The Cuestio index edition 001August 2026
The World Cup in the cart.
Panama returned to the World Cup and bowed out in the group stage. The cart tells another story. This edition measures the full tournament, June 11 to July 19, with the Cuestio panel: DGI electronic invoices contributed by facturillo users, compared against the May baseline, weekday against weekday.
The edition in three figures
The team bowed out early. The country stood still to watch anyway.
Beer nearly doubled on Panama's match days. Chicken wings won the food World Cup. And on July 19, in a final Panama was not even playing, the country stopped buying for three straight hours.
Figures verified at the publication cut of August 1, 2026. Chains anonymized in public figures.
Finding
1The final Panama did not play
On July 19, with Panama out for three weeks already, the country stopped buying. Invoices that day came in 22% below a normal Sunday. The gap is shaped like a match: three hours, from 3 to 6 in the afternoon, with 57% fewer invoices than the Sunday mean. By 6 the gap starts to close and by 7 it is gone. That three-hour band explains 62% of the invoices missing that day.
This is not a technical drop. The morning control band, 10 to 1, came in at −0.8%: intact. It is behavior. Panama stopped harder for someone else's final than for its own matches.
Invoices per hour on the day of the final, against the mean of 6 Sundays
| Band | Change vs Sunday mean |
|---|---|
| Invoices, full day | −22.3% |
| 3:00 to 5:59 p.m. | −57.4% |
| By hour: 3 p.m. · 4 p.m. · 5 p.m. | −64% · −64% · −44% |
| 6 p.m. · 7 p.m. | −9.5% · +1.0% |
| Control band, 10 a.m. to 12:59 p.m. | −0.8% |
Window: Sun 19 Jul against the mean of 6 Sundays, 1 Jun to 12 Jul, on a comparable 7-day scan basis.
And what did get bought that day was party food. In incidence per 1,000 invoices, sodas rose +34%, snacks +20% and ready meals +12%, while fruit and vegetables did not move.
| Category | Change |
|---|---|
| Sodas | +34.1% |
| Snacks | +20.2% |
| Ready meals | +12.1% |
| Fruit | −2.7% |
| Vegetables | −3.8% |
The country did not buy less party. It bought the party earlier and sat down to watch.
Finding
2Match-day beer
On the days Panama played, beer buyers nearly doubled against the same weekday in May. On debut day against Ghana they nearly tripled, with the day's spend at +115%. And this was not a June effect: before kickoff beer was running at −1.4%.
Elimination killed the spikes, not the thirst. Across the three weeks after Panama's last match, the level held +8.6% above normal. The three knockout weekends averaged +15%, though each one was its own world: +36% for the round of 16, −14% for the middle one and +21% for the final.
Window: each day against the same weekday in May. Spend uses the $200 per-line ex-bulk rule. Match days are published pooled only: 23 Jun on its own does not reach the panel's publication minimum.
Finding
3Panama did not stop eating out. It moved to lunch.
On Panama's match days the afternoon band lost weight inside the day and the morning gained it. Restaurant visits from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. went from 39.0% to 45.5% of the day (+17%), and those in the match band, 3 to 9 p.m., fell from 42.8% to 37.4% (−13%). People ate out just the same. They ate earlier.
The evening supermarket did empty out. On the two nights with a 6 p.m. kickoff, the 7 to 10 p.m. band held 14.0% of the day's supermarket visits against a 22.0% baseline: −36%.
The shape of the day on Panama's match days, as a fraction of that same day's visits
| Band | Match days | Baseline | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Restaurants, 9:00 a.m. to 2:59 p.m. | 45.5% | 39.0% | +16.8% |
| Restaurants, 3:00 to 8:59 p.m. | 37.4% | 42.8% | −12.5% |
| Restaurants, 9:00 to 11:59 p.m. | 7.8% | 8.0% | −2.1% |
| Supermarket, 7:00 to 9:59 p.m., 17 and 23 Jun | 14.0% | 22.0% | −36.3% |
Window: Panama's match days against the same weekday, 19 May to 8 Jul. The metric is the band's share within that same day's visits, which is immune to panel volume drift.
