absolute gains in pounds for meat versus meat alternatives caused the share to drop during the pandemic. Meat alternatives presented 0.82% of total sales the first week of March and dropped to a low of 0.59% the week of April 12. The share for the week of May 10 stood at 0.70%.

What’s next?
These past nine weeks have shown tremendous strength for plant-based meat alternative sales, even if its overall share versus meat dropped slightly. The coming two weeks are critical in the process of establishing what the next several months will look like. Nearly all U.S. states have started to partially re-open or have plans to do so. The relaxation of these stay-at-home executive orders looks different from state to state and encompasses everything from the partial re-opening of dine-in restaurants to the opening of hair salons and gyms to merely shifting from stay-at-home to safer-at-home. As states begin to enter their various re-opening phases, the economic and social readiness of consumers to re-engage with foodservice will become clearer.  For the foreseeable future, it is likely that grocery retailing will continue to capture an above-average share of the food dollar.

Source: 210 Analytics/IRI