South Africans who consume alcohol rejoiced after hearing President; Cyril Ramaposa lift of the ban of alcohol sales. According to research and analytics company, Lightstone, thousands of customers lined up at stores across the country on the 1st of June to get their hands-on alcohol which also confirmed a change in behaviour.
Using aggregated and anonymized Tracker data, the company looked at the patterns of behaviour of vehicles travelling to retail destinations to see whether there was a significant surge in the number of people going to bottle stores.
“The data confirms that on Monday, June 1, SA did indeed behave differently to the Monday of the week before, the month before and three months before. When looking only at the centres which had the biggest recovery of ‘back to normal retail patterns’, the liquor chains present in those centres were most often a Tops, followed by a Pick n Pay liquor,” said Lightstone.
Analysis of the data, which only identified trips to shopping centres, showed that out of almost 1,000 shopping centres that offered a liquor outlet, 165 had more visitors on June 1 than on March 2, an equivalent date pre-lockdown and compared to month-end in February.
Lightstone also noted that retail activity was generally higher at the beginning of the month as most people had received their salaries and on this particular start to the month additional stores were allowed to operate because of eased level 3 lockdown restrictions.
“Shopping centres with a Tops and/or ‘Blue Bottles’ store were on average at 70% of their normal pre-lockdown visits during the last week of May, yet up to 85% of their normal activity on June 1. Smaller centres with chain liquor stores saw bigger recoveries than bigger centres, understandably due to the bigger centres having already pulled shoppers back with non-grocery (for example clothing) retail offerings, whereas smaller centres with only grocery and liquor outlets now have substantial additional pull. Liquor City Jan Smuts in Craighall recorded the biggest recovery on June 1 with 500%,” said the company.
On the other hand, the Eastern Cape government wants the national coronavirus command council to consider banning the sale of alcohol in the province. “Alcohol is a problem generally. I want to make a plea to the people of the Eastern Cape to drink responsibly because when they overindulge, that has been proven to result in car accidents, stabbings, rapes and general violence which add more pressure on our already overstretched doctors and nurses,” said Premier, Oscar Mabuyane.
