COVID-19 Analysis Part 4: Foot Traffic by Region

As people across the country self-isolate, work from home, or no longer go to work, grocery chains are shifting their policies to absorb increased demand. So far, 23 grocery chains have implemented policy changes, including offering benefits like paid sick leave and enacting purchase limits on certain necessity items.

Many grocery chains are also hiring temporary workers to fulfill increased demand - Amazon, Safeway, Albertsons and Kroger have all announced plans to fill hundreds of thousands of jobs.

Now that there are confirmed cases of COVID-19 in all 50 states, all regional and national grocery chains will need to react to the changing landscape.

We analyzed the foot traffic of our panel of 2 million consumers to determine how much of an increasing share of traffic these grocery stores are absorbing. We separated out the data by region (map guide below) to see if any regions are getting hit harder than others.

us-region-map


 

Food industry foot traffic by region

When looking at the total visits people make in the food industry (including grocery, restaurant and C-store), we found that Grocery stores have seen a strong increase in share of visits in all regions. The national average is a 21% increase in the share of visits that occur, and the percentage ranges from 20-22% across the various regions of the U.S.

Conversely, restaurant and C-stores have seen decreases in their share of total visits, with Casual Dining chains seeing the most dramatic decrease in share - especially in the West region.

Confirmed cases of coronavirus, and consequent bans on dine-in restaurant visits, have quickly spread throughout the country beyond the initial hot zones - Washington, California, and New York. As the situation develops we expect further declines in restaurant visit share and further increases in grocery visit share.

foot-traffic-by-region


 

Notes on the Data

Metric Definition: Share of Visits is the percent of visits that a brand receives out of all of the visits in the market. It is similar to market share. This metric provides an understanding of the share of visits that are to the brand in question out of all visits to a similar brand.

  • We can calculate this metric for any cut: region, daypart, day of week, occasion, hour, etc.

  • This metric can be calculated at any level of aggregation: daily, weekly, monthly, etc.

*Market: National; Total Food Industry: Grocery, C-Store, Quick Service, Fast Casual, Pizza, Frozen Desserts, Casual Dining, Family Dining. Note: National may not appear as a pure weighted average of the 4 regions due to panel methodology.

*Subject to restatement following week-end and month-end panel weighting adjustments.