> On average, customers go to physical grocery stores 3.2 times per month
This seems crazy to me -- not only must be purchases be enormous, but fresh meats and vegetables don't keep for 9 days between each visit. Am I missing something?
This seems crazy to me -- not only must be purchases be enormous, but fresh meats and vegetables don't keep for 9 days between each visit. Am I missing something?
I expect most people aren't shy about buying several weeks worth of meat and freezing it. Quality doesn't drop off that much. Quality differences are more noticeable with frozen vegetables, but I suspect a lot of people are fine with those too. Then there are frozen microwave/oven dinners and things like that, as well as non-perishable/shelf-stable items.
A household that exclusively cooks all their meals might make 7-10 grocery trips per month, but I expect that most people don't do that, and even those who cook all their meals probably don't rely on fresh meat & veggies for every single meal. And note that they don't cover people who go out to eat at restaurants at all in that list, so they're not accounted for anywhere.
On a side note, regarding your surprise at the purchases being large: most Americans, especially those who live in rural or suburban areas, don't do the kind of daily or near-daily stops at small convenience stores to pick up a few quick things that you see in dense cities. They drive to the grocery store, load up as much as they can fit in their cart, fill up their car, and go back home.
Heavily depends on the vegetables, frozen peas often taste way better than ones bought from the local market (not always but often) and come without the time taken to shell them, same with things like carrots etc.
The price difference is pretty insignificant when factored against the convenience (for me at least).
> This seems crazy to me
It read to me as poor use of statistics (as in the statement that the average human has slightly more than one ovary and slightly less than one testicle). Some don't go at all and do no food prep, some are not primary shopper she in household but stop by occasionally on way home to fetch forgotten item, etc. Plus all surveyed order in!
You eat the perishable stuff the first week, and the less perishable stuff the second week. Strawberries on day 1, oranges on day 13. Fresh bread on day 4, homemade biscuits on day 12. String beans on day 6, cabbage on day 11.
One of the nice benefits is you really work through everything by the end of week 2, so you don't have random crap sitting in your fridge for a month.
In any case, according to what my American friends told me, in their case most probably it is because they don't buy much fresh food at all.
We ate a lot of frozen meats and vegetables. Even bread stays fresh if you freeze it.
I go to a gigantic butcher's shop once or twice a month, portion out the purchases and then freeze them.
I get a veg delivery once a week from a local farm who also locally sources what they don't grow.