The seemingly endless coronavirus pandemic has changed all aspects of daily life, with restaurants across the U.S. remaining closed for weeks amind an uncertain future.

With people social-distancing and dining in, even hoarding groceries, the rally in packaged-foods stocks that began at the end of March might just be getting started, Barron's explained.

Packaged-foods stocks could keep climbing as COVID-19 forces America to dine in, even after economic lockdowns have been lifted.

These five companies have rising earnings and below-market valuations, according to Barron's:

• Campbell Soup (CPB)
• Conagra Brands (CAG)
• General Mills (GIS)
• Kellogg (K)
• Kraft Heinz (KHC)

However, some reports show consumers have stocked up and are now going back to more normal purchasing patterns, Bloomberg said.

U.S. packaged food sales rose 24% year-over-year for the week ended April 4, slowing from a gain of 32% a week earlier, according to analytics firm Nielsen. Ready-to-eat soup sales slowed by more than 50% in the period, and similar declines were seen in semolina pasta and beans, Bernstein analysts said in a report.

Americans spend more than half of their food budget eating out, and an increase in retail among grocery stores can’t fully compensate for the lack of demand from restaurants. Every 10% decline in out-of-home food spending translates into a gain of just 3% in the retail channel, according to Rabobank, one of the largest lenders to the food and agriculture industry.

Nowhere is the effect of restaurant shutdowns more obvious than in the dairy industry, with almost 50% of American cheese production going to food services. Farmers in top-producing Wisconsin are being asked to dump milk to boost low prices with overall demand for dairy products expected to drop 10% to 15% in the second quarter, according to Mary Ledman, a global diary strategist at Rabobank.

“You had this initial strong retail demand that muted the slow in food services demand,” Ledman said. “But once everybody had stocked their fridges and there’s not this panic buying, it’s just going back and filling the gaps. At the same time, we have seasonally increasing milk production. So, for the dairy sector, it was really this perfect storm.”

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