January 25, 2021 โ If you could peek inside Americaโs cupboards and refrigerators, youโd see tableaus that capture changes wrought by the pandemic: Towers of paper goods, loads of comfort food, caches of upmarket coffee. You might also be surprised to see an unusual amount of seafood.
Frozen seafood sales at U.S. supermarkets and other food retailers rose 26% in the four weeks ended Dec. 27 from a year earlier, according to market research company IRI, far stronger than the 6% growth for consumer packaged goods overall. Fresh seafood sales rose 25% in the same period. That strong result wasnโt just a holiday binge: Since the onset of the pandemic, seafood sales growth has tended to outpace that of the grocery store as a whole by a comfortable margin.
The seafood spending surge is an example of the hard-to-foresee ways the pandemic continues to displace and redirect consumer demand. Typically, an outsize share of Americansโ spending on seafood is at restaurants. Consumers spent $69.6 billion in 2017 on seafood at restaurants and other food-service venues, according to a U.S. government report, compared with $32.5 billion spent at stores for home consumption. But with many white-tablecloth dining rooms closed or operating at reduced capacity during the pandemic, shoppers who perhaps rarely cooked seafood before have decided to put seared salmon, shrimp scampi and steamed lobsters on their own kitchen tables.
The trend is apparent everywhere, from big-box retailers to discount chains and traditional supermarkets. Walmart Inc. has had such strong growth in both fresh and frozen seafood at its U.S. business during the pandemic that the giant expanded its fresh shellfish offering in the fall. Lidl said it had a โdouble-digitโ increase in seafood sales in the past year, while Albertsons Cos. executives said on a January earnings call that seafood sales had delivered quarterly comparable sales growth above the company average. Conventional supermarket Stop & Shop said it is carrying a bigger selection of seafood as shoppers have increased purchases, while Whole Foods Market is experiencing โhuge growthโ in frozen seafood, according to Wesley Rose, the chainโs vice president for seafood. That led the upscale chain to expand its selection to include value packs of halibut, barramundi and arctic char. With fresh offerings such as red snapper also selling well, Whole Foods has added black cod and farm-raised striped bass to fish counters at most of its stores.