The cold weather that plagued the UK last week saw shoppers upping their spend on bird feed.
According to the latest figures from IRI in the w/e 3 March 2018, consumers spent nearly half a million pound of bird feed.
IRI’s granular store-level data from the UK’s major multiples (Tesco, Waitrose, M&S, Morrison, Asda, Iceland, Co-Op, Ocado and Sainsbury’s) shows that non-food was down 7.7 percent, the equivalent of £43.7 million, grocery overall was up 2.4 percent, but still less than the recent four and 12 week average, suggesting that shoppers delayed the big supermarket shop in favour of visiting convenience stores.
As a nation of animal lovers, IRI’s figures reveal that shoppers battled through the snow to make sure their garden birds were well fed, with sales of bird feed up a massive 48.9 percent, worth nearly half a million pounds to retailers. Car care products also saw big jump, up 78.5 percent, together with matches and firelighters (up 64.5 percent).
IRI’s head of strategic insight – retail, Martin Wood, comments: “What was really interesting from our data analysis was that the weather conditions saw many people defer their big shop at the major stores for the week and shopped more locally, providing a huge boost to local shops.
“Shoppers now visit their local store much more often and are spending more, so these retailers should be looking to capitalise on the demand for convenience, accessibility and product range.”
