"In today's challenging economic environment, convenience stores were able to hold on to their existing business as they wait for stronger sales in the near future," the annually released report said.
The [image-nocss] total dollar share for convenience stores was 15.4%, with annual grocery and consumable sales of $151.875 billion, with convenience stores that sell gasoline having the lion's share of that with 13.2%. Total traditional grocery stores (including traditional supermarkets, fresh format, limited assortment, super warehouse and small grocery) had 47.5% of the dollar share, and nontraditional grocery (wholesale clubs, supercenters, dollar stores, drug stores, mass and military) had 37%.
Convenience stores with gasoline had an average total of SKUs of 4,200, while convenience stores without gasoline had 5,000. Grocery and consumables accounted for 81% of sales in both.
Willard Bishop is forecasting that the dollar share of convenience stores in grocery and consumables will increase from 15.4% in 2009 to 15.8% in 2014.
"Convenience store sales will continue to increase at a modest annual rate of 2.5% for convenience with gas and 2.0% for convenience without gas," said the report.
The consultancy forecasts that traditional supermarkets will increase only 0.2%, while mass retailers will see a decrease of 6.7%.
"Assuming annual food price inflation averages 1.9% over the next five years, the industry will see two formerly powerful formatstraditional supermarkets and massrapidly losing ground.... This will cause these formats to continue losing market share as consumers choose to shop other formats for grocery needs," the report said.
Willard Bishop, Barrington, Ill., is a consulting firm working with retail and foodservice companies to solve business problems and identify opportunities to drive profitable growth.
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