Finding
4Chicken wings won the food World Cup
Of every food category the panel tracks, only one genuinely grew across the five and a half weeks of the tournament: chicken wings, +12% against May. Snacks and ready meals came out nominally positive inside the noise. Pizza and sodas fell.
On Panama's three match days the craving had a podium of its own: snacks +33%, pizza +27% and sodas +12%, with fruit and vegetables flat as the contrast. The craving belonged to the event, not to the month.
Food categories across the full tournament, against May
| Category | Change vs May |
|---|---|
| Chicken wings | +12.1% |
| Snacks | +2.1% |
| Ready meals | +0.5% |
| Vegetables | −2.5% |
| Sodas | −2.7% |
| Fruit | −3.0% |
| Pizza | −6.8% |
| Category | Change |
|---|---|
| Snacks | +33.0% |
| Pizza | +26.9% |
| Sodas | +11.9% |
Finding
5Balboa won the brand World Cup
Inside beer, a national brand took the tournament. Balboa went from 22.8% of spend in May to 30.3% during the tournament: +7.5 points of share, with +29% more buyers in June. And the gain did not unwind with elimination: in July, with Panama out for three weeks, it still held 26.8%, still 4.0 points above May.
Balboa's share of the panel's beer spend
| Window | Balboa share |
|---|---|
| May (baseline) | 22.8% |
| June | 30.3% |
| Full tournament, 11 Jun to 19 Jul | 30.3% |
| July 1 to 19, after elimination | 26.8% |
A brand is named only when the data is neutral or favorable to it. Brands that gave up share are grouped as other national brands and are not named. Retail chains are always anonymized.
Finding
6Ice did not win the World Cup
The myth says a World Cup sells ice. The panel says the opposite: June was the weakest month of all 2026 for packaged ice, at −29% against May in incidence per 1,000 invoices, and July came in as the second weakest. Across the full tournament the drop is −27%.
Packaged ice in 2026, incidence per 1,000 invoices
Window: monthly incidence per 1,000 invoices, January to July 2026.
The reading of the edition
The World Cup did not grow the cart. It synchronized it.
Across the full tournament, the World Cup basket came out flat against May: −0.9%. All the action was redistribution in time. That same basket rose +17% on Panama's match days and +22% on the day of the final. The country did not consume more. It consumed at the same hour, on the same days, with the same brands winning and losing inside the category.
For a brand or a chain, the question for the next event is not how much more it will sell. It is at what hour, in which channel and with which brand. That detail, with chains named, is worked through in tailored reports.
Cuestio panel · DGI electronic invoices contributed by facturillo users · tournament June 11 to July 19 against May
Every month
Get the next edition the day it publishes.
Subscribe and every edition of El Carrito Real reaches you the day it comes out, with every finding, the data tables and the citable figures.
The index only. Nothing else.
What every edition brings
- Every figure carries its window. The data comes from DGI electronic invoices that facturillo users choose to share.
- Open data tables under every chart.
- Citable figures for press and analysts, with source and permanent link.
- Chains anonymized in public figures. Named detail is delivered in tailored reports.
Methodological note
How edition 001 is measured
The Cuestio panel is made up of facturillo users who choose to share their DGI electronic invoices. The base is urban and digital: results are panel shares, gaps and patterns, not national market sizes. Every figure in this edition uses exclusively DGI electronic invoices for prices and baskets, requires a minimum of 30 distinct profiles and states its window next to the data. Baselines are matched by weekday against May. Hourly metrics use the band's share within its own day, immune to panel volume drift. Figures verified at the publication cut of August 1, 2026. The metrics for the day of the final publish on a 7-day scan basis, stable between cuts. Full methodology at cuestio.com/en/methodology.
Citability
Every edition, a permanent link.
The index is free to read and any outlet or analyst can cite it. Every edition keeps its own permanent link and it does not change when the next one is published. Edition 001 lives at cuestio.com/en/carrito-real/001 and any figure can be cited like this: "Cuestio, El Carrito Real de Panamá, edition 001".
Editions
Edition 001 · The World Cup in the cart · August 2026 · current edition.