Shopping preferences indicate shift
The pandemic has created a new normal in how people shop as well as what they buy.
• Hershey baking supply sales — Hershey syrup, baking chips and cocoa — all jumped about 30 percent in the weeks consumers have been under stay-at-home orders. Gum sales have gone in the other direction, with social distancing knocking fresh breath down a few pegs on the priority list. Fewer people are making impulse buys in checkout lines.
Hershey withdrew financial guidance Thursday citing current events.
• Target: Comparable-store sales at Target rose 7 percent so far this quarter, but less is being bought by customers at its stores. That seeming contradiction is being driven by booming online sales.
Online sales have nearly tripled so far in April, while store sales have declined.
If something is ordered online and either delivered or picked up curbside, Target logs that as a sale for the store from where the goods were delivered, or left out for pick up.
Sales of food and beverages have jumped 20 percent, while sales of clothes and accessories have tumbled 20 percent.
• Gap Inc. has stopped paying rent in North America and elsewhere where stores are closed and said Thursday that it may run out of cash to continue without an infusion.
“We will need to take additional actions to both preserve existing liquidity and seek additional sources of liquidity, beyond our currently available cash and credit facilities within the next 12 months,” Gap said in a regulatory filing.
• Crocs expects a larger decline in revenues in the second quarter, anticipating that a majority of its retail and partner stores may be closed for the whole period. The funky shoe maker said it is comfortable with the cash it has on hand. Crocs has furloughed workers at its retail stores in North America and reduced pay for executives and board members.