Grocery shoppers spend extra half billion on keeping cool – figures

Consumers spent almost half a billion pounds more on keeping cool over the last 12 weeks as they coped with the joint hottest summer on record, supermarket figures show.

Between the World Cup kick off in June through to the August bank holiday and beyond, shoppers spent £228 million more on alcohol, £178 million more on soft drinks and £74 million more on ice cream compared with the same time last year, while the overall market grew by 3.8%, Kantar Worldpanel said.

The warm weather was particularly kind to convenience stores, which benefited from shoppers wanting to buy locally for drinks and barbecue supplies, collectively seeing sales growth of 7.6% compared with last year.

Co-op increased sales by 8.5%, its fastest rate since 2011, while Tesco Express’s performance contributed to total sales for Tesco rising 1.9%.

The figures come as grocery inflation reached 2%, adding £85 to each household’s grocery spending annually, Kantar said.

Fraser McKevitt, head of retail and consumer insight at Kantar Worldpanel, said: “Retailers are looking to offer consistently lower prices on everyday items rather than one-off deals and they have all reduced promotions as a result.

“That being said, consumers may not feel like they have more money in their pockets – grocery inflation has now reached 2.0%, adding £1.64 to each household’s weekly shopping bill. At the current rate, these price increases add up to an extra £85 per home annually.”

Aldi was the UK’s fastest growing supermarket in the latest period with sales up 13.9%, while Lidl also outpaced the market with an 8.3% sales increase.

Asda’s recovery continued as it saw sales increase by 3.1% and an extra 211,000 shoppers through the doors over the past 12 weeks.

Figures from rival analysts Nielsen show sales volumes returned to normal over the past month after growth of 1.4% over the last 12 weeks.