Key Takeaways
• Since the week beginning March 2nd, overall online grocery sales have increased by 90%, while overall food delivery sales have increased by 51%.
• When COVID-19 national emergency was declared March 13th, online grocery delivery and pickup sales nearly doubled from the week prior.
COVID-19 has upended the consumer spending landscape. As non-essential brick-and-mortar businesses were ordered to shutter their doors, the ecommerce industry has been put in the limelight now more than ever. In an earlier report on COVID-19’s impact on apparel and DTC brands, Edison Trends research shows that varying performance of brands as customers change their spending patterns to adapt to the new reality.
Food and grocery delivery companies have been playing a major role in adapting, and research shows that some food delivery platforms have experienced upticks and the same is true for online grocery spend.
To analyze day-to-day trends, Edison Trends took a deep dive into over 856,000 food delivery, online grocery, and pizza transactions this year, including aggregated data for Walmart Grocery, Instacart, DoorDash, Domino's Pizza and many more.
Figure 1: Chart shows online spend by day across food delivery, grocery delivery and pick up, and pizza delivery and pick up orders, between February 1 and April 16, 2020, according to Edison Trends. This analysis was performed on over 856,000 online transactions. Pizza Delivery vendors in the analysis include: "Pizza Hut", "Domino's Pizza", "Papa John's", "Little Caesars". Grocery vendors in the analysis include: "Instacart", "Kroger","Albertsons","ACME Markets", "Jewel-Osco", "Pavilions","Randalls", "Safeway","Shaws", "Starmarket", "Tom Thumb", "Vons", "Shipt", “Amazon Fresh”, “Walmart Grocery”. Food Delivery vendors in the analysis include: 'Postmates', 'Caviar', 'DoorDash', 'GrubHub', 'UberEats', 'Seamless', 'Eat24', 'Yelp', 'Order Up', 'Foodler', 'Amazon Restaurants', 'delivery.com', 'NeighborFavor', 'Delivery Dudes', 'Ritual', 'Bite Squad', 'Fooda', 'Tapingo'.
According to Edison Trends research, on March 13th, when a national emergency was declared in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, online grocery sales across the United States surged, with delivery and pickup sales nearly doubling from their value on the same day the week prior. On the same day, food delivery sales declined while pizza delivery remained flat.
Since March 13th, grocery pickup and delivery have continued to grow, deviating from the typical declines seen on weekdays when consumers are usually at work (see figure 1 chart where in February cyclical peaks appear on weekends and the dips are weekdays vs in March and April when the sales become more steady everyday). Food delivery sales have also risen, although the majority of orders placed still occur on weekends. Note the decline in grocery spend that took place on April 12th, which was the Easter holiday. Overall, since the week beginning March 2nd, online grocery sales have increased by 90%, while food delivery sales have increased by 51%.
Between March 30th and April 19th, grocery pickup and delivery have grown an additional 18%. Interestingly, food delivery also grew about the same amount (17%) during that time. Further, daily grocery delivery and pickup spend is higher, on average, in April than in previous months.
As the market evolves, we will continue to stay on top of the latest trends. To learn more about how Edison Trends can help your business, contact us at bizdev@edison.tech. For more up-to-date insights in the e-commerce space, be sure to subscribe to our newsletter, and follow us on Twitter at @EdisonTrends.
*The data shown is based on a sample of anonymized and aggregated e-receipts from millions of consumers in the United States.