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**Your Grocery Store Is Now a Warehouse With a Website**

19h ago · 6 sources · trend

If you still think of online grocery as a side hustle, the numbers disagree.

About 94% of consumers now shop both online and in-store. Omnichannel is not a niche. It is the default. And online is doing the heavy lifting. E-commerce grocery is projected to grow at 11.6% CAGR from 2026 to 2028. In-store crawls at 0.6%.

Online’s share of total grocery spending is set to jump from 18% in 2024 to 25.5% by 2028, reaching roughly $452 billion. Last year alone, e-commerce drove three-quarters of total grocery dollar growth. Most of that volume, about 80%, comes from shipped and delivered orders.

Retailers are reacting fast. Walmart and others are turning stores into mini warehouses to move product quicker and cheaper. At the same time, loyalty is getting messy. Shoppers are splitting spend across channels and retailers, which fragments allegiance in an omnichannel world.

Brands followed the traffic into retail media. More than 200 networks popped up in the early boom. Today, 71% of brands actively use retail media networks. Yet more than a quarter of retail marketers are pulling spend as budgets tighten, consolidating around networks that prove real business impact.

Why it matters. Growth lives online, but control does not. The store is now a fulfillment engine. The website is the new shelf. Winning means showing up in search, in media, and in the last mile. The contrarian take? Physical retail is not dying. It is being rewired into the backbone of digital grocery.

Key facts

  • Approximately 94% of consumers shop across both online and in-store channels, reflecting the dominance of omnichannel grocery shopping.
  • Online grocery sales are projected to grow at an 11.6% CAGR from 2026 to 2028, compared with 0.6% for in-store sales.
  • Online grocery’s share of total grocery spending is projected to rise from 18% in 2024 to 25.5% by 2028, reaching roughly $452 billion in sales.
  • Last year, e-commerce grocery accounted for roughly three-quarters of total grocery dollar growth.
  • The majority of online grocery fulfillment comes from shipped and delivered orders, which make up about 80% of e-commerce volume.
  • Shoppers are increasingly splitting grocery spending across channels and retailers, creating fragmented loyalty in an omnichannel marketplace.
  • Retailers like Walmart are turning stores into mini warehouses and fulfillment centers to deliver products faster and at lower cost.
  • More than a third of food retailers and 71% of brands actively use retail media networks to support ecommerce capabilities and digital engagement.
  • More than a quarter of retail marketers are pulling ad spend from retail media networks to fund other channels as budgets tighten.
  • Retail media’s early boom created more than 200 networks, but marketers are now consolidating spend toward networks that demonstrate measurable business impact.
  • 94%
  • 11.6%
  • 0.6%
  • 18%
  • 25.5%
  • $452 billion
  • three-quarters
  • 80%

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