Grocery sales: Ocado on top as supermarkets snag 58m more visits as UK exited lockdown
As the UK’s vaccination programme pushes on, supermarkets have enjoyed 58m more shopping visits in the first quarter of this year than last year, according to industry data released today.
Supermarkets actually had more visits in the 12 weeks to 16 May, than when panic buying gripped shoppers at the start of the pandemic, market researcher Kantar said.
“As the vaccine rollout moves full steam ahead, consumers are getting more confident venturing back out to stores,” head of retail and consumer insight at Kantar, Fraser McKevitt, said.
Online retailer Ocado scored the highest shift in sales of 15.4 per cent. Meanwhile, the Co-operative’s sales sank 12.1 per cent.
Despite Ocado’s result, the proportion of online supermarket sales has dwindled from 13.9 per cent in April to 13.4 per cent but remained much higher than 2019 levels.
Tesco remained on top overall, however, with a steady market share of around 27 points but had flat sales data.
Sainsbury’s followed behind with a market share of around 15 points, increasing sales slightly by 0.7 per cent in the post-lockdown shopping spree.
While the influx of shoppers was good news for supermarkets, there have also been signs that the traditional big weekly shop may be dying out, Kantar said.
The average basket size has fallen for the third month in a row to £22.82 pounds, the lowest since March last year when customers began upping their shopping loads to limit their time outside.
Total grocery sales fell 0.4 per cent year-on-year over the quarter, which could be a sign of people slowly beginning to make use of the eased restrictions on pubs and restaurants.
“Many of us this time last year were eating all our meals at home and we bought extra food and drink as a result. Now we’re seeing take-home grocery sales dip versus 2020 as people are able to eat in restaurants, pubs and cafés and can pick up food on the go again,” McKevitt added.