The demand for staple food products and their consumption has risen quite substantially ever since the coronavirus pandemic broke out last year, prompting episodic lockdowns and restrictions on movement. With people being constrained to stay at home, consumption of everyday, basic-use food products has undergone a massive shift.
When the pandemic struck in March last year and when the entire country had to lock itself down, consumers found everyday essential food products disappearing from shop shelves. At the same time, people scrambled to lay their hands on products that we had always assumed to find in the stores: Products like breakfast cereals, noodles, pasta, cooking oils, beverages. It led to scarcity and shortage of many such basic supplies, which became hard to find in local supermarkets and even online.
These product shortages were attributed by many to COVID-19 fear-driven purchases by consumers as they hoarded everyday products and stocked their pantries. While these bulk purchases did play a small part in some of the shortages, the primary driver was consumers’ increased time spent at home during lockdown and work-from-home initiatives, and the resulting shift in consumption and demand for everyday staples products.
The surge in panic-buying caused shortages of daily essentials - the kinds of goods you buy and stock your house with regardless of the state of the economy - and it understandably scared many consumers. There have been shortages of our favourite beverages and snacks, not necessarily the things we can’t live without, but rather the things we don’t want to live without, as food companies had to trim down their production pipelines.
This story is from the May 2021 edition of Progressive Grocer.
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This story is from the May 2021 edition of Progressive Grocer.
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