People’s pandemic-era fears and habits have paid off for frozen food makers

Alongside home sellers and Big Tech companies, count the frozen food aisle among those seeing pandemic-era windfalls. As Quartz reports, many people’s newfound fears and patterns over the past two years—grocery hoarding, needing easy meals for children’s remote school, mistrust of an Instacart deliverer’s choices in fresh produce—all culminated in average household spending of $595 on frozen food in 2020. And demand for frozen food has shown only slight signs of, ahem, cooling off—sales were up 26 percent in January 2022 compared to 2020 (although partly due to inflation). Supermarkets have even installed whole extra aisles to satiate people’s hunger for frozen dinosaur chicken nuggets and pizzas. Meanwhile, some New Yorkers and other urbanites are purchasing additional reach-in freezers, sacrificing precious square footage in their bedrooms to store their hauls. —Matthew Sedacca