How Pandemic-Related Shifts in Our Eating & Shopping Habits Will Alter the Equipment Needed to Keep it Fresh

The coronavirus pandemic has drastically shifted how we purchase foods and beverages. For example, the most recent release of monthly sales data from the US Census Bureau reported that unadjusted retail sales at food and beverage stores posted a 30% increase from February to March of 2020 and a 26% increase over comparable sales in March 2019.

This shift is also altering the landscape of cold storage equipment:

• A sharp decline in foodservice revenues has caused food distributors to readjust their business toward retailers, increasing the need for cold storage at distribution sites and in grocery stores.
• A spike in e-commerce food sales, long thought to be the final frontier of traditional consumer shopping, is requiring additional investment in cold storage equipment to accommodate both direct-to-consumer shipped orders and in-store or curb-side pickups.

There is expected to be some amount of return to normal shopping habits when the pandemic passes and consumers are not restricted to certain shopping behaviors. Therefore, to some degree, this may be a short-lived bump in equipment sales to meet an immediate need.

However, this pandemic will also lead to some permanent changes in consumer behavior, reinforcing what had already been a trend toward the use of e-commerce food shopping or curb-side pickup. Therefore, in certain areas, there will need to be a strong continuation of investment in cold storage equipment – both in stores and at food warehouses – to meet sustained demand.

For more information, see The Freedonia Group’s coverage of the Commercial Refrigeration Equipment industry as well as our sister publisher Package Facts’ coverage of the food and beverage industry.