Dive Brief:

• Grocery e-commerce sales totaled $8.5 billion in April, about 4% above their level during the same month in 2023, according to data released Tuesday by Brick Meets Click and Mercatus.
• Pickup orders represented approximately 43% of the U.S. online grocery sector last month, while delivery claimed about 38% of sales and ship-to-home accounted for just over 18% of the market.
• Mass retailers like Walmart continued to grow their share of the digital grocery sector in April while traditional supermarkets saw their portion of the market contract.

Dive Insight:

While digital grocery sales moved up last month across all fulfillment channels after holding steady in March, that year-over-year growth stemmed mostly from higher spending as opposed to an overall expansion in the number of e-commerce shoppers, Brick Meets Click reported.

Pickup sales were up by just over 2% during the month even as order volume dropped and the number of monthly active users declined, particularly people over 60. Delivery, meanwhile, recorded a sales increase of more than 4% as order volume rose against a backdrop of flat order sizes.

Growth in the delivery channel stemmed in part from efforts by mass merchants to boost interest in their in-house delivery services through membership and subscription programs, Brick Meets Click found.

In a potentially worrisome sign for traditional grocers, the data also shows that the share of shoppers who ordered groceries online from a mass retailer as well as from a supermarket or hard discounter last month grew to more than a third — underscoring how more people are adding online orders from mass merchandisers to their routines. That figure was up by nearly 8 percentage points in April compared with the same period last year, according to the research.

The ship-to-home segment, which includes orders shipped by common carriers like FedEx and UPS, recorded the most robust year-over-year sales growth among the three e-grocery fulfillment methods. Sales for the channel were up by over 10% last month as the size of the average order increased after falling in April 2023.

Brick Meets Click and Mercatus noted that the base of monthly active users across all fulfillment methods did not change appreciably in April. In addition, more than 70% of grocery e-commerce shoppers used only one channel for all of their orders during the month.

The firms also pointed out that many shoppers try digital grocery services to take advantage of savings retailers offer new customers as a way to attract business. 

“One question related to this growth remains whether many of the newer customers who are attracted by the trial offers will behave like streaming subscription service users who choose to use one service at a time until the ‘free’ period expires, and then jump to the next special offer,” Brick Meets Click partner David Bishop said in a statement.

The findings are based on a survey of 1,704 shoppers that Brick Meets Click conducted from April 29 to April 30.