By Abbey Lenton
Woolies has crunched the numbers and discovered that self-isolation has made us all experimental in the kitchen.
The supermarket giant has reviewed its sales data from the last nine weeks to understand how the coronarvirus pandemic has impacted the way we shop and eat.
According to Woolies’ stats, we’ve been getting spicy in isy. Purchases of sauces, spices and soups have seen explosive growth in recent weeks.
Ingredients such as cardamom, saffron and dried sesame seeds have seen their sales double, while ground ginger and turmeric sales are up 120 percent and sauerkraut sales are up 76 percent.
The cold weather has made us turn to soups — soup mix packet sales are up a whopping 200 percent.
And it seems we’re opting for ingredients we were previously intimidated by. Roasted pepper sales are up 65 percent, Asian and hot chilli sauce sales are both up 40 percent, and caper sales are up 35 percent.
There are a number of reasons this tasty new trend may have come about. Perhaps it’s because we’ve all had a lot more time to try new things in the kitchen while hunkering down in isolation, or maybe we’re all feeling inspired by MasterChef.
The sales data was revealed following Friday morning’s announcement that Woolworths will begin rolling back some of the changes made when Australia first went into shutdown.
One of the key changes will be that from Monday, the Woolworths Community Hour for the elderly, disabled and frontline emergency workers will be phased out.
COVID-19 has had an enormous impact on the way we live, shop and eat. And even as Australia’s restrictions start to ease, it looks like we’re in for a long, spicy winter.
