SN Off the Shelf: A closer look at this year’s Top 75 Retailers report

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Supermarket News’ annual Top 75 Retailers report has just come out, and in our latest SN Off the Shelf podcast, Senior Editor Russell Redman and Data Content Director Alan Liddle joined me for a discussion of the numbers and trends we found this year.

The Top 75 takes an annual look at the consumables sales and store counts of 75 of the largest supermarket and non-traditional retailers and wholesalers in the United States and Canada. Below, we offer a sampling of this year’s report with a look at the top 10 companies by sales on this year’s list:

For a complete look at the Top 75 sales overview, as well as year-over-year dollar and percentage changes and store counts, the full report and a slideshow of all 75 companies is available for Supermarket News subscribers now.

One of the first things we noticed about this year’s Top 75 is its consistency. While overall numbers are up for just about every company on the list, there are no new companies breaking in and — except for a big jump for UNFI, which we talk about in the podcast — most of the companies are in the same position this year.

In the podcast, we also talk about the strong position of Amazon, which broke into the top 10 of grocery retailers in 2019 and continues to perform strongly, with more than 60% sales growth this year. And that’s without a significant increase in physical stores, which includes Whole Foods and Amazon Go. Other retailers we take a look at include Walmart, Target, Kroger and nontraditional grocers such as Dollar General, which continues its growth in store numbers, with 915 new units last year and an expected 1,000 more this year.

While the Top 75 looks at 2019-20 numbers, the SN team also takes a look forward as we discuss what next year’s Top 75 might look like, as the ongoing coronavirus pandemic continues to wreak havoc. Based on initial year-over-year sales increases in March, we’ll probably see some huge sales jumps next year but less store growth. So far in March, we’ve seen double-digit sales growth at grocery retail — Kroger, for instance, reported a 30% increase last month. How sustainable these sales can be, and what the rest of the year might look like are still open questions.

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