What day is the least busy at grocery stores?

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If you’ve been feeling like your grocery store seems awfully crowded these days, you might consider finding a different time to shop, suggests Google Maps. In their look at this year’s holiday and pandemic trends using searches, they’ve found that certain times are significantly more popular for grocery shopping than others, reports Delish.

“If you find yourself in need of a caffeine fix to tackle your holiday errands, make sure to avoid picking up coffee on Saturday mornings at 10 a.m. when coffee shops across America tend to be most packed,” Google Maps posted on their blog. And for grocery store shopping, they suggest avoiding Saturday afternoons from 12 to 3 p.m. — which seems like common sense. Similarly, it’s unsurprising that Monday morning at 8 a.m. is the least popular time.

Similarly, restaurants are busiest Friday at 6 p.m. and least busy Tuesday at 3 p.m. Scarily, Delish points out that restaurant reservations are up 203% since last year — but before you worry too much, they reassure that it’s most likely because places require them, not because twice as many people are eating out. 

In fact, 306% more people are searching for takeout — and specifically they are looking for Mexican food, Chinese food, Indian food, and barbecue — a big change from this spring when the searches for home cooking were at an all-time high, especially “easy recipes.” Certain cities saw even smaller trends, too — Philadelphia’s cheesesteak searches fell by almost 40% — likely because tourists were the ones looking for them.

But one interesting trend about all these searches on maps for grocery stores and when people are going is that they also show how people are getting there — and increasingly, that is by bike. Compared to pre-pandemic searches, biking as a form of transportation has gone up more than 30%. Unsurprisingly, public transport has gone down by more than 50%.

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In the olden days (when B.C. stood for something other than “Before Coronavirus”), going to the grocery store at an inopportune time was simply a drag. If you chose to go at peak hours, you might find aisles to be jam-packed, clusters of people gathered at the deli and bakery counters, and lines snaked around the store’s perimeter in anticipation of checkout. Was it obnoxious and inconvenient? Yes. But an over-crowded grocery store was never considered a public health risk. Of course, now, the answer to that question is very different.

Over the past year and a half, we’ve seen grocery stores implement all sorts of increased safety precautions to protect both workers and shoppers. It’s less common these days to show up to the supermarket to find a socially distanced line of mask wearers extending well beyond the store’s entrance. Though, for some grocers, all-too-long lines predate the pandemic. (Looking at you, Trader Joe’s!) We’re still inclined to get our shopping done in as empty a store and as few minutes as possible.

Because the idea of a routine or schedule has become nebulous at this point, it’s no longer safe to guesstimate that you’ll be in and out on a Tuesday at 9 a.m or Thursday at 6 p.m. without a doubt. Your usual time may be way more crowded these days, or maybe you can no longer go during your preferred time. This brings us to our smart tip: Use Google Maps for a data-backed view of when to visit your local grocery store during its least busy hours. See, the app uses historical data to predict the range of least to most popular times that people visit certain locations like stores, parks, and restaurants.

In order to access this view, simply Google your local grocery store. A sidebar will appear in the search results (on the right) that shows popular times based on historical data. It also has a “Live” view, which indicates how busy the store is at this very moment. While this feature is by no means a new feature, we thought it could be worth the reminder and something to take advantage of when you’re carefully timing your grocery shopping.

What time are you finding is best for grocery shopping these days?