Grocery growth slows as market eases out of lockdown

The latest market share figures from Kantar show grocery spend of £9.7bn over the past four weeks makes it the lowest since February, although this is still considerably higher than pre-pandemic levels.

Charlotte Scott, consumer insight director at Kantar, said: “While things are far from normal, the data shows a gradual softening of the more extreme lockdown trends in the grocery market. The relaxing of rules across much of the country means shoppers are less inclined to stock up their cupboards with regular large trips. That has seen average spend drop below £25 for the first time since March.  However, at £24, it is still a world away from the pre-Covid average of £19 per trip.

“Although the current average of 14 shopping trips per month per household is lower than it was last month, it is higher than in April and May, when lockdown rules were much tighter. So, while some consumers have shopped more often in the past month, the story varies in different parts of the country, with localised lockdowns and slower openings resulting in people making fewer trips in the north, the Midlands and Wales.”

Online shopping reached another new record market share in the latest four weeks – with 13.5% of all sales now ordered through the internet. Ocado has been a major beneficiary of this, and it also hit a new record this month, registering a market share of 1.8% over the past 12 weeks and growth of 45.5%.

In addition, the figures show that the past month has seen a renewed focus on health. Scott added: “People want to get back to their best after the long lockdown, and clean living is a priority again. Over the past month, we saw sales of vitamins and minerals grow at 34%, while herbal teas were up by 19% and nuts by 21%.”

All of the major retailers registered overall take-home sales growth in the past 12 weeks. However, all bar Ocado saw that growth slow compared with July.

Morrisons was the fastest-growing big four retailers, with sales up 16.0% driven by a particularly strong performance from its supermarket stores – it now accounts for 10.2% of the market. Despite Tesco being close behind in terms of growth, it lost market share of 0.4 percentage points bringing it to 26.6%.  Sainsbury’s share now stands at 14.9%, losing 0.5 percentage points this month, while Asda lost 0.6 percentage points taking it to 14.3%.

Iceland was the second fastest-growing retailer at 29.2%, its share increasing to 2.4%. Meanwhile, Co-op increased its share to 7.1%, with growth of 22.4%. Lidl successfully managed to hold its share steady at 5.9%, while Aldi and Waitrose both lost 0.2 percentage points taking them to 7.9% and 4.7%, respectively.