The Los Angeles Rams and the New England Patriots aren’t the only ones facing off against each other this Sunday for Super Bowl 2019. Snack Brands will also be competing in a Promo Bowl of their own! To see how promotions for snacks compare between the two coasts, we monitored promotional activity on snack food items across 21 major online grocery retailers and compared East Coast vs West Coast retailers.
The snacking industry in the country is valued at over $40 billion (FY 2018), with salty snacks accounting for over half of the category’s size. So, it is no surprise that when the most popular sports event of the year comes around people look forward to indulging in their favorite snacks as they cheer on their favorite teams.
Across all the retailers analyzed on both coasts, Safeway was the winner in promotional activity in snacks, offering promotions on over 50% of snack food items on certain days. Safeway’s promotions on snack items ramped up in early January with a significant jump between January 1st and January 2nd for Safeway Seattle, and between January 5th and 6th for Safeway San Francisco.
Total promotions on snack food items more than doubled between the two days for Safeway Seattle and San Francisco. Safeway Seattle further saw an increase in promotions by 30% on snack food items between January 12th and 13th, and continued until January 15th. This increase in promotions was during the weekend before the semifinal matches between LA Rams vs. Saints, and Patriots vs. Chiefs.
On the other hand, Amazon Fresh didn’t quite match up to the same level of promotion as Safeway, averaging about 6-7% of total snack items in both coasts on promotion. Whole Foods seems to have picked up Amazon’s lack of promotional activity on snacks from early to mid-January, but sharply reduced total promotions by 80% just around the semifinals. Amazon Fresh increased total promotions marginally towards the last week of January, but it remains to be seen whether the promotional activity picks up closer to Super Bowl.
East Coast vs. West Coast: Who is Scoring the Promotional Touchdowns in Chips and Dip?
We compared price reductions between online grocery retailers from Seattle and San Francisco on the West Coast, to those from Manhattan and Philadelphia on the East Coast.
Comparing the total number of price reductions on Chips and Dips, we found out that West Coast retailers on average offered 14 more Chips and Dip items at a reduced price in comparison to the East Cast retailers.
Further, Doritos were promoted more across the East Coast retailers whereas Frito-Lay potato chip variety packs were promoted more on the West Coast during semifinals weekend. Out of the most popular chips brands, over 70% of Doritos items were promoted for the semifinal game on the East Coast, whereas on the West Coast, Frito-Lay potato chips saw nearly all items offered with some type of promotion over the same weekend.
We are not quite done yet – as the Super Bowl draws closer, we will be closely monitoring other popular snack food items and beverages in our follow-up report to show promotional trends over the Super Bowl weekend. Stay tuned!
