Geographies of grocery shopping in major Canadian cities: Evidence from large-scale mobile app data

Socioeconomic and place-based factors contribute to grocery shopping patterns which may be important for diet health. Big data provide the opportunity explore behaviours at population level. We used collected from Flipp, a free all-in-one savings deals content app, identify visitation stores estimate home-to-store distances, monthly frequencies number of unique visited in eight Canadian cities during 2020. Grocery outcomes associations with income, density percentage car commuters were explored using aggregated Aggregate Dissemination Area level app users lived. Changes following restrictions implemented response COVID-19 pandemic also investigated. The median average distances ranged 4 5 km across all throughout Shorter shown consistently shoppers living lower densely populated low car-commuting ADAs. A maximum three supermarkets on each month. Decreases frequency variability store visits April 2020 implementation COVID-19, pre-pandemic levels rarely achieved by end year. Ultimately, these results much needed information regarding characteristics trips high-income country, as well how food was impacted onset pandemic. This will useful range future studies seeking characterise access retail.