Prepared Foods Sales Rise at Grocery, but Shoppers Prefer Restaurant Apps

Grocers must improve digital ordering capabilities to compete with the convenience of restaurant apps

FORT LAUDERDALE, FLORIDA, UNITED STATES, May 8, 2024 /EINPresswire.com/ -- Incisiv, a next-generation industry insights firm that helps retailers and brands navigate digital disruption, and Wynshop, the leading provider of digital commerce and fulfillment solutions for local store-based retailers, today revealed the findings from the State of Digital Grocery Performance Scorecard for April 2024.

Amidst a widening gap between the cost of restaurant and eat-at-home dining, grocers nationwide have been revamping their ready-to-heat and ready-to-eat options, with gourmet deli sandwiches, sushi bars, and other prepared food offerings. For this month’s scorecard, Grocery Doppio asked grocers and shoppers how it is going. Here are the results:

- 69% of grocers regard prepared foods as a key competitive differentiator.
- 63% of grocers report that their sales of prepared food have increased in the last six months.
- When buying prepared food, consumers value convenience (87%), cost (84%), and quality (74%) the most.
- 81% of shoppers report that restaurant apps are easier to order prepared food from than grocery apps.
- Loyal prepared food shoppers look to their grocer nine times/month for prepared food, but the average grocery shopper does so just once per month.

The monthly State of Digital Grocery Performance Scorecards are one of many resources available on the Grocery Doppio website. The latest report was built around aggregated data analysis of 2.5 million shopper orders and survey results from 45,000 shoppers and 4,300 U.S. grocery executives from January 2022 to the present.

More key findings from the April 2024 Performance Scorecard include:

Overall grocery sales and digital sales grew:
- There was $78.7 billion in total grocery sales in April 2024, a 2.4% YOY increase from April 2023.
- $10B of those sales were digital, a 13.4% share, representing a 1.5% increase over digital sales in April 2023

Shopper sentiment is down, even as grocers work to keep prices steady:
- Average digital grocery basket value in April 2024 fell 6.7% from March 2024, to $165.40.
- 71% of shoppers expect household budgets to be tight in the next three months, even as 64% of grocers predict that prices will stay the same or decrease over the same period.

"Loyal prepared food shoppers have proven grocers’ hypothesis that affordable, delicious, ready-to-heat and ready-to-eat meals are a valuable business proposition,” said Gaurav Pant, Chief Insights Officer of both Incisiv and Grocery Doppio. "But grocers still have work to do if they intend to win customers over from restaurant ordering apps.”

"Restaurants have been at this much longer than grocers,” added Charlie Kaplan, Chief Product and Marketing Officer at Wynshop. “However, using data insights about shoppers, grocers have the opportunity to bring incredibly sophisticated personalization to bear, making prepared food ordering more convenient than ever.”

Grocery Doppio is a free, independent source of grocery insights and data designed to help grocers jumpstart, accelerate, and sustain digital growth. Each month, Grocery Doppio brings together rich, research-driven grocery content, fact-based observations, inspiring perspectives, and deep performance benchmarks that identify improvement opportunities for grocery retailers.

Download Grocery Doppio’s “State of Digital Grocery Performance Scorecard: April 2024” at www.grocerydoppio.com

Laurel Getz
Wynshop Inc
+1 203.767.5963
laurel.getz@gmail.com
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