COVID-19 is pushing up grocery store costs and their prices
B.C. consumers learn new shopping habits as COVID-19 changes our daily way of life
Extraordinary price fluctuations, supply interruptions and myriad new sanitation costs are changing the way British Columbians shop for food, what they eat and how much they pay.
Shoppers on the West Coast are paying more this year than last for beef, which is up 11 per cent; pork, up 12.7 per cent, and chicken, which is up 7.5 per cent. Canada-wide, the price of fresh tomatoes has shot up 42 per cent.
Sales of fresh foods remain relatively strong as people are cooking more than ever at home during their self-imposed quarantine.
“I’m cooking more from scratch, so I’m eating healthier,” said Celia Nord, an archivist who is between assignments. “This is what I do with less money and more time, and I’m less tired at the end of the day, so more cooking.”
While some like Nord say they are using their extra down time to walk, run, and cycle, many others report noticeable weight gain.
Teacher and tutor Kerry Dawson is cooking more at home, but also baking more cakes and cookies and says she has gained about 10 pounds. “Much of the weight gain I fear is from increased wine intake and reduced exercise,” she said.
Staying home more due to social distancing restrictions has had a profound impact on people’s snack food purchases. Local grocers report people are buying 25 to 50 per cent more salty snacks such as potato and tortilla chips.
“After flour and toilet paper, snacks and cola sales are up the most,” said Bob Hoy, owner operator of the IGA in Gibsons.
Online grocery sales were just getting started when the province announced pandemic restrictions, with perhaps a dozen orders a week, he said. Weeks later, staff were spending hundreds of hours filling more than 400 online and email orders a week at the peak.
Grocery stores are also facing significant new costs, including full time security at store entrances, protective barriers and signage, higher garbage disposal costs, additional cleaning supplies and disposable bags.
“People on the Sunshine Coast are really good about bringing reusable bags, but we haven’t been able to use them so I’m ordering four to five times as many paper bags,” he said.
Hoy is also paying his staff $2 an hour in bonus pay over their normal hourly rate.
“They really have had to put up with a tremendous amount of change and stress,” he said.
Early in the pandemic, shoppers cleared store shelves of rice, beans, flour, canned soups and other shelf-stable foods. More recently, they have become focused on fresh ingredients for cooking at home, said Sylvain Charlebois, dean of the faculty of management at Dalhousie University.
“Everyone went into survival mode and bought up the centre of the store, everything they thought they needed to live in isolation for several weeks,” he said. “When they started to cook more, they went back to the periphery where the fresh food is.”
When people exhaust the federal government’s 16-week Canada Emergency Response Benefit cheques, buying patterns are likely to shift again.
“Consumers tend to trade down to cheaper goods in a recession,” he said. “A lot of people have lost their jobs and budgets will get tight. People aren’t going to be buying caviar, they’ll go for the Kraft Dinner instead.”
Grocers are facing higher overhead costs and lower margins, which will make it tough to offer bargain prices.