Chicago-based Information Resourced Inc. (IRI) is continuing to collaborate with its partners at the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) to analyze the latest consumer purchase trends in Italy, France, Germany, Netherlands, New Zealand, Spain, United Kingdom and United States. The market research firm updated the report “Consumer Spending Tracker: COVID-19 Impact” to capture the most recent insights.

The most recent report sources sales data from the IRI POS Data ending April 12. For the United States, sales trends remain elevated but are down significantly from its peak. Total store sales were up 14.3 percent for that time period. For edible, sales were up 18.8 percent; however, for the week timeframe, non-edible sales were down 0.8 percent.

U.S. consumers also seem to be favoring traditional channels as grocery store sales have outpaced multi-outlet (MULO) growth since peak stockpiling, up 27 percent vs. up 16 percent, respectively. However, convenience store sales are in decline when compared with a year ago as IRI data found the channel down 5 percent for the week ending April 12.

Among the main edible categories, beverages were relatively flat, posting a modest 0.1 decline. The category’s largest subcategories exhibited a mixed bag of results:

• Regular soft drinks up 8.7 percent
• Convenience/PET still water -22.8 percent
• Non-aseptic energy drink -8.1 percent
• Low calorie soft drinks 9.7 percent
• Non-aseptic sports drink -12.3 percent

Alcohol, however, continues to post double-digit gains with sales up 25.6 percent. All the top sub-categories for alcohol continued to post strong growth:

• Domestic beer/ale (including non-alcohol) up 22.3 percent
• Domestic table/still wine up 27.7 percent
• Imported beer/ale (including non-alcohol) up 21.1 percent
• Spirits up 39.5 percent