Are Grocery Store Pantry Sales Gone For Good

Ok, most regular readers of this blog know Foodservice Solutions® Grocerant Guru® has worked with, driven, and documented customer migration from Grocery stores pantry sales too Restaurants, Convenience Stores, Drug Stores, and grocerant niche Ready-2-Eat and Heat-N-Eat fresh food retailers.

Success does leave clues so none of our regular readers could have been surprised to read that U.S. grocery sales continued to erode in December.  Yes, the undercurrent of deflated food prices remained however IRI reported volume slowed on top that.  The consumer is dynamic not static and doing the same thing the same way will just does not get you the same result. 

Simply put consumers are not eating any less they are simply buying food and food products from other retailers according to Foodservice Solutions® team. IRI reported that for the four weeks ended Dec. 18, dollar sales were down by 1.7% and volume was down by 2.3% for U.S. grocery stores, excluding mass merchants like Walmart. BMO Capital Markets analyst Kelly Bania told Supermarket Nes in an interview this week “That marked the second-weakest monthly sales growth figure since 2010 when. The only worse month was November of 2013 during which numbers were affected mainly by a Thanksgiving calendar shift.”

IRI found that for the three-month period, volume is down by 1% on a 0.8% decline in dollar sales.  The US Census Bureau reported that 50% of Americans over the age of 18 are single. Foodservice Solutions® Grocerant Guru® Steven Johnson asks how many singles need to go to the grocery stores and buy 10lbs of potatoes or 10 pork chops at a time?

Foodservice Solutions® Grocerant ScoreCards reflect an uptick in customer acceptance and migration from legacy grocery stores in California to Aldi.  They find acceptance and migration to companies the ilk of Wawa, Sheetz, and Everytable.  Restaurant data shows an increase in total restaurant sales all the while legacy chain restaurant customer counts are flat or off.  The simple fact is customers are migration to new avenues of fresh food distribution.  

So, just my friend Bill Bishop Chief Architect at Brick Meets Clicks calls many of these new avenues of fresh food distribution minnows in an ocean. However, regular readers of this blog know $1.5 billion in meal kit sales, $2.2 Billion in sales at IKEA, and Wawa with fresh food sales topping the charts. We could go on but the undercurrent’s of the evolving consumer has our attention.  Why does it not have the attention of legacy grocery retailers, and grocery analyst?  Success does leave clues. The clue of the day is that the minnows are growing up fast.

Invite Foodservice Solutions® to complete a Grocerant Program Assessment, Grocerant ScoreCard, or for product positioning or placement assistance, or call our Grocerant Guru®.  Since 1991 www.FoodserviceSolutions.us  of Tacoma, WA has been the global leader in the Grocerant niche. Contact: Steve@FoodserviceSolutions.us or 253-759-7869