Source USDA ERS The Weekly Retail Food Sales series

Made in Goodle Sheets

The biggest shopping weekend in 4 years was the 2 weeks in the middle of March 2020 as everyone panic bought. Every Year July 4th, Memorial Day, Christmas and Thanksgiving are the normal outliers for shopping

That left April and October as good comparisons

[removed]

There are a number of issues with this visualization, so I'll try to be concise. Please don't take it as a harsh criticism but more as a helpful learning moment.

Is there a key takeaway or two that you have identified and that you would like the audience to notice? At the moment I just don't see it because you're trying to fit so much information into one single visual that I don't know what I'm supposed to concentrate on. It looks like you got some data and put together a visual without much thought to what you're wanting to communicate or you didn't even think about any findings at all.

It looks like you're trying to show certain trends over time, but bar charts are not the best choice for this kind of data. You've tried to fit too much information into one single visual, but in reality it's just excessive text and color everywhere. When stacked bar charts are appropriate, you should use no more than 5 colors.

The time intervals appear really inconsistent. We want to see intervals like day, week, month, quarter or year, not jump from random dates to another as it's misleading and disruptive.

If your intention is to show trends over time, use an area or line chart instead. For example, an area chart showing the total (as opposed to a second bar), and lines showing different categories (as opposed to stacked bars). Now, instead of showing an excessive number of different colored lines, think what you are trying to communicate.

Option 1: Is it really necessary to show all these different categories separately if nothing really stands out and if it's so difficult to tell which is which due the high number of them? Combine them into no more than 5 bigger categories and draw attention to the most important or interesting ones by using distinctive colors, the uninteresting ones can all have the same neutral tone of grey for example.

Option 2: Are there any product categories with a very surprising or significant change in the trend? Let's say there is and you find that the sale of bread has skyrocketed since the pandemic began compared to all other categories combined. That would be your interesting finding to focus on, one line representing bread and another the rest. Color that line with one that stands out and leave the other one neutral. Everyone's eyes will be drawn immediately to the fact that there's an interesting trend with bread.

Thats it though....theres been no change

The biggest shopping weekend in 4 years was the 2 weeks in the middle of March 2020 as everyone panic bought. Every Year July 4th, Memorial Day, Christmas and Thanksgiving are the normal outliers for shopping

That left April Covid and October Inflation as good comparisons

Inflation, and a Pandemic....and we still buy the same kind of things

Ground Beef or Steak, Cokes and Pepsi, Fruit Drinks, Crackers, Cookies, and Frozen Meals

None of this really changed in the Same week in each year even as life changed so much

Then that is your takeaway. There is absolutely no need to use so much text and color. Choose a few key categories that are a good representation of people's overall shopping habits and add those as your colored lines. You can add another line with a neutral color combining all the rest and show the average values over time. Drop all the numbers from the chart and add a subtitle that says how nothing has changed despite this and that. And please use a logical order for the dates on the X axis.

Thats the week beginning Sunday of each year

IF you use Beef, Beer, Cokes, Stouffer Frozen Food, Crackers, and Oreo's, well that only 50% and people just think youre being to selective to make fun of American Diets

It appears that the overall amount of money Americans are spending hasn't changed much...but since the prices of everything has, could one conclude that there are a lot less calories, protiens, and ounces of food being consumed?

In the lives of people around here (Strafford County, NH) who are on fixed incomes or low income, there has been a huge rise in the need to access food pantries, meals on wheels, and senior commodities.

At the same time, pandemic extra food stamps ran out last June. The social security increase was a good 5-8% less than the increase in food prices, and some workers who got higher pay rates discovered it made them ineligible for or reduced food stamp amounts by more than the extra cash in the paycheck. We also have hundreds of unfilled Homecare positions statewide, so more disabled & elderly who don't have the stamina or transportation to do their own food shopping are losing a huge % of their grocery budget to Instacart etc.

I was expecting the total spent of groceries to be much higher for the 2021 & 2022 dates....