News and Trends

 Source: Linkedin , IGD An improved format fit for its largest ever Foodhall, brimming with experiential retail, highlights include: 🍣 Highly visible counters, featuring relevant cross-merchandising and adjacencies 🚥 Clear category zoning with embedded themes 🧀 An upgraded cheese barge marking the centre square of the store ❄️ Outstanding use of blended retail across various categories including Organic, seafood, desserts, BWS, pet, and herbs.  🏷️ Improved value cues through Remarkable Value bays  🍓 Strong health and sustainability messaging, spotlighting the credentials of relevant products M&S Food Godalming is an exceptional example of how retailers can format stores to bring together experience and value while featuring blended retail with some class.

 Source: IGD, away from home, July 2026

Thinktank IGD has developed six insights that are moulding the future of the UK and European Grocery Retail sector in 2025, underlined by a renewed focus on fundamental retail practices, new revenue opportunities, and the growing demand for health and sustainability initiatives.   Optimising Retail Fundamentals for Success While new technologies capture attention, UK and European retailers are reinforcing core retail fundamentals like stock availability, pricing, and promotions. Innovations like shelf-edge cameras and AI-driven stock management are improving these essential areas, ensuring a seamless shopping experience.   Exploring New Revenue Streams As operating costs rise, UK retailers are diversifying their revenue sources by leveraging ecommerce technology, data monetization, and B2B services.  Tesco’s launch of  Transcend , enabling other grocers to use its fulfilment tools, exemplifies the growing interest in non-traditional retail income streams.   Evol...

 

28 August 2024 Household real spending on food and drink fell over 2022-23 The ONS has issued the latest edition of its long-running  Family Spending  report, which provides detailed information on how UK households allocate their budgets. According to the data, average household spending on food and drink rose very slightly between 2021-22 and 2022-23, but this was driven by powerful inflation. In real terms, with inflation accounted for, spending actually fell, across all household income groups. Households with the highest incomes cut back most aggressively. Lower income households cut back less, but they were presumably already managing all spending very closely and therefore had little leeway to go further. This ties-in with findings from IGD’s ShopperVista surveys, which show that shoppers across all income groups responded to inflation by seeking ways to reduce food spending, often reducing the amount purchased. This behaviour is also reflected in IGD’s research on UK g...

Source: IGD, 12 April 2024 Our latest report,   “Eating out in 2023, reality vs expectations”   analyses how the eating out market performed last year with a particular focus on the performance of the second half vs the first half.  We compare these findings to the assumptions made in   our 2023 forecast , and provide a view on how this will impact 2024.  Key findings: 1. Eating out in 2023: a year of two halves Last year between January and July visits to eating-out establishments increased as consumers’ financial confidence rose.  However, the second half of the year saw a reversal of this trends across all sectors, with full-service restaurants being hit the hardest. Gathering momentum behind a return to offices boosted contract catering sales and initially food-to-go, but this has also declined as consumers became accustomed to their new routines and adopted cost-saving habits. 2.    Q4: consumers feel the pinch at Christmas The Christmas peri...