CHICAGO — In the snacks segment, alternative snacks were up 2.6% in 2018.
But snacks are one convenience category in which online retailer Amazon appears to be making headway in grabbing sales. The Seattle-based company saw 40% year-over-year growth in what it called “school snack” categories such as snack nuts, salty snacks, cookies and meat snacks, while its sales of nutritional bars rose 20% year over year, according to One Click Retail.
Retailers should consider technology solutions such as loyalty programs to help offset the looming threat of digital retailers and other cross-channel competitors, said summit speaker Charlie McIlvaine, chairman and CEO of Coen Oil Co.
“We have evolved, reinvented ourselves,” he said, adding that the transformation must continue. “There is a path out there.”
Alternative Snacks Sales by Subcategory
Alternative snack sales grew 2.6% in 2018 to $1,970 per store per month, according to NACS.
Source: NACS preliminary data. Final data to appear in the NACS State of the Industry Report of 2018 Data.
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