An E-Commerce Step Change for Canadian Food Retailers

Over the past two years, the government-mandated restrictions on movement and business activity, combined with consumers' concerns about the potential exposure to the Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) pandemic, resulted in Canada's food retailers experiencing an unprecedented surge in e-commerce sales. While we believe e-commerce sales could moderate over the near term from the current elevated pandemic levels given the rapidly easing restrictions and the reopening of the economy combined with an increasingly price-conscious consumer in an inflationary environment, it is our view the pandemic has driven a fundamental increase in e-commerce penetration and the rate of penetration in a post-pandemic environment will remain significantly above pre-pandemic levels.