Top 10 Grocery Retailers of 2023
We chose to keep supercenters like Target and Walmart on the list, while keeping convenience stores off in order to get a cleaner picture of true grocers in the space — those that not only provide packaged goods, but also offer fresh produce as well.
While Amazon has significantly pulled back from its grocery efforts this year, it continues to have a strong brick-and-mortar grocery presence within its Whole Foods segment, which it says it will continue to invest in. Therefore, we have decided to keep it within the list below.
1. Walmart
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The remainder of the Top 10 list is made up of Albertsons, George Weston (Loblaw), Empire Company, BJs Wholesale Club, and SpartanNash.
We recently featured Frank Vasi, tax manager at Albertsons in a RIS webinar that outlined common sources of friction in the retail experience. The company ranked No. 6 on the grocery ranking, making up 2.13% of the overall retail market share.
George Weston, one of Canada's largest supermarket retailers, came in seventh with a 1.55% share of the retail market. Its retail brands include President's Choice, No Name, and Joe Fresh.
Ranked eighth is Empire Company with a 0.86% share of the retail market. The Canadian-based company includes several well-known grocery brands, including Safeway, IGA, FreshCo, Sobeys, and more.
In the No. 9 spot among its grocery competitors is BJs Wholesale Club. BJs, which makes up a 0.54% share of the overall retail market, recently invested in an artificial intelligence-powered inventory robot that will increase its visibility into chainwide operations and club conditions.
And rounding out the Top 10 Grocery Retailers list is SpartanNash, which makes up 0.27% of the retail market and has recently made several leadership changes to bolster its executive team. It named Arpen Shah its vice president of merchandising strategy and analytics and promoted David Sisk to executive vice president, chief customer officer.
Methodology
While other lists rank retailers on total revenue, profit, or even share price, this annual list takes a different approach. The retailers that make our Top 100 are ranked on their piece of the total retail market.
Our rankings are based on data gathered from research partner Gary A. Williams, CEO of wRatings. The financial metrics of 180 publicly traded retailers were examined.
The economic data is from a trailing 12-month period ending on March 24, 2023. The percent of retail market share was calculated against a total retail market of around $3.6 trillion. The research ranked North American (including U.S., Canada, Bermuda, Virgin Islands) retailers across apparel, department store, grocery, furniture, beauty, building supply, convenience/fuel, e-commerce, hardlines, and softlines segments.
- Why the Full Top 100 List Looks a Little Different This Year
When comparing this year’s list to last year, we’ve implemented a few changes, which impacted overall rankings when comparing year-over-year. For this year’s rankings, we’ve pulled out all the retailers that were not North America-based. This move eliminated a total of five retailers from the 2023 list, including two which normally make the Top 10: JD.com and Alibaba Group. The five retailers eliminated included four from China and one from Japan because, while these companies all trade on a U.S.-based stock exchange, they don’t operate stores in the country.
Additionally, we deleted the restaurant chains category. These changes did not impact the top five retailers on this year’s list, but the removal of JD.com and Alibaba Group left room for home improvement retailer Lowe’s and convenience retailer Alimentation Couche-Tard to step up to the limelight, notching the No. 9 and No. 10 spots of the top 10 retailers. Click here for the full “Top 100 Retailers in 2023” list.