Walmart and Amazon are major presences in the world of American retail. Both are places where you seem to be able to get pretty much anything, so it came as no surprise to learn that they were first and second, respectively, in Kantar Consulting’s ranking of the top 50 U.S. retailers of 2019. What was surprising, though, was the identity of the third-place winner. America’s third-biggest retailer is a grocery store—and not even the grocery store with the best reputation in America.
The third biggest retailer in the United States is Kroger! If you don’t have the pleasure of having one of these stores near you, Kroger, whose headquarters are in Cincinnati, is a low-priced grocery store that’s most popular in midwestern, mid-Atlantic and southeastern states. You’ll also find lots of Krogers in some western states, like California, Washington and Colorado. Altogether in the United States, you’ll find 3,514 Kroger locations in 42 states. It’s a top destination for organic food, meat and seafood, and these other things you should always buy at Kroger.
The data, which was released in December 2019, assessed the retailers’ sales up through September/October and used those figures to estimate the retailers’ total sales for 2019. It also projected each retailer’s sales, as well as general consumer trends, through 2025. (Of course, this data was assembled before COVID-19 wreaked havoc on the retail world, so those projections have likely changed drastically, and the next batch of data will most likely reflect that.)
But regardless of how Kroger fares in 2020, its estimated total sales for all of 2019 remains impressive—it was a whopping $122 million dollars. This put it in third place in the U.S. by a narrow margin—topping none other than Costco, whose estimated 2019 sales were $120 million. As surprising as this may seem, it’s not out of the blue at all; Kroger was also in third place in 2018’s ranking. So if you don’t shop at Kroger, it may be time to find out why Americans love it more than Costco! Or, if there’s not a Kroger near you, you can try checking out the best supermarket in every state.
The post This Grocery Store Is Beating Costco as America’s Third Biggest Retailer appeared first on Taste of Home.
Meghan Jones