More Canadians eating in, stats show

Sylvain Charlebois, senior director of the Agri-food Analytics Lab at Dalhousie University in Halifax, said higher food prices in grocery stores affect families differently.

“A lot of people have been saving because we've been staying at home — food is not competing against many other aspects of our lives,” he said, including dining out, travel and other leisure activities that have been toned down due to the need to socially distance.

Many people have also engaged in “pandemic gardening,” in which they've been growing some of their own fresh produce, in part as a new hobby or diversion.

Charlebois's lab has done the math.

PRE-COVID, the average Canadian family was spending 38 per cent of its household budget outside the home, including eating out at restaurants.

Last March, as provinces were declaring health emergencies, that same average household was only spending nine per cent of its budget outside the home.

As Canadians adjusted to life during a pandemic, some of that outside spending rebounded, but Charlebois estimates the current outside-the-home spending rate is probably around 27 per cent. It's still a big reduction from a year ago in a Canadian industry — retail and hospitality, convenience and specialty food sectors — with annual sales exceeding $220 billion.