Executive Briefing
The 50 top-growing food categories in America
Instacart’s view of the grocery world. Plus: An Expo West scene report, Nike’s growth challenges, and more airline loyalty ‘innovation’.
By Dan Frommer on Monday, March 25, 2024 at 8:00 am
For the second year in a row, Instacart, the online grocery platform, generously provided exclusive data for the Consumer Trends Food & Wellness “Expo Special” report that I published last week with Coefficient Capital.
Instacart, which has more than 85,000 stores in its network, and processed almost 270 million orders last year, has a unique and important view of the grocery world, so it’s interesting to tap into what it’s seeing.
What’s growing on Instacart? What does it say about how consumers are eating differently? And where are some opportunities for emerging brands to ride a growing category?
First, we simply looked at what people are buying more frequently — specifically looking for mass volume growth, not the niche categories with huge year-over-year percentage growth. For this, Instacart provided us with the 50 food categories that experienced the greatest absolute growth in 2023, as measured by the increase in item share in its customers’ baskets.
For 2023, these were:
- Berries
- Greek & Icelandic Yogurt
- Chips
- Packaged Baked Goods
- Cucumbers
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