Posted on 08/20/2022 5:42:10 AM PDT by DoodleBob
A new study examines how Americans acquired food at various points during the COVID-19 pandemic, and how those activities changed over time as case numbers fluctuated and vaccines became available.
"In addition to food acquisition and the restaurant and grocery industry, this also tells us how people behave in a time of crisis. It helps us prepare for the next crisis," said Melissa Ocepek, a professor of information sciences at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign whose work looks at the intersection of information and culture with a strong emphasis on food.
Ocepek worked with Brenna Ellison, a former Illinois professor of agricultural and consumer economics who is now at Purdue University, and Illinois doctoral student in agricultural and consumer economics Maria Kalaitzandonakes. The researchers reported their findings in the journal PLOS ONE.
They analyzed eight food-acquisition activities—in-person grocery shopping, online grocery shopping, ordering from a meal kit service, indoor restaurant dining, outdoor restaurant dining, ordering takeout from a restaurant, visiting a food bank and visiting a farmer's market.
They used data from survey responses in September 2020, December 2020 and March 2021—points after the initial panic buying and stockpiling early in the pandemic. In September 2020, new COVID-19 case rates were relatively low, but there were concerns about cases rising in the winter and uncertainty about the timing of vaccines. In December 2020, the country was experiencing its first large surge in cases and the first vaccines were becoming available to certain people. In March 2021, cases were falling, with the expectation that widespread vaccine deployment would continue the downward trend.
"We wanted to understand what happened when people were on the other side of the panic mindset and see how people were behaving. Once people started to become familiar with the new normal, how was food buying changing?" Ellison said.
One of the most surprising findings was that in-person grocery shopping remained extremely common throughout the pandemic, even as online grocery shopping increased. According to survey data, more than 90% of people reported shopping in person across the three time periods.
"This finding suggests that brick-and-mortar grocery shopping is not going away in the near future, as has often been predicted, even before the COVID-19 pandemic," the researchers wrote.
Ocepek, who has studied online grocery shopping in the past, said there is something unique about shopping for food in person.
"People like looking at the meat, they like looking at the produce, they like seeing what's in season. Those are things we aren't very good at replicating online," she said.
Activities requiring less in-person contact—online grocery shopping, ordering takeout and using a meal kit service—peaked in December 2020, likely due to the surge in cases then, the researchers reported. Visiting a food bank or farmers' market also peaked at that time. The increased use of online grocery shopping and shopping at food banks continued through March 2021.
The survey results indicate a rising class of hybrid shoppers who buy food both in person and online, with online shopping a complement rather than a substitute for in-person shopping, Ellison said. Grocers will need to examine their marketing strategies and engage with consumers in a way that gets them to shop with the company for both experiences, she said.
Before the pandemic, Americans spent more than half of their food dollars on food consumed away from home, the researchers wrote. As states restricted access to restaurants, they shifted to increased takeout, and about 80% of full-service restaurants added curbside pickup options.
Takeout ordering peaked in December 2020, but it was a common activity for all three periods, the survey results showed.
Just under a third of the survey participants reported eating indoors and outdoors at restaurants in September 2020. The rate of indoor dining increased across the time periods, with a noticeable increase in March 2021, while outdoor dining experienced a consistent decline across those times.
The youngest survey participants, ages 18-34, were significantly more likely to eat at a restaurant, both indoors and outdoors, than the oldest individuals, ages 55 and older. The rates of indoor dining decreased in December 2020 for those 55 and older. It also declined significantly in the Midwest in December 2020, compared with other regions of the country.
Restaurants were more vulnerable to surges in COVID-19, with rates of on-site dining more variable. They need to find ways to get people comfortable coming back to restaurants, the researchers said, as well as find options for when people don't feel safe eating inside—for example, encouraging outdoor dining by closing streets, as some cities did. They also need to market themselves to those most willing to dine out.
Ocepek and Ellison plan to use the survey data to answer other questions about food acquisition, including more specific ways in which shopping behavior has changed. They want to know if shoppers are making fewer trips per week to the grocery store than before the pandemic, if they are comparison shopping at multiple stores or just visiting one store, and what items they are buying in person and online. They also are interested in consumers' emotional responses to shopping.
"Everybody has feelings about grocery shopping. It creates a really great environment to understand so much else about our culture and society," Ocepek said.
There is only one reason for this study. “...It helps us prepare for the next crisis...”, should tell you everything. I expect that a lot of these alternative means will soon go the way of food processing plants in this country.
We didn’t change our habits. If we wanted to eat out or dine in, we did. I did in-person shopping for groceries much the same way as I have for years. Only did curbside from places where I wasn’t allowed inside. As soon as they would let me in without a mask, I went in. One store was so rude to me, I have never returned. I had to find alternate sources for those items.
Meat and potatoes, eggs and all the staples in the baking aisle were the first to disappear here in rural MO during the Great Lockdown of 2020. Snack and soda aisles remained fairly untouched. I was impressed.
