When is Sobeys busy?

If you Google your local grocery store–Sobeys, in my case–one of the things that Google Maps will show you is when the store is typically busy on any given day, and how busy it is right now. Useful information to have when you’re trying to minimize contact with other shoppers.

Here are snapshots of four Prince Edward Island Sobeys for a Friday; don’t use these as an actual guide, because they’re evolving and will be inaccurate in the future:

Because this is Google, and thus closed and proprietary, there’s no way of knowing the sample size–the number of mobile devices that Google is detecting at each location to develop its approximation of busyness–and the charts are only useful in a relative not an absolute sense. Also, the data was gathered during a time when Sobeys was open longer hours; hours are now 8:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m., and that means that visits are distributed differently now, even more so with so many people not working and so able to shop at unusual times.