U.S. grocery retail generated hundreds of billions of dollars in sales while prices, store access, digital services, employment, and retailer investment changed across distinct measures and periods. The figures below separate Census industry definitions, USDA food-at-home measures, company reporting, and tract-level access estimates so the comparisons remain meaningful.
Key Grocery Retail Statistics
The following figures summarize the most broadly useful measures:
- In 2022, U.S. grocery-store sales were $858.3 billion for NAICS 4451 grocery stores.
- From 2021 to 2022, grocery-store sales rose 8.2% in nominal U.S. dollars.
- In 2023, supermarkets and other grocery stores excluding convenience reported $824.540486 billion in U.S. sales, shipments, or revenue.
- In 2022, selected food-at-home outlets recorded $796 billion in U.S. food sales.
- In 2025, nominal per-capita food-at-home purchases reached $3,197 in the United States.
- In 2022, average U.S. food-at-home prices rose 11.4%.
- In 2024, average food-at-home prices rose 1.2% in the United States.
- In 2024, real food-at-home spending increased 1.8% after inflation adjustment.
- In 2023, farms received 24.3 cents of each food-at-home dollar in the United States.
- In 2022, the 20 largest food retailers accounted for $519 billion of selected U.S. food sales.
- In 2022, the 20 largest food retailers represented 65.2% of the selected U.S. food-retail market.
- In fiscal 2024, Kroger digital sales exceeded $13.0 billion across pickup, delivery, and ship solutions.
- In fiscal 2024, Albertsons digital sales increased 24%.
- In 2019, 3.08% of U.S. census tracts were less than 5 miles from one major food store but 10–20 miles from a third store.
- In November 2024, average hourly earnings were $17.86 for production and nonsupervisory employees in supermarkets and other grocery retailers excluding convenience.
- In fiscal 2024, Albertsons spent approximately $1,927.5 million on capital expenditures.
Contents
- Key Grocery Retail Statistics
- Grocery Retail Market Scale and Sales Statistics
- Food-at-Home Spending and Grocery Price Trends
- Grocery Retail Concentration and the Food Dollar
- Online Grocery Shopping and Omnichannel Retail Data
- Grocery Store Access and Competitive Reach
- Grocery Retail Employment and Pay
- Supermarket Operating Scale and Investment
Grocery Retail Market Scale and Sales Statistics
The Census Bureau reports grocery sales under different industry scopes. NAICS 4451 includes grocery stores and firms without paid employees, while NAICS 44511 covers employer supermarkets and other grocery stores excluding convenience stores.
- The U.S. Census Bureau estimated 2022 NAICS 4451 grocery-store sales at $858.3 billion.
- Census estimated that NAICS 4451 sales increased 8.2%, from $793.4 billion in 2021 to $858.3 billion in 2022; this is a nominal change and is not inflation-adjusted.
- For 2023, Census reported $824,540,486,000 in sales, shipments, or revenue for NAICS 44511 employer firms in Retail Trade: Summary Statistics for Industry Groups and Industries in the U.S..
- As broader context, the U.S. retail sector recorded $7,041.0 billion in 2022 sales, up 8.0% from $6,519.8 billion in 2021, according to the Census Bureau’s annual retail trade release.
- The same sector had about 1.0 million establishments in 2022, a retail-wide figure rather than a grocery-only count.
USDA uses a selected food-at-home outlet group that is not identical to either Census grocery definition. Its 2022 estimate for supermarkets, other grocery stores, warehouse clubs, and supercenters was $796 billion in food sales, and its 2025 estimate for nominal per-capita food-at-home purchases was $3,197.
Both figures come from USDA ERS Retailing & Wholesaling: Retail Trends.
Food-at-Home Spending and Grocery Price Trends
Food-at-home prices and inflation-adjusted spending answer different questions. USDA’s price series measures annual price changes, while real spending adjusts spending for inflation and is not a direct measure of physical grocery volume.
| Measure | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Food-at-home price change | 11.4% | 5.1% | 1.2% |
| Real food-at-home spending change | — | -2.6% | 1.8% |
| Food-away-from-home price change | — | 7.1% | 4.1% |
| Real food-away-from-home spending change | — | 3.0% | 0.4% |
The USDA ERS food-price analysis reports the food-at-home and food-away-from-home comparisons. Food-away-from-home figures are included only as context and do not represent grocery retail.
Category-level 2024 changes show why an overall grocery price measure can conceal variation:
- USDA ERS food prices and spending data recorded an 8.5% increase for eggs in 2024, the largest food-at-home category increase listed there; USDA linked part of the increase to avian-influenza effects.
- Beef and veal prices increased 5.4% in 2024.
- Sugar and sweets prices increased 3.0% in 2024.
- Fish and seafood prices declined 1.9% in 2024.
- Dairy-product prices declined 0.2% in 2024.
The historical comparison baseline was 2.7% average annual retail-food price inflation from 2004 through 2023, according to the same USDA ERS food-price source. These are category or overall price measures, not retailer margin estimates.
