Brits spent an extra £1.9bn stockpiling groceries and made 79 million extra grocery shopping trips in the last four weeks compared to the same period last year.

The data from Nielsen follows a crushing week for the wider retail sector that has seen high street operations all but shut down, with hundreds of thousands of staff furloughed.

Nielsen charted an 84% surge in frozen food sales last week alone, compared to the same period last year, saying there was a clear trend showing that households had already picked up other necessities including medicines.

As the Government announced the closure of pubs and restaurants, in-store sales of beer, wine and spirits were 67% up - meaning that around £200m extra was spent on booze.

The report said 'finite' capacity limited sales growth for online grocery operations.


(source: Sky News, image: pexels)