Research

Comparing Grocery Shopping: Brick-and-Mortar vs. Online

Last year, I wrote about how brick-and-mortar grocery stores are alive and well, and looking at the 2019 U.S. Grocery Shopper Trends report we see this trend remains strong. An important indicator is the number of trips that consumers make to brick-...

What Does It Look Like When Grocery Trends Intersect?

What does it look like when all of these trends intersect? It looks like a month in the life of FMI’s Carol Abel, who manages a single-shopper household with a varying grocery list. In one month, Carol shopped at five different grocery stores with ...

Meal Kits: One Man’s Dream Becomes A Reality

According to FMI’s 2019 U.S Grocery Shopper Trends report, 17% of U.S. shoppers have tried a least one subscription-model approach to food procurement, most often online meal kits or grocery deliveries. Men have adopted meal kits at a higher rate ...

How Many Grocery Stores Did You Shop at Last Month?

This year’s U.S. Grocery Shopper Trends report found that the average shopper visits 4.4 different retail banners in a typical month, up from 4.1 last year. While shoppers do spend a significant share of their food dollars at their primary store, ...

Millennial vs Gen Z: 2019 Grocery Shopping Habits

As an older Millennial sibling, I could share a million examples that demonstrate how I differ from my younger Gen Z brother. I like calendar appointments; he prefers his days to be unplanned. I tend to be tidy; my brother lives with a mountain of ...

Over Time, What Brings Grocery Shoppers To The Store?

Come with me on a journey through a time machine to consider the attributes that attract customers to a particular grocery store. When FMI first explored this topic in the 1982 Trends research, at that time called Trends: Consumer Attitudes and the ...

The Mind of a Millennial Mom Grocery Shopper

Let’s go to a place my husband would consider very scary—the inner workings of my mind and how I make a decision about when, where and how I shop for grocery items for my family. I’m suggesting we take this journey together because of an interesting ...

Slice of the Bakery Market

Slicing into the overall bakery market that racked up $59.7 billion in grocery sales in 2018, there are similar diverging preferences for baked goods of all kinds. The first Power of Bakery report, recently released by Food Marketing Institute and ...

How Does FMI Know the State of the Food Retail Industry?

The first ever The Food Retailing Industry Speaks (Speaks) report appeared in 1949. Seventy years later, this report continues to provide the food retail industry with important benchmarks, facts and figures that are used in our advocacy work on ...

The Seafood Category Is Distinct And Intriguing

What reveals the market potential for seafood at retail, given the diversity of products and varying availability and seasonality around the country? The Power of Seafood report – the first in FMI’s “Power of…” series to focus on seafood – shares ...

The Power of Meat 2019

Shoppers are on a power trip when it comes to meat and poultry. And that’s not a bad thing. People continue to enjoy power-packed protein in their diets, usually in the form of meat....

The Category Heavyweight Poised for a Comeback: Frozen Food

The food retailing industry often touts the strength of the perimeter, namely, produce, meat, bakery or deli/prepared foods. But there’s a contender in the ring; a heavyweight that boasts $57 billion in retail sales that’s conditioning for a strong ...

The Boardroom’s Perspective of The Future of Retail

For the fourth year, FMI and Oliver Wyman have teamed up to provide thought leadership on the most pressing issues facing the food retail industry. The annual edition of Boardroom takes readers directly into the C-Suite of food retail companies and ...

Unifying the Food Retail Industry in 2018

The FMI Foundation worked to unite the food retail industry using three main campaigns: National Family Meals Month™, Unified Voice Protocol and Stir It ...

FMI’s 2018 Financial Diversity

Providing the retail food industry with the myriad products and services that FMI offers requires resources—both human and financial capital. To avoid being a one-pronged fork, any well-run business endeavors to diversify its revenue sources and FMI ...