Grocers enjoyed a bumper festive season despite fears that surging coronavirus cases would dampen the Christmas season, with premium own-label sales breaking records.
Take-home grocery sales hit £31.7bn for the 12 weeks to December 26, 2021 and £11.7bn in the month of December, as customers seized on the chance to enjoy Christmas with friends and family, according to the latest Kantar grocery sales data.
While overall sales for the period were down 3% compared to record figures in 2020, Kantar said sales were up 8% on pre-pandemic spending levels.
“We can really see just how much spending accelerated in December compared with earlier in the year,” said Kantar head of retail and consumer insight Fraser McKevitt. “The lofty [£11.7bn] figure is down just 0.2% on record 2020 sales. Looking at the average trend during March to November, sales were down 2.5% against 2020”.
Kantar found that while spending on traditional Christmas dinner items was “broadly similar compared with last year”, there was evidence that customers treated themselves and guests.
Premium own-label sales broke records this Christmas, with shoppers spending over £627m on supermarkets’ own upmarket lines over the four weeks to December 26, an increase of 6.8% compared to 2020.
McKevitt said: “The appetite to celebrate and splash out that little bit more this year pushed sales of luxury own-brand products up across the board. Sparkling and still wine sales grew 22% and 18% respectively, while crisps surged by 31%.
“Tesco’s Finest and Sainsbury’s Taste the Difference are easily the largest premium own-label ranges, but we saw the fastest growth from other ranges such as Asda Extra Special and Iceland Luxury.”
Continued growth of dietary trends such as veganism was also evident, with the sales of chilled vegetarian ranges increasing 6% and frozen equivalents jumping 4% in the period.
Inflation also pushed up shopping budgets, with prices jumping 3.5% in December, which Kantar’s McKevitt said added nearly £15 to shoppers’ average monthly grocery bills.
Despite spiralling Covid-19 numbers for the period, online sales slipped back 3.7% against 2020 and accounted for 12.2% of sales.
Year-on-year growth challenging
While the grocers found increasing sales year-on-year to be a challenge in 2021, all the major supermarket chains increased sales compared to pre-pandemic levels.
Pureplay grocer Ocado was the only major grocer to buck this trend over the 12 week period, increasing sales 2.5%. Tesco also gained market share, jumping 0.6% to 27.9% - its highest overall share of the grocery market since January 2018.
The discounters Aldi and Lidl grew market share 0.3% and 0.2% respectively, while Waitrose also saw a small 0.1% uptick in share.
Sainsbury’s market share stands at 15.7% of the market, with Asda on 14.2% and Morrisons on 10.1%. the Co-op market share stands at 5.8% and Iceland’s at 2.4%.
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