February grocery sales growth accelerates to fastest rate since June

Grocery sales rose by 15.1 per cent in February, the fastest rate of growth since June 2020, as the latest national restrictions curtailed spending in cafés, restaurants and pubs.

Sales rose by 12.5 per cent during the 12 weeks to 21 February 2021, according to the latest figures from Kantar.

Symbols and independents continued to outpace the overall grocery market, with 21.8 per cent year on year growth for the 12 week period. As in the previous months, Ocado (35.3%) and Iceland (23.9%) enjoyed the top two positions in growth rate, followed by convenience stores.

The period saw all major retailers, except for Aldi, registering double digit growth in the 12 week period. Aldi’s growth figure of 5.6 per cent has been marginally lower from the previous month’s 5.7 per cent.

The market researcher said shoppers have spent an extra £15.2 billion on groceries during the pandemic, with an average household spending £4,800 on groceries, an increase of £500 compared with normal times

“The pandemic has now been making its mark on our lives and completely changing the way we shop for a full year,” commented Fraser McKevitt, head of retail and consumer insight at Kantar.

“Various hospitality restrictions mean that we’ve eaten an extra seven billion meals at home since spring 2020. Office tea rounds meanwhile were replaced by brews in our own kitchens and we drank an additional two billion cups of tea in the house this year.”

Online grocery sales reached a new record share in the four weeks to 21 February accounting for 15.4 per cent of sales, up from 8.7 per cent last year.

“It’s been an extraordinary twelve months for online and three million tonnes of food alone have been delivered to people’s homes over the past year. It’s a habit that seems to be sticking among British consumers and internet orders now make up an average of 65 per cent of grocery spending each month for people who do shop online,” McKevitt said.

“Grocers should take note of the customer satisfaction gap between online and in store – people that buy on the internet are typically 7 percentage points happier with their shopping trip than shoppers at bricks and mortar stores,” he added.