Meat Demand Remains Robust During May
Weekly consumer demand for meat and poultry continues to be robust compared to the 2019 pre-pandemic baseline. Consumer concern about COVID-19 is rapidly declining as infection rates are down and 66% of shoppers have received one or two vaccines, according to the May IRI survey.
According to the IRI survey, consumers are beginning to re-engage with restaurants. 210 Analytics and IRI partnered to understand how fresh and processed meat performed relative to their 2020 and 2019 performances. The report is made possible by Marriner Marketing.
Meat sales continue to be boosted by high engagement in trips and dollars per trip. While overall household penetration was down slightly, shoppers still visited the meat department slightly more often and spent 6.3% more per trip over the 52 weeks ending mid-May.
“While still down when compared to the big 2020 sales spikes, May sales saw some recovery versus the April performance,” said Anne-Marie Roerink, president of 210 Analytics. “Dollar sales were down 11.0% versus 14.8% the month prior and the absolute dollar losses were more moderate as well.”
Each one of the May 2021 weeks generated sales of $1.5 billion or above. The strongest week was the last week of May, with sales of $1.7 billion, which was only 8% below 2020 levels, but 28.5% above the 2019 pre-pandemic normal.
“Meat is a very interesting area to watch as grilling season 2020 was heavily impacted by the lack of larger gatherings,” Roerink said. “Memorial Day may be a great gauge on summer trends to come. Consumers are engaging more with foodservice, but at the same time the backyard barbecue will be a common way to re-start normal summer routines.”
Both dollars and volume started to track closer to 2020 levels in May. And both are still up versus the 2019 pre-pandemic normal. Volume tracked 2.8% ahead of 2019 in May, slightly higher than the +2.3% in April. And dollars tracked 15.8% ahead of 2019 in May, which was also slightly higher than April.
Fresh meat made up the majority share of sales, at $5.2 billion. Processed meat, however, had slightly lower declines at -7.9% versus -12.4% for fresh. Fresh meat has very similar dollar and volume results, but the gap between volume and dollar increases is 3.5 points for processed meats.
Beef continues to represent more than half of all dollar sales, at 56%. Compared with the pre-pandemic 2019 baseline, beef was up 20.4%. This is the highest increase across all proteins, with the exception of lamb (which is a fraction of the size of beef).
In May 2021, ground beef generated upwards of $1 billion in sales. This was up a little more than 9% versus 2019, but down 20.4% versus 2020. Ground beef was one of the powerhouses during the early pandemic months as well as saw high levels of inflation due to production issues. Ground turkey is the only other protein that generated upwards of $100 million in sales.
“Consumers’ re-engagement with restaurants may signal a greater share of food dollars starting to flow from retail to foodservice,” Roerink said. “However, it is likely that at least some of the increases in on-premise dining are replacing food delivery or pickup that became very popular over the past 15 months.”
