Ever since the COVID-19 pandemic started sweeping around the globe and shaking up economies, real estate investors have been scrambling to adjust their strategies.

Investors need to look at each asset class separately to understand its tenants and their business models to make smart decisions. The importance of such detailed analysis is made evident in the retail sector. While the crisis has pushed even more nonfood business into ecommerce, which is a trend that shows no signs of reversal, food retail has been more or less unscathed, especially in Germany, where customers are traditionally averse to buying groceries online.

That does not mean that nothing has changed,  however, especially from an investor’s perspective. To understand current trends and allocate investments in a profitable way, we must look beyond the COVID-19 crisis and consider other demographic trends that are currently affecting food retail.

Three main trends have been shifting business aw