Brits set to splurge over Jubilee break, say UK grocers

British patriotic staples will fly off shelves at the fastest rate in a decade over the Platinum Jubilee weekend, stated recent reports, citing some of the nation’s biggest grocers.

Supermarket Tesco says it expects to sell 4 million bottles of gin, 3.5 million baskets of strawberries and 2 million cream cakes over the holiday period, Bloomberg reported. Hundreds of thousands of champagne bottles, sausage rolls, scotch eggs and pork pies are also likely to be sold, the UK’s largest grocery chain said.

“Brits love a royal celebration and the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee is set to spark a feel-good factor with plenty of street and house parties,” said Alice Gallop, chilled food category planner at Tesco. “We are predicting the biggest concentrated demand for British classic food and drink for a decade.”

Tesco’s counterpart Sainsbury’s predicts a 200 percent increase in sales of cake decorating items, and at least a 30 percent jump in transactions for cupboard staples such as flour, eggs and icing sugar as Britons bake cakes and sweet treats for guests.

Waitrose has also been reporting similar trends where Home bakers have also been flocking where sales of savory pastries have surged 325 percent compared to last year and online searches for the supermarket’s Victoria sponge recipe is up by more than 900 percent.

According to Nielsen data published earlier this week, some 20 percent of households are expected to buy extra groceries for the extended holiday weekend.

Kantar in an earlier report has expressed similar sentiment by claiming that British consumers will be more wary of splurging on non-essential items than they were for the Diamond Jubilee in 2012.

“We should never underestimate the appetite for a party, especially a royal one,” said Fraser McKevitt, head of retail and consumer insight at Kantar. “While we’re all keen to celebrate in style, shoppers will be carefully considering any unnecessary expense and prices are significantly different from the last Jubilee.”