What are you eating for dinner tonight? Because we’re still in lockdown, It’s probably something you’ve planned, using up what you’ve got in the fridge – and you’re probably the one cooking it.
The pandemic has had a huge impact on the way we eat. Before the pandemic, people were eating out more than ever – around one third of the calories we consumed were outside the home. We were all short on time and wanted convenience, plus eating out was cheap and quick. Things changed suddenly and unexpectedly for the whole industry, from consumers putting things on their plates all the way back to farmers.
The pandemic has given many people a chance to think about what and how they are eating. Baking and cooking at home have been huge trends throughout lockdown. People are buying food more locally and online grocery shopping has been huge. Visit our live blog for the latest updates: Coronavirus news live Going forward, experts expect that restaurants will still have plenty of customers when they reopen as eating out has become a huge part of our busy lives – the problem will be ensuring they can enjoy a meal safely. But the lockdown has been long enough to change some of our habits, like where we shop, what we buy, how we cook it and what we throw away. Food production For the first time, people turned up at the shop and shelves were empty. We had become used to being able to get almost anything in our local supermarket but finding flour, eggs, fruit and vegetables and meat became more of a struggle. According to Stuart Roberts, Deputy President of the National Farmers’ Union (NFU), it wasn’t necessarily that there wasn’t enough food but just that the demands on the system had changed.
It was very imbalanced because of this move from food service to retail He explains: ‘Taking the beef sector for example, you might well have a steak in a pub on a Friday night. You wouldn’t cook a steak at home because maybe you weren’t confident or maybe it looked expensive. And so therefore, you bought an extra pack of mince. With that, it’s a different part of the animal and therefore you are finding the carcass was very imbalanced just because of this move from food service to retail.’ Similarly, Stuart adds that flour shortages were down to processing difficulties as many factories made huge bags for the hospitality industry and weren’t able to suddenly switch to small bags, which is where the demand was. Adrian Palmer, Professor of Marketing at Henley Business School at the University of Reading, says that there has been a trend for the supply chain and households to operate on a ‘just in time system’, which is a problem in times of crisis. He says: ‘I remember my grandmother, for example, storing apples for a whole year and she would have had stocks of tins of stuff ‘just in case’, so that they could withstand the crisis. Now, people are running on ‘just in time’ – they decide what they are going to eat tonight and get it on the way home. ‘There’s clear evidence that kitchens have been getting smaller as people buy less food.’
Although some of the supply chain is now working in a different way to get food to the areas of demand, there could still be a longer term impact and more shortages going forward, especially for fruit and veg due to a shortage of labour to pick food – so could the experience of empty shelves make us consider stocking up more in future? Adrian adds: ‘I’m skeptical about whether it’s going to change consumers’ attitudes to keeping stocks. ‘I think two or three years down the line, people will go back to saying, “well, do I use that space to put in my new entertainment centre, or do I want to store 10 tins of potatoes?” ‘My view is that in a functioning capitalist system, it would favour the just in time system where all the tasks work together. It’s more profitable for the farmer to sell to the wholesaler just when they need it and to minimise their stock holding costs and then put it through the distribution channel. ‘But there’s a lot of disruption, which we can’t possibly resolve – coronavirus, Brexit, world trade talks – and if supply chains become severely disrupted again, then we might just go back to where people think, “I better stock up just in case.
Let’s keep those extra 10 tins of baked beans in the cupboard”. That’s probably going to be more important than using the space for entertainment centre.’ Cooking at home As well as changing what we could buy, meaning we had to get more inventive with cooking, being at home has seen people to get more into making their own food. During lockdown, social media feeds have been filled with people posting pictures of their own recipes and many are learning new skills. It seems as if everyone has been creating sourdough or banana bread. Data released by M&S showed people buying more fresh herbs and whole vegetables to cook up delicious meals from scratch at home.
But realistically, when we go back to normality, life is going to get busy again and the appeal of quick and convenient food will continue. Our desire to eat out is likely to return if life goes back to anything like we had before. Christian Reynolds, senior lecturer at the centre for food policy at City University, London says: ‘If you look at other countries that have started to ease lockdown and see what trends they’re going through, you can see those old habits are reforming and the future. ‘The future, in some ways, really depends on what we want to give it. If employers say we can have more flexible jobs and a better work life balance, those sorts of labour things will feed through the food system to enable people to possibly spend more time in the kitchen.’ Adrian Palmer adds: ‘People have been getting into creative things like knitting as an escape and I think cooking is part of that. There’s an Instagram generation where people want to show off what they have made. ‘But I see the trend for cooking being more for creativity and special occasions. I think the long term trend for eating out will continue when we can go out again.’ Social distancing in restaurants When we can eat out again, restaurants will have to implement social distancing measures and no one is sure how long those will last. Restaurants are already thinking about what they can do to keep customers and staff safe even when lockdown restrictions end.
Some have some interesting methods – a cafe in Germany is using pool noodles to keep customers apart, while one in Amsterdam is serving customers in greenhouses. Hotels, for example, the Farncombe Estate in the Cotswolds, explained that they will be ditching breakfast buffets, instead of focusing on room service, which will allow guests to stay apart in their own rooms. CEO Andrew Grahame explains: ‘We’ll extend the area as well as timings of where we will serve breakfast and former buffet items will now be on-request from the kitchen.
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