Consumer Behavior
Online grocery sales hit $9.3B in January
February 23, 2021
January was a busy month at online supermarket sites with total U.S. online grocery sales hitting $9.3 billion for the month.
More than 69.7 million U.S. households placed an average of 2.8 orders across delivery, ship-to-home and pickup, according to a Brick Meets Click/Mercatus Grocery Shopping survey.
The delivery and pickup segment captured $7.1 billion in January 2021, accounting for 77% of all online grocery spending during the month, according to a press release on the findings.
January's sales figure reflects a 15% spike compared to November 2020, yet January's overall usage rate with regard to online grocery fell short of the record 76.7 million households who shopped online in April 2020 when much of the U.S. was under stay-at-home orders due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
The average order value decreased nearly 11% in January 2021 versus November 2020 when analyzing the aggregated spend rates across all three segments (pickup, delivery and ship-to-home).
"Even though many grocers remain capacity constrained — especially with pickup — others are growing market share as they staff up or expand pickup to a larger store base," David Bishop, partner, Brick Meets Click, said in the release.
