With the online shopping boom and rising ecommerce sales in the US year after year, it should come as no surprise that the online grocery market has also been growing pretty quickly in recent years.

In 2021, online grocery sales in the US is expected to hit $112.9 billion, spurred by approximately 137.9 million digital grocery buyers across the country. 

This sales figure marks a 17.8 percent annual increase and makes up 12.4 percent of total ecommerce sales. In other words, out of every $100 US consumers are spending on purchasing items online, $12.4 is being spent on groceries.

And it isn’t just online grocery sales that have been increasing. Its share of US ecommerce sales and the number of US consumers purchasing groceries online have also been rising. 

In 2019, the percentage of grocery ecommerce sales was at 10.9. This figure is forecast to increase to 13.9 by 2024. Similarly, the number of digital grocery buyers in the US is expected to rise from 92.3 million in 2019 to 151.5 million by 2024 and at an average annual growth rate of 13 percent.

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Online Grocery Sales During the Coronavirus Pandemic

The US online grocery market experienced a massive boom in 2020 as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.

With brick-and-mortar stores shut and consumers mostly staying indoors to stem the spread of the virus, most shoppers resorted to going online to purchase groceries.

According to the latest online grocery sales statistics, tens of millions of US consumers purchased groceries via the internet for the very first time during the pandemic. 

Experts say grocery retailers also helped to boost online their grocery sales by adapting to the situation. Not only did many begin to offer curbside pickups, delivery apps also enhanced their features to provide added incentives.

The $95.8 billion the online grocery market raked in last year marked a whopping 54 percent increase from 2019’s $62.2 billion. This is also more than double the previous year’s growth rate, which came in at 22.1 percent.

To put matters in perspective, the average annual growth rate of online grocery sales in the US from 2019 to 2024 is 24.9 percent – less than half of 2020’s growth.

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