Proactive Investors - Food price inflation cooled for the seventh month in a row to 11% for the four weeks to 1 October 2023, the lowest rate since July 2022, according to figures from Kantar.
Tom Steel, strategic insight director at Kantar, comments: “Grocery price inflation is still very high, but shoppers will be relieved to see the rate continuing to fall.”
“For the first time since last year, the prices of some staple foods are now dropping and that’s helping to bring down the wider inflation rate.”
Kantar reported that the prices of some staple foods are now dropping, for the first time since last year, with the average price of a pack of butter now 16p less than a year ago.
A jump in the amount of money spent on offers is also helping to offset the impact of inflation, Kantar said.
Steel pointed out spending on promotions made up over a quarter of all sales in the latest 12-week period at 26.5%, the highest level since June 2022.
The survey said Tesco (LON:TSCO) had done well. The UK’s biggest supermarket saw sales rise by 9.2% over the latest 12 weeks, with its market share edging up by 0.4 percentage points to 27.4%.
Steel said the warm weather also saw volume sales of ice cream, burgers and dips shooting up by 27%, 19% and 10% respectively.
Lidl was the fastest-growing retailer this month with sales up 15.2%, the first time that Lidl has led the pack since April 2023, taking its market share to 7.6%, up 0.5 percentage points year on year.
Fellow discounter Aldi’s sales were up by 14.9%, with its total share of the market now at 9.9%, up by 0.6 percentage points compared with a year ago.
Sainsbury’s share grew to 14.8% as its sales increased by 9.1% compared with last year, while Asda and Morrisons now hold 13.7% and 8.6% of the market.
Amid reports that Waitrose could become the latest retailer to partner with Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) for grocery delivery services, total online trips increased year-on-year for the first time this month since December 2021 by 3.1%.
Waitrose has a 4.6% share with sales growth at 5.3% for the latest period.
Co-op’s market share sits at 6.1% with sales up 3.3%. Iceland’s sales rose by 2.8%, and Ocado (LON:OCDO) grew sales by 9.6% to take 1.7% of the market.