Business

Lockdowns Long Over, Americans Still Hooked on Online Groceries

September 27, 2022

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Amazon.com Inc. Prime Deliveries As Workers Demand Better Pay — An independent contractor picks up an Amazon.com Inc. Prime grocery bag into a vehicle outside a Whole Foods Market Inc. store in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Tuesday, March 31, 2020. As coronavirus cases pop up at warehouses and supermarkets, workers, cheered on by politicians and labor activists, have begun demanding better pay, sick leave and on-the-job protections from the deadly respiratory virus. Photographer: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg

Summary:

While other lockdown hobbies and trends are dwindling, online grocery shopping continues to flourish even with the highest inflation in decades. Grocery sales overall are continuing to rise not just online grocery orders making average monthly sales in the first few months of 2022 four times as high as sales before lockdown started. Regular (monthly) online grocery users have more than doubled since 2019. Waving fees for grocery pickup rather than paying more for delivery has helped retain customers impacted by inflation.

Online grocery ordering started gaining traction before the pandemic, but lockdown sparked major investments into grocery pickup and delivery services with many grocery stores initially signing with Instacart. Discount online supermarkets like Thrive and Misfits Market are thriving with order sizes almost doubling in the first half of the year. Big box stores have been and are continuing to invest in online grocery services with Kroger having robotic distribution centers, Walmart delivering to your fridge, Amazon purchasing Whole Foods and delivering orders inside garages, and others like Target amping up their curbside pickup. Food delivery services like UberEats and Doordash are working with local supermarkets as well as establishing their own convenience store fulfillment centers, or dark stores.

Analysis:

This article describes how online grocery shopping behaviors have boosted since lockdown was initiated and how little that has changed even with inflation now that we are back out and about again. Inflation has had very little affect on online grocery shopping as grocery stores are constantly adapting to the cultural and economic factors happening around it. Switching to promoting pickup rather than delivery after lockdown to battle inflation helped keep customers ordering online. The investments in grocery pickup and delivery keep rolling in and don’t seem to be stopping soon as customers continue to use their services.