By Frank Becker

Americans shouldn’t criticize grocers for being unable to meet demand during this pandemic.

In 2017, the average household’s expenditure for food was $7,700, Of this total, nearly 50 percent – $3,365 – was spent on eating out.

By 2019, over half of all Americans said that they dined at a restaurant, got take out or had a meal delivered between two and three times a week. More than ten percent said they ate out between four and six times a week, and six percent said they ate out everyday.

According to CNBC, The National Restaurant Association projected overall industry sales would hit a new high of $863 billion in 2019, up 3.6% year over year. In what was a red hot economy, it was clearly destined to be more in 2020. Analysts said it was likely to continue, even if the economy went lower, as long as the job market remained steady.

They did not, of course, anticipate the Chinese Wuhan Virus of November, 2019 to ????

Where am I going with this?

With some states already requiring restaurants to close, and with consumers concerned about buying take-out or delivered meals, we can certainly expect that during 2020, anticipated sales exceeding $900 billion will easily be cut in half, for a loss of at least $450 billion in sales.

If we then assume that ingredients for these restaurant meals cost about 50% of the retail prices, or $250 billion, then we can say that restaurants would have been purchasing less ingredients each month> Calculating one twelth of the annual $250 billion reduction in food required by restaurants, we come up with a total of $20 billion per month.

So, overnight, America’s grocers had to somehow compensate for our moving from McDonald’s to the grocery store. Worse, virtually everyone suddenly wanted to stock up and even hoard food.

So, just in the past week, America’s grocers had to somehow miraculously anticipate this disaster, then increase their regular purchases from farmers and wholesalers by perhaps $20 billion above their regular commitments, then arrange transportation for the food, and retain personnel to stock the shelves and bag the goods.

Now the burden for supplying Americans with an additional $20 billion in food a month moved from the restaurants to the grocery stores, a seismic shift.

Our grocery chains have done an admirable job of trying to meet the challenge.