Dive Brief:
- Specialty grocers have overtaken value food retailers as the fastest-growing grocery segment, according to a recent Placer.ai report.
- Fresh-format grocers posted the strongest year-over-year traffic gains of any grocery category in 2025, driven by affluent consumers seeking out health, wellness and convenience, per the report.
- Specialty grocers’ fast growth highlights numerous market shifts, including premium, health-oriented brands becoming the new growth driver in grocery, as widening economic divides amongst consumers reshape the grocery landscape.
Dive Insight:
All grocery formats — value, fresh, traditional and ethnic — were up year-over-year in the second quarter, according to Placer’s report.
Specialty and value grocery formats are the frontrunners of the industry, underscoring the “bifurcation of spending,” according to Placer, between price-sensitive shoppers looking for affordable options and affluent consumers seeking out premium, health-oriented formats.
Specialty grocers are appealing to the highest-income households, signaling how affluent shoppers, despite accounting for only 7% of total grocery visits in the first half of 2025, are becoming a growing influence in the grocery landscape, according