Supermarket sale in March grew by 20.6 per ent with £10.8bn sales

Sales of groceries in the UK in March beat all previous records as shoppers were panic buying and stocked up for a long period at home due to the COVID-19 outbreak. Between 16-19 March 88 per cent of households visited a food store adding up to 42 million extra trips across four days. In the last four weeks, year-on-year supermarket sales grew by 20.6 per cent with £10.8bn sales. The average household spent an extra £62.92 during the past four weeks equivalent to adding five days’ worth of groceries.

London had the biggest increase in grocery spending up by 26 per cent during the month.

With restaurants and cafes closed none of us can eat meals on the go any longer and an extra 503 million meals mainly lunches and snacks will be prepared and eaten at home every week for the foreseeable future.

The online grocery spending was 13 per cent higher than in the same period last year.

The average online basket cost £81.88 which was £6 more that in March 2019. Sales of alcohol rose by 22 per cent an extra £199m.