USA: Berries recover their top three positions in dollar earnings

US Retail Sales Report for the week ending June 14

While summer sales patterns are in full swing, demand for fresh, frozen, and canned goods continues to change. Consumers increasingly have the opportunity to dine and many are tired of their tried and true recipes. Restaurant transactions and spending recovered during the second week of June, but grocery and product sales along with them remained well above the 2019 baseline. This despite going against the rise in Father's Day sales 2019 fell a week earlier than 2020. 210 Analytics, IRI, and PMA partnered to understand how product sales continue to unfold as states emerge from the effects of the pandemic on sales.

During the week of June 14, high daily demand generated huge gains for fresh, frozen and stable fruits and vegetables. Year-over-year growth in fresh produce for this week compared to the comparable week in 2019 increased 9.8%, several points below the previous week. So far this year, fresh produce sales increased 10,6% over the same time period in 2019, a steady hold from the previous week. Frozen fruits and vegetables were the ones that increased the most, 22,7%. This gain occurs despite the limited availability of assortment of frozen fruits and vegetables, 9,0% less in average items per store sale.

Fresh products

Fresh produce generated $ 1.4 billion in sales the week ending June 14, an additional $ 125 million in fresh produce sales. Vegetables, with a 14.1% increase, still outperformed fruits (+ 6.1%), but the gap remained in the single digits. While the steady erosion of earnings seen since the last week of April stopped last week, it started again in the second week of June, eroding around three percentage points.

“More than three months after the biggest two weeks of panic buying in grocery retail history, vegetable profits are still in their mid-teens compared to a year ago, while yields for the fruit is much higher and lower,” said Jonna Parker, Team Leader, Fresco for IRI. “The gains in vegetables illustrate that consumers are still engaging in many more meals at home and the challenge now is how to keep those meals fun and varied. Provide tips and recipes on social media and in-store to help consumers with their meal-alignment fatigue."

Fresh versus frozen and stable

Buyers in the Retail Feedback Group's CCF (Customer Feedback Feedback) program commented on improved availability, quality and freshness in the product department in recent weeks. Sold out comments were few and far between, and IRI data shows a 1.6% increase in the average number of fresh produce sold per store the week of June 14 compared to the previous year.

With sales of $ 1.4 billion during the week of June 14, fresh produce is significantly larger than stable ($ 166 million) and frozen fruits and vegetables ($ 134 million). This means that, despite the lower growth rates, Fresh has recovered much of its lost stake.

Fresh produce dollars versus volume

With dollar gains of + 9.8% during the week ending June 14, and volume sales at + 7.6%, the gap between fresh produce volume and dollar earnings narrowed slightly to 2.2 percentage points. This is the fourth week that dollar sales outstripped volume sales, but compared to the 15-point volume / dollar gap in fresh meat, product inflation remained relatively subdued.

Both fruit and vegetables recorded volume growth before the dollar the week of June 14 versus the comparable week in 2019. However, the volume / dollar gap for fresh vegetables increased to more than four percentage points. In fruit, dollar gains were just 0.2 points ahead of volume this week, less than the week before.

The top three growth items in terms of absolute dollar gains for the week of June 14 compared to the prior year were lettuce, tomatoes and berries. “Over the past two weeks, cherries have jumped to the top in absolute dollar gains, but this week berries have reclaimed their all-time high, with cherries in fourth place. Oranges moved up a few points to fifth and potatoes dropped out of the top five for the first time since the start of the coronavirus in early March. Cucumbers are new to the top 10 absolute dollar gain products, which knocks onions off the list.”

Strong demand is driving volume along with dollar gains across the board. While some fruits and vegetables are experiencing inflation, for others, prices remain depressed. Inflation is seen in several tropical and citrus fruits, including mangoes, papayas, tangelos, and tangerines. On the vegetable side, inflation is seen for items like asparagus, beans, corn, garlic, and potatoes. Continued volume/dollar gaps persist for other areas, such as avocados, cherries, Brussels sprouts, and celery. “Strength in demand coming out of foodservice combined with the continued elevated demand seen in retail will continue to balance supply and demand in the coming weeks,” Watson said.

Previous article

next article

ARTÍCULOS RELACIONADOS

Austral Cherry: Good Campaign for the Pretty Girl of Fruit Growing
The impact and supply of new genetics will be the main topic at the meeting...
Novel system to evaluate the impact of relative humidity on the pe...