The pandemic has shaken up how grocery stores operate.
The amount of dollars spent on “food away from home” has been slowly and steadily growing for years, but by April, consumers were spending more money at the grocery stores. However, one major problem they have faced is empty shelves.
The Food Marketing Institution says that it was not possible to take the restaurant industry’s packaged food and bring it to the stores.
According to FMI’s Andy Harig, “Food service deals with different cuts of meat, for example, different size and kinds of packaging. In food service, you often have a one-hundred-pound bag of potatoes. Your whole staff is going to be on disability shortly from hauling those around, so you simply don’t operate that level with that kind of bulk.”
Stores also changed their cleaning schedules, so consumers physically saw their sanitation strategies. What remains to be seen is if the buying patterns continue.
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