In addition to the interview with Bruce Axtman from the Perishables Group, which we feature here, we have run several pieces on category management, including an interview with Willard Bishop Consulting’s Bill Bishop, Information Resources’ Thom Blischok and a joint interview with FreshLook’s Mark Degner and IRI’s June Fenzel.
Now Willard Bishop has made available a nine-page report entitled, The Future of Food Retailing. This report is an annual event since 1983. Among the highlights:
- Though still dropping in shares, traditional supermarkets actually had a sales increase in 2006, indicating some stabilization among survivors in the sector.
- Fresh format stores, such as Whole Foods or O’Malia’s, had the highest growth of any sector — up 19.6% from 2005 to 2006. This is very impressive as the growth comes despite major retailers now emphasizing aspects of “fresh” as in the Safeway Lifestyle stores.
- Supercenters grew 11.3% and surpassed convenience stores to be the number two retail format in food.
- Non-traditional grocery now accounts for over a third of all the grocery and consumable product sales in the U.S.
- Both wholesale clubs and limited assortment stores continue to grow in share and dollars.
- By 2011, Willard Bishop projects the dollar share of food and consumables sold by conventional grocery stores to drop from 49.8% to 43.5%
You can read The Future of Food Retailing right here.
By the way, jointly with The Food Institute, Willard Bishop is offering a webinar on this subject. You can register for it here.
