Data Shows that Pandemic Compelled Businesses to Act Faster Than the Government

The COVID-19 outbreak has thrown much of Europe into lockdown. Germany and the Netherlands have shut bars, while restaurants are allowed to stay open only for takeout and delivery services.

In recent days, both countries have also tightened rules on social interaction, banning groups of more than two or three people for gathering. It has been two months since the first confirmed case surfaced in Germany and nearly a month since the Netherlands’ first case – so have these moves come too late?

While this is up for debate among epidemiologists and public health policy experts, we analysed our CPG data to determine two things: business response and public response to the crisis in Germany and the Netherlands over the first quarter. As a proxy for public behaviour, we looked at key indicators such as the number of transactions and sales volume at thousands of F&B outlets across these two countries.

Store closures preceded government action

In both countries, a plunge in open outlets occurred just days before the government introduced tougher measures to combat the spread of the virus, and mandated the closure of clubs and bars.

It seems that many businesses had already taken the initiative to close their doors before any government order. In Germany, voluntary closure of restaurants increased a few days earlier than in the Netherlands. On March 9, when the first COVID-19 deaths in Germany were reported, one-third fewer restaurants remained open compared to the Q1 weekly average.

Restaurants probably decided to shut down since more customers were staying home and shunning busy places in the wake of growing cases. Or they might have found it hard to enforce social distancing by seating diners at least 1.5 meters (5 feet) apart. Regardless of the reason, we can see from total sales volume below that this was a sudden, rather than gradual, dip in activity. It seems the rapidly escalating outbreak had little impact on public life – people were still going out to eat and drink as usual – but this was brought to a virtual standstill on the weekend of March 14.

We looked at sales volume in regions that were hit hardest by the pandemic – Germany’s North-Rhine Westphalia and the Netherlands’ Noord-Brabant province – to see if activity there differed from activity at a national level. But it appears that business and public behaviour in those regions were not significantly different from the rest of the nation, despite more stringent regulations being introduced there first.

In summary, the data demonstrates that even when the pandemic strikes close to home, it tends to be business as usual during the early days of the outbreak. However, businesses felt the impact earlier and acted quicker than governments did. While efforts to curb social interactions at a state or regional level can change public behaviour, not everyone will comply with the rules until there is a total shutdown.