Out-of-Home sector in Spain shows signs of recovery

• Spending on food and drink to be consumed outside of the home (OOH) recovers to up to 44% of pre-lockdown levels
• Consumption inside the home continues to grow at double-digit rates up to 22%
• Home delivery and ecommerce have achieved sustained rates of growth
• 2.6 million Spanish people tried home delivery for the first time during the lockdown

Following eight weeks of enforced confinement and the first few days of the restrictions being lifted, Kantar analysed the behaviour of consumers who were already starting to adapt to the new normal.

During the weeks of lockdown, almost seven out of every 10 people confirmed that they “would return to consuming products outside of the home as soon as possible”, thus assuring a rapid recovery of their former habits.

Since lockdown rules started to be eased, the number of occasions when people consume outside of the home has started to gradually increase. By the third week of easing, Spanish consumption outside the home reached on average 44% of the levels in the five weeks prior to the health crisis.

It should be noted that this recovery is progressing more slowly in the metropolitan areas of Madrid and Barcelona, where phase 0 of the restrictions stayed in place for an additional week.

This recovery of Out of Home purchases seems to be replacing at-home consumption rather than home delivery, due to the fact that some restriction of movement is still in place. Nevertheless, as the restrictions continue to be lifted, people are still maintaining a 16% increase in at-home consumption occasions, a figure that confirms the importance of the new habits that have arisen during the crisis.

Although the increase in at-home purchases is slowing down, in the first two weeks since restrictions started to be lifted, there has been a 22% increase in total spending on FMCG compared to pre-crisis levels.

The new shopping channels are here to stay

Although shopping and consumption are changing as we progress through the lockdown phases, Kantar has observed how some changes due to the lockdown will stay. This is the case for 2.0 shopping channels, in which the growth of e-commerce and food delivery has accelerated rapidly, with sustained levels during the lifting of restrictions.

Because of the isolation phase, people had a need to use delivery services which helped to overcome fears and barriers related to these modes of shopping. More than 700,000 households have shopped online and almost 8% of the Spanish population have used home delivery for the first time during the lockdown, which means more than 2.6 million new shoppers for the channel over these weeks.