The online grocery market in the United States generated a total of $8 billion in sales during September, driven by $6.4 billion from the pickup/delivery segment and $1.7 billion from ship-to-home services, according to the Brick Meets Click/Mercatus Grocery Shopping Survey.
“The combined pickup and delivery segment now captures nearly 80% of sales in the U.S. eGrocery market, and pickup hit a record-high portion of total sales in our September research wave, underscoring its critical role in a grocer’s strategy,” said David Bishop, a partner at the Brick Meets Click grocery ecommerce consulting firm..
While year-to-year comparisons are not available, comparing September 2021 versus August 2020 shows ship-to-home’s share of sales shrank by 10%, while pickup captured all that and more, given the share that delivery also ceded. Pickup/delivery expanded its share of online orders – growing from 56% in August 2020 to 67% in September 2021.
The number of U.S. households that bought groceries online in September, using all receiving methods, rose 16% to 64.1 million households compared to August 2020.For the same period, the BMC/Mercatus survey also found that the reported monthly pickup/delivery combined monthly active user (MAU) base grew more than 33%, while the ship-to-home user base contracted by more than 12%. For September 2021, the weighted average spending per order across all three receiving methods totaled $69.65, down 12% from August 2020, but up 19% from pre-pandemic levels seen in August 2019. Since August 2019, Average Order Values (AOVs) for pickup/delivery have risen by 14%, while ship-to-home AOVs have declined by 3%.