Grocery Retail Concentration and the Food Dollar
Selected-outlet concentration data describe how much sales are represented by large food retailers, not the entire food system. In 2022, the 20 largest U.S. food retailers accounted for $519 billion and 65.2% of the selected food-retail market, according to USDA ERS Retail Trends.
The same USDA analysis reports that the top-four, top-eight, and top-20 food-retailer shares all increased between 1997 and 2022. The page reports the direction of change rather than one common percentage for all three measures.
USDA’s 2023 Food Dollar Series separates farm and marketing activities. For food at home, USDA ERS estimated that farms received 24.3 cents of each dollar, while the marketing share was 75.7 cents; marketing includes processing, transportation, retailing, and other activities.
For domestically produced food more broadly, the 2023 distribution was:
- Wholesale trade received 11.4 cents per dollar.
- Retail trade received 14.7 cents per dollar.
- Wholesale plus retail trade represented 26.1 cents per dollar.
- Food processing represented 13.2 cents per dollar.
- Food services represented 31.5 cents per dollar.
These broader figures come from USDA ERS Food Prices and Spending. Retail trade includes grocery stores, wholesale clubs, restaurant-supply outlets, and other distribution outlets, so the 14.7-cent figure is not a grocery-store gross margin.
For comparison, farms received 5.4 cents of each food-away-from-home dollar in 2023 and the marketing share was 94.6 cents. Those comparison figures are also from USDA ERS and do not describe grocery retail.
Online Grocery Shopping and Omnichannel Retail Data
Company filings provide operating evidence for digital grocery services, but they are not estimates of the entire online grocery market. Fiscal years and adjusted comparisons matter, particularly when a comparison year contains an extra week.
Kroger reported more than $13.0 billion in fiscal 2024 digital sales, including pickup, delivery, and ship solutions. Its digital sales increased approximately 11% in fiscal 2024 excluding the extra week in 2023, while delivery solutions grew 18%; Kroger also reported identical sales excluding fuel up 1.5%.
The figures come from Kroger’s Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended February 1, 2025. The filing also reported digital-sales growth of 12% in fiscal 2023, delivery-solutions growth of 25% in fiscal 2023, and delivery-solutions growth of 25% in fiscal 2022.
Albertsons reported that fiscal 2024 digital sales increased 24%. Its loyalty membership increased 15% to 45.6 million in fiscal 2024, although membership accounts are not necessarily unique active shoppers, as described in the company’s fiscal 2024 annual report.
Grocery Store Access and Competitive Reach
USDA ERS’s 2019 access analysis examined distances from U.S. census tracts to both the nearest and third-nearest major food stores. A major food store means a supermarket, supercenter, or large grocery store; the results describe tract-level geographic access and competition, not individual food insecurity or travel time.
- In 2019, 3.08% of U.S. census tracts were less than 5 miles from one major food store but 10–20 miles from a third store.
- In 2019, 0.63% of U.S. census tracts were less than 5 miles from one major food store but more than 20 miles from a third store.
The definitions and percentages are reported by USDA ERS. They should not be read as the share of households lacking food access, because the unit is the census tract and the measure concerns ranked store distances.
FoodAPS provides a separate research geography reference: its Geography Component data cover all 50 primary sampling units in the study. USDA ERS’s FoodAPS report describes the research dataset, which is not a current national store census.
Grocery Retail Employment and Pay
The Bureau of Labor Statistics’ November 2024 figures cover production and nonsupervisory employees, not every grocery worker. The industry classifications also separate supermarkets, convenience retailers, specialty food retailers, and meat, fish, and seafood retailers.
| Industry group | Average hourly earnings | Average weekly earnings | Period |
|---|---|---|---|
| Grocery and convenience retailers, NAICS 4451 | $17.79 | $514.13 | November 2024 |
| Supermarkets and other grocery, excluding convenience, NAICS 44511 | $17.86 | $516.15 | November 2024 |
| Convenience retailers and vending, NAICS 44513 | $16.83 | $483.02 | November 2024 |
| Specialty food retailers, NAICS 4452 | $19.25 | $485.10 | November 2024 |
| Meat, fish, and seafood retailers, NAICS 44524/44525 | $18.68 | $496.89 | November 2024 |
The figures are from BLS CES Table 8b. Weekly earnings should not be treated as a universal full-time annual-pay measure because the table covers a defined employee subgroup and reports an average weekly amount.
Supermarket Operating Scale and Investment
Large-company operating measures illustrate the scale and capital intensity of grocery retail without representing the whole industry. Kroger reported $147.123 billion in fiscal 2024 total sales, including company-defined sales categories and fuel-related activity.
As of February 3, 2024, Kroger operated supermarkets under local banner names in 35 states and the District of Columbia and offered pickup at 2,350 supermarkets. These are company footprint and service-availability measures from Kroger’s fiscal 2024 Form 10-K, not counts of all U.S. grocery stores.
Albertsons reported approximately $1,927.5 million in fiscal 2024 capital expenditures, completed 127 store remodels, and opened 11 new stores. Those figures are company-reported investments and activity from the Albertsons fiscal 2024 annual report, rather than industry-wide totals.