Record online sales at Coles in lead up to Christmas

The big hit at Coles this Christmas was record sales of seafood, especially lobster, as online sales spiked to new highs.

The Chatswood store in Sydney sold the most lobsters at Christmas 2020.

Australians staying home and preparing Christmas celebrations helped generate the best online sales day for supermarket giant Coles, with a spike in visits to its online store on the Wednesday before Christmas producing record results.

The closure of international borders along with an exodus of people to Queensland helped that state rank as the best performing region for Coles across the country as shoppers visited supermarkets near resorts.

The big hit at Coles this Christmas was record sales of seafood, especially lobster which was China’s loss given their blockade and our own shoppers’ gain with lobsters actually selling out. Such was the huge demand for $20 lobsters the Chatswood Chase Coles in Sydney sold more lobsters this year than the whole of Australia last year.

Other big volumes of sales for Coles were booked for pavlova, prawns, croissants and champagne. The family barbecue was a favourite, especially as many were staying close to home, with gas bottle sales to fire up the grill much higher.

Coles chief executive Steven Cain told The Australian its Coles online platform hit record sales last Wednesday to make it the biggest day of the year for online sales with the massive uptick even eclipsing the worst days of the Covid-19 pandemic in March when consumers rushed the shops and online to strip the shelves of groceries.

“What is interesting is, and this is not a sales forecast as we are in a blackout so this is more consumer trends, at the AGM we said there would be more Australians in Australia and more from working from home and that’s proven to be the case as we headed into Christmas,” Mr Cain told The Australian.

“Then certainly as we have gone over the Christmas period it was interesting looking at what has changed over the year, it is interesting that Queensland has been the top performing state, suggesting that a lot of people have headed there this year rather than overseas.

“And all around Australia our resorts stores have performed best, which I guess is not too much a surprise, and CBD (stores) are still very subdued. From a purchasing perspective it is very clear that a lot of Australians have treated themselves this Christmas and if you look at our highest growth category it would be seafood and lobsters sold out.”

Mr Cain said he was surprised croissants were up so strongly for the year and heading into Christmas.

“That is the sort of breakfast, lunch and dinner at home, and floral has done well as people are buying lots of flowers for each other for their homes and on the liquor side of things it continues to be champagne, whisky and seltzer which has come from nowhere to be very popular.”

Coles expected more Australians to have Christmas at home, and these sales suggest they did, with an increase in sales in resort areas, more entertaining at home, customers treating themselves with seafood and champagne, as well as value-priced items like pavlova and discounted prawns.

Click and collect

Mr Cain said Wednesday was the top day of the year for online sales, with many shoppers opting for the click and collect service.

“Click and collect was a bit stronger than we thought it would be, but it was a similar picture to what we saw in the rest of the store, and I think overall what I would say that at Christmas time we did note however that people did get back into stores more.

“And that is probably to do with wanting to see what there is for buying, to see what is new and so on, so there was definitely a pick up in store traffic in Christmas week which was also good to see.”

He said some of the price reductions Coles had done around prawns and pavlovas had helped drive higher sales in those categories, while ‘food to go’ was also strong at Coles Express a lot of people were on the road and looking for meals.

In terms of the new outbreak of Covid-19 across Sydney’s northern beaches, which caused some panic buying and triggered lockdowns and restrictions on movement, Mr Cain said volumes at its Coles stores in the area had experienced a spike in sales.

“We are finding that the busiest places at the moment are where holidaymakers can get to, and so far the Sydney situation has been well managed and under control.”

Coles had long prepared for a bumper Christmas and new years’ trading and has been gearing up for catering to the grocery needs of an extra million Australians stuck at home and unable to travel overseas this Christmas.

A recent report from Credit Suisse retail analyst Grant Saligari forecast that due to travel restrictions, such as closed international borders, the nation’s population could increase by as much as 4 per cent, or about a million more mouths to feed over the summer holidays.