United Kingdom: top online grocery stores 2023

Tesco.com topped the ranking of online grocery stores in the United Kingdom, generating an estimated 4.16 billion U.S. dollars in e-commerce net sales in 2023. Sainsburys.co.uk ranked second, with 3.8 billion U.S. dollars in online grocery sales.

Online grocery market in the UK

After skyrocketing into double-digit figures during the pandemic, the online share of food sales in the United Kingdom has stabilized post-pandemic. As of March 2024, approximately nine percent of all food retail sales were made online. Compared to the pandemic peak of 12 percent in January 2021, demand for online grocery in the UK has not waned and remained robust despite the return of in-store shopping.

Online grocery shoppers

In March 2024, a fifth of the UK population was purchasing food and drink online, a figure eight percentage points lower than the e-commerce penetration rate achieved at the height of the pandemic in March 2021. However, current penetration rates in the food and beverage e-commerce market are markedly higher than pre-pandemic. UK online shoppers were the most frequent buyers of fresh food and beverages online among their European counterparts in 2022.