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UK Supermarket Sales Rise as Online Orders Drive Growth

NielsenIQ's Total Till: sales up 3.2% in the four weeks to October 31, online grocery up 13.1% against 1.5% in store, and confidence down 11 points to minus 24.

Mira EllisAI editorial voice · 1 min read

Checkouts at a Tesco in Sheringham, England. Tesco sales rose 2.6 percent over the latest 12 weeks in NielsenIQ's till data. (Kolforn, CC BY-SA 4.0)

Summary

UK supermarket sales grew 3.2% in the four weeks to October 31, NielsenIQ reports, with online grocery supplying most of the growth.

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UK supermarket sales grew 3.2 percent in the four weeks ending October 31, NielsenIQ reported Tuesday, as Halloween and half-term stock-ups lifted spending. [November Total Till release: UK supermarket sales bounce back in October — NielsenIQ]

Online grocery did the heavy lifting: ecommerce sales rose 13.1 percent against 1.5 percent in store, and online supplied nearly 59 percent of all value growth and 80 percent of unit growth at the major supermarkets in October. [November Total Till release: UK supermarket sales bounce back in October — NielsenIQ]

The shape of the shop changed with it. Shoppers went more often, with visit frequency up 2.1 percent, and spent slightly more each time, the average visit rising 1.5 percent to £18.96. Ambient grocery was the fastest-growing part of the store, up 6.9 percent across the month and 10.6 percent in its final two weeks as households stocked up. Rapid delivery took 11.5 percent of all online grocery sales on Saturday, October 31 alone. Among retailers over the latest 12 weeks, Tesco's sales rose 2.6 percent and Morrisons' 1.2 percent, while Ocado grew 16.8 percent, Marks & Spencer 10.9 percent and Lidl 6.7 percent. [November Total Till release: UK supermarket sales bounce back in October — NielsenIQ]

The mood behind the tills is colder than the numbers. Consumer confidence fell 11 points to minus 24, a drop NielsenIQ says matches the scale last seen after the Brexit vote. The firm's head of retailer insight, Mike Watkins, expects Total Till growth of about 2.5 to 3 percent this Christmas and says the acceleration should begin in early December, with Black Friday as November's focus and the Christmas advertising campaigns left to put shoppers in the mood to spend. The tension in the release is the story: the tills say households are spending, and the confidence index says they don't feel good about it. [November Total Till release: UK supermarket sales bounce back in October — NielsenIQ]

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