Shoppers fill up their virtual grocery carts
Houston grocers are experiencing a surge in sales as shoppers spend more time at home, cooking their own meals and dyeing their own hair, as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.
Sales in the last few months are up by double digits for Kroger, Houston’s largest grocer, followed by H-E-B and Walmart, in the Chronicle 100 survey of grocers.
Sales are “through the roof ” for meats, rotisserie chicken, coffee, sugar and flour, hand sanitizer and hair dye, said Joe Kelley, Kroger’s Houston division president.
“The good news is,” Kelley said, “they’re getting the family around the dinner table. That helps the family, and it helps business.”
Nationally, grocery sales have zoomed over the last several months as stay at home orders in March translated to higher demand, more online ordering and curbside pickup.
Total grocery store sales were up 17 percent year over year in June, according to First Data Merchant Services Corp. That’s down from pandemic peak of 31 percent in March.
Kroger kept the top spot by store count in 2020 with 107 stores in the Houston area, up from 102 in 2019. The Cincinnatibased grocer has had near 100 stores or more over each the last 10 years, according to Chronicle 100 annual surveys.
Kelley estimates 30 stores have been remodeled or expanded over the last 20 months with a focus on online orders for curbside and delivery and upgrading seafood and butcher departments.
San Antonio-based H-E-B has more than doubled its store count over the last decade to 102 local stores, including Central Market, Joe V’s Smart
Shop and Mi Tienda. HE-B, which had 47 area stores in 2010 according to the Chronicle survey, has grown in both the suburbs and city with recent openings in Richmond, Meyerland, Third Ward, Kingwood and Buffalo Heights.
Walmart, the other perennial top three grocer in Houston, kept the same count at 87 in 2020.
Scott McClelland, president of H-E-B Food/Drug Stores, said H-E-B is garnering a bigger “share of the stomach” as customers cut down on restaurant visits. The grocer teamed up with the local restaurants Hugo’s, Underbelly Hospitality, Coltivare and Brennan’s to support them by offering prepared meals in store without taking a profit on the sales.
McClelland said revenues from the growth in sales have been offset by the additional costs of safety and other upgrades related to the pandemic and the demand it created. Early on, H-E-B quickly geared up to meet the shift in customer demand to online shopping and curbside.
Initially, household cleaners, hand sanitizer, disinfectants and toilet paper sold out, McClelland said. Next came baking items, then meat, poultry and bacon as supply concerns arose amid coronavirus outbreaks at processing plants.
“If you double the number of orders,” McClelland said, “you have to have more space to put the orders, and more people to pick up and process the orders.”