Within 2 weeks, not a freezer could be found in stores.
“As states restricted access to restaurants...”
Just my guess here. As The State forced restaurants to close, people went to restaurants less.
I saw a video of a farmer who had just gotten ramped up and fully operational selling to restaurants when covid hit. All the restaurants closed so he had to revamp his operation into mostly CSA. He did open shopping though instead of a box of whatever. It was points based. You could buy 15 points for a single share or 30 for a double share. All produce had points assigned and people could choose what they wanted so it was more like a shopping experience than the average CSA grab bag.
It started outdoors but he also built a farm store by converting a barn and designed it for a single direction flow of customers in a big U shape. Cooler doors were built into the wall and the backside was the walk in cooler room with doors on the other end. That way personnel could restock it from the back end instead of being up front where the customers were. The only employee in the front area was the cashier and the checkout counter was designed to keep a distance between the cashier and customer.
The outdoor booth didn’t take long to build and between that and people preferring it to going into a grocery store, he had a booming business very quickly. Helps that he chose his location well and had good exposure on a major road. By the time it got cold, the barn he started with was a farm store.
Video was almost an hour long and the guy was really impressive as a common sense farmer and businessman. Instead of hiring a construction company, he hired one knowledgeable guy full time and everything but the cooler doors was salvage or used. He also did a lot of the work himself.
I looked forward to shopping during the pandemic. It afforded me the chance to take a pulse on what was ACTUALLY happening vs the fearporn online.
What became incredibly scarce early on - aside from TP and paper towels and hand sanitizer - was kiddie food: fries and chicken tenders and burgers! There was plenty of meat in our stores, but the local farmer was our go-to choice for meat and chicken since they didn't treat me like plague.
The OTHER, very telling observation, was piles and piles of fake meat inventory. They tried to push that nonsense on us, and nobody fell for it. I was proud of my fellow Americans.
That's funny and I had forgotten that fakemeat showed up for the first time in our small town grocery store but it also remained untouched even when all the other meat was gone.
We're 80 miles from St Louis and this a recreational area due to a large river, canoeing kayaking, tubing etc, National Forest for hunting and lots of gravel roads. A lot of St Louis area people own land here and St Louis locked down pretty hard so most of them came here for the 2 week state lockdown and many came here every weekend after that. By the end of every weekend, the grocery stores were wiped out. I think a lot of them were going back to the city with coolers full.
“People like looking at the meat”
Yes, because it brings back good memories of the days Before Brandon when people could afford meat.
Found it which is tough to do on youtube now. Their search really sucks these days; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksf6KBymnLo
37 minutes.
"As a result of western governments’ taking collective action under the auspices of a ‘climate change’ agenda, we are on the cusp of something happening with ramifications that no one has ever seen before".
“The OTHER, very telling observation, was piles and piles of fake meat inventory. They tried to push that nonsense on us, and nobody fell for it. I was proud of my fellow Americans.”
Same here in SW Wisconsin. Fake meat, Tofu, Kale and anything ‘Vegan’ were always the last items to go...if at all!
Don’t need a study to know that during The pandemic, dry goods and canned food completely sold out, and meat was near non existent unless you were right there when they were offloading it from the trucks and into the counters. Noodles, rice, pastas, tuna fish, soups both dry and wet, e5c were all very hard to Get during that time.
Bookmarked that video!
One acre doesn’t seem like much land, but my old farm only had an acre-worth of tillable land and I got a TON of food off of that place through the years - which helped because I had three teen boys to feed!
Even now, at my ‘new’ 1900’s farm, I have much less than an acre, including the greenhouse, but with 16 raised beds, I can still grow a ton of food for just the two of us - with plenty to put up and share, too.
Only five minutes in, but this is pretty cool so far. Thanks.
Well all I know is my habits are about to change... Inflation drove up fast food about $2 a meal, and has anyone else noticed the simultaneous reduction bof the size of burgers?? McMuffin and a Wendy’s double is a little bigger round than a tennis ball!! The size a kiddy burger was years ago. Truly truly pathetic!!
Lots of Blueberry Muffins until there was a mention in the news of people turning to ‘comfort food’ during ‘lockdown’
comfort food AKA FAT
so I weened myself of them
:)
I’ve got it open in a tab to watch again. I just found it impressive how he was able to make a u-turn in Spring 2020 from restaurant sales to individuals in 2-3 months and then have his farm store done for before it got cold. Very driven and smart.
I’ve got an acre of good soil but some of it still has trees on it and it has a 30 foot x 300 foot swath down the middle that’s electric easement. Guess I could grow amaranth or something there.
I learned how to make decent oil-free blueberry muffins a year ago. It helps fulfill that craving for muffins that I get from time to time, but isn’t full of fat. The recipe can be adjusted to whatever you might want to add instead of blueberries.
Thanks for the link. Need to read soon.
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