Supermarkets experienced their busiest Christmas period since 2019, boosted by promotions, new research suggests.
Customers made 488 million grocery trips in the four weeks to 24 December. Some £13.7bn passed through the tills, even as food price inflation fell to 6.7% in December. Although British households spent £477 on average, many still feel “pretty hefty pressures on their budgets”.
The appetite for traditional Christmas dinner items was particularly strong in 2023, with volumes of parsnips, sprouts, and potatoes up, along with festive meats including pigs in blankets, sausages, hams and turkeys. However, mince pies and Christmas puddings did buck the trend, they were less popular this year.
Retailers used promotions to entice shoppers over the festive period with nearly a third of all the money spent on items with some kind of offer. In the battle for customers, Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Aldi and Lidl all grew their market share. Sainsbury’s reached its highest market share since December 2020 at 15.8%, pushing up its sales by 9.3%. Tesco now holds 27.6% of the market and grew its sales by 7.5%. The traditional retailers always tend to do well in the run up to Christmas and this year was no exception. Supermarkets saw especially strong performances for their own-label lines, with sales of premium ranges like Sainsbury’s Taste the Difference and Tesco Finest surging by 11.9% compared with last year to hit £790m – accounting for 5.7% of all grocery sales.
However, rival discount supermarket chains Aldi and Lidl reported “record” Christmas trading, boosted by demand for more affordable luxury items like beef rib or macarons. The British arm of Aldi said that sales topped £1.5bn for the first time in the four weeks to Christmas Eve, while rival Lidl claimed its best Christmas yet since it entered the British market in 1994.
Analysts suggested that as costs remain elevated, it was little surprise that stores were reporting higher takings.