'A Little More and Less Often' Trend Continues

The emerging convenience trend of shopping a little more and less often that we identified in our previous ICSN issue continued in October. While average store footfall continues to fall (-3.6%), a £6.55 average basket spend remains firmly above last year's October (+4.9%) giving independent convenience stores a much-desired uplift in overall turnover (+1.2%) vs a year ago.

The build up to Halloween, launch of Christmas confectionery lines, and England reaching the 2019 Rugby World Cup final helped grow sales in key convenience categories such as chocolate confectionery (+4.2%), Beer (+3.6%), Wine (+3.6%), Spirits (+4.8%), and RYO Tobacco (+9.9%) that contributed to increased basket spend and turnover. Sales of Cigarettes (-1.2%) and Lottery (-6.8%) declined in October.

What was the average basket size?

Average basket size also increased slightly from 2.8 items in October 2018 to 2.9 items per basket in October 2019. Chilled foods (including dairy and chilled food to go) and Confectionery were the two main contributors to this growth.

Average basket spend increased the most in London and the South East (+6%), East of England (+5.6%) and South West (+5.1%). Scotland (-1.3%), North of England (-2.8%) and South West (-3.5%) performed best with regards to footfall. Scotland also performed well in terms of year-on-year store turnover growth (+3.7%) followed by North of England (+1.8%), East of England (+1.4%) and South West (+1.4%).

For more information on our data, get in touch with The Retail Data Partnership's research team.