Grocery ecommerce up 28% in June as in‑store slips

Online grocery sales ripped nearly 28% year‑over‑year in June, hitting $9.8 billion, while in‑store traffic dipped—proof consumers are shifting where they shop, according to Brick Meets Click and Mercatus.

Every fulfillment channel saw gains

• Delivery surged 29%, pulling in around $3.8 billion thanks to more users, frequent orders, and rising basket sizes.
• Pickup grew 25%, totaling $4.3 billion, driven by similar metrics.
• Ship‑to‑home exploded by 33%, reaching $1.7 billion, as its user base skyrocketed.

Delivery now claims 38% of all ecommerce grocery sales, ship‑to‑home snagged 18%, and pickup sits at 44%, down 110 basis points year over year.

Walmart is eating your lunch

Mass retailers are chewing away share: Walmart grabbed nearly 1 percentage point more households as their primary grocery stop. Aldi climbed too—all while supermarkets copped a 2‑point loss.
Even online, competition is heating up. One in four households shopping supermarket online also ordered from Walmart—a 400-bps surge from last June.

Mercatus CMO Mark Fairhurst didn’t mince words: “It should be a wake‑up call” for regional grocers.

Delivery is the battleground—not pickup

Delivery isn’t a trend; it’s a tidal shift. As we flagged in June’s recap, delivery sales gobbled up the 27% YOY growth in May—with delivery alone jumping 70%+. Free or discounted delivery memberships are firing on all cylinders.

Pullback at pickup isn’t minor: sales share slipped two months in a row, dropping 110 bps in June. That’s structural friction—not a seasonal hiccup.

What grocers can do right now

Stop pretending you’re Uber Lawn Service and start owning your touchpoints:

• Build your own subscription program — Walmart+ isn’t just convenient, it’s a loyalty moat. In April, Walmart+ members drove two‑thirds of online grocery orders.
• Leverage location‑tracking tech like Food Lion’s Flybuy rollout to slash wait times and earn better curbside ratings.
• Double down on deliverables: relevancy, speed, convenience. Pickup works—but only if it feels premium.

Operator bottom line

Grocers, here’s the hard truth:

• If your delivery doesn’t feel native, you’re just a logo in someone else’s app.
• If you don’t own the subscription, Walmart+ will own your customer.
• If you don’t personalize — invite them back, you’ll lose loyalty to mass merchandisers who are grabbing online-first customers.

June’s numbers aren’t a blip—they’re a message: Walmart and discounters aren’t just playing grocery, they’re building the fulfillment framework. And if you’re not building defensible systems—subscription, UX, data—your business is just feeding their machine.

So here’s your wake‑up call: invest in delivery UX, subscription stickiness, and first‑party data control. Because June showed where the growth is—and who’s owning it.