After an initial flurry of panic buying at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in March, Canadians have slowed down their spending at grocery stores a little, but sales in April were still far above normal levels in a variety of product categories, a new report from Statistics Canada shows.
After an initial flurry of panic buying at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in March, Canadians have slowed down their spending at grocery stores a little, but sales in April were still far above normal levels in a variety of product categories, a new report from Statistics Canada shows.
Sales at Canadian grocery stores were more than 40 per cent above last year’s level for both the second and third weeks of March, as most of the country went into lockdown and millions of Canadians stockpiled supplies to shelter in place for an extended period.
While sales since then have come down from those highs, they were still running more than 10 per cent above normal levels through to the end of the month.
And it’s clear from the numbers that Canadians aren’t panic buying everything with quite the same level of zeal.
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