Were there more home deliveries on my street?

What does the image show?

Some people stopped shopping online for groceries at the start of lockdown 2020, perhaps because they could not get delivery slots. However, for those who were already users, their use grew from, on average, 0.6 days a week to 0.8 days a week in Spring and 0.9 by October. Starters in the spring lockdown grew even more by October, going from 0.7 days a week to 1.0 days a week so there were certainly more grocery delivery vans.

Why is this important?

Going online for retail has been happening over a long period of time. Grocery sales though were pretty flat at 5% of sales by value. This jumped to 10% at the start of lockdown and has risen further, in line with our findings. Non-grocery jumped even more, up from 18% to 35% although the figures go up and down a bit more with lockdowns and re-openings. All of this drives additional home deliveries. Overall, it has been estimated that internet shopping van miles are not increasing so much they that offset people’s car miles when driving to the shops. However, when people ask for quick delivery this reduces the chance of the logistics industry to get multiple packages for one area in the same van.

Figure: Mean number of days per week using Home Delivery. Users includes Increasers, Consistents and Reducers.