Time to head to the grocery store?

In a recently released report, ERS researchers used data for 2014-17 from the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ annual American Time Use Survey (ATUS) to provide a snapshot of when Americans grocery shop on weekdays versus weekends. Saturdays and Sundays are somewhat more popular days for grocery shopping than weekdays. Over an average weekday in 2014-17, 13 percent of Americans age 15 and older engaged in grocery shopping, and 16 percent grocery shopped over an average weekend in 2014-17. The peak times for grocery shopping during a weekday were 11 am to 12:59 p.m. and 3 p.m. to 3:59 p.m. Of those grocery shopping on a weekday, 16 percent did so in each of those 3 hours. On weekends, grocery shopping peaked during 11 a.m. to 12:59 p.m., with 20 percent of those shopping on a Saturday or Sunday doing so during each of these 2 hours. A version of this chart appears in the ERS report, Food-Related Time Use: Changes and Demographic Differences, November 2019.

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