This year has brought seismic shifts in the food sector, which continues to adjust to the major impacts in trading brought about by Covid and Brexit.
Volatility is the byword for the economy as consumers adjust to post-Covid patterns and the return of freedom.
The market continues to be bumpy. There is little certainty about when this will rebalance and a new normal will begin.
Fluctuations in Covid cases have continued to unsettle the wider hospitality market alongside another year of staycations.
There have been two fundamental shifts during Covid. One is the shift to online and the other is shopper attitudes to health and safety when out and about.
It’s no secret that the corner shop has been a staple of local high streets for well over a century and its evolution continues.
On average, shoppers make 18 shopping trips a month and we see the majority of these in convenience stores.
It has dipped slightly during Covid as more people work at home, although average basket size has increased.
The modern phenomenon of online shopping continues to grow and takes the headlines for the most dramatic shifts in consumer behaviour.
It also promises to redesign our high streets as traditional bricks-and-mortar stores get to grips with fast-moving changes to the market.
Pre-Covid, online shopping helped households constrained by longer working hours and was the perfect solution for time-poor workers.
“Physical estates embedded in communities give a new competitive advantage offering access into towns and villages in a way that could not have been foreseen a decade ago”
However, now the growing demand for 30-minute same-day deliveries is driving up the importance of local stores and community reach can provide a platform for future growth.
Physical estates embedded in communities give a new competitive advantage offering access and delivery routes into towns and villages in a way that could not have been foreseen a decade ago.
As well as a quick delivery route into communities, they are a home to wider services, including parcel services, click-and-collect and banking.
The reimagining of high streets, with the closure of town and city-centre stores by household brand names, has shown the importance of local convenience stores as more than just a top-up shop.
They’ve often played a vital role in communities by offering much more than food and drink, whether that is vital community cashpoints or postal services.
The trend is now evolving as they house Amazon lockers and the likes of John Lewis click-and-collect services. These parcel services provide new touchpoints for online brands to get goods into the hands of consumers just around the corner from where shoppers live.
But, alongside this, the biggest driver of change in shopping habits in the coming years will be efforts to tackle climate change.
“Ambitious targets to cut carbon emissions and reduce the impact of operations are likely to prop up the trend of localism”
COP26 [the 26th United Nations Climate Change Conference] will drive ethics into the fast lane because sustainability will grow in meaning and importance for shoppers and it promises to revolutionise the food industry.
Ambitious targets to cut carbon emissions and reduce the impact of operations are likely to prop up the trend of localism and aid the long-term shift to greater local sourcing and sustainable low-carbon delivery models, be it pedal-powered or electric.
Future-gazers would have us believe that vertical farming and lab-grown meats could be the answer to changing weather patterns that destroy crops and the need to reduce supply chain impacts.
Yes, urban farms featuring stacked growing floors could become commonplace, but they are unlikely to replace the traditional fields full of crops in entirety. They do, though, offer a way for food to be produced closer to shoppers with easier local delivery.
Consumers who care about the environment and want to shop ethically are often also passionate about supporting local shops and buying only what they need to consume, which adds further weight to the argument that shopping little and often is not a fad but here to stay.
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