When the you-know-what hits the fan, Britain puts the kettle on. See the extra £126.7m shoppers have splashed out on tea, coffee and hot chocolate in the supermarkets for proof. That’s a rise of 7.1%, which brings total hot beverage sales to £1,920.3m.
But this amounts to little more than froth next to the massive losses suffered by foodservice. As The Grocer revealed earlier this month, coffee shops and cafés were the biggest foodservice casualty of 2020, with £2.4bn – 37.7% of annual sales – going down the drain. Coffee saw the sharpest decline of any food or drink: £1.8bn (31.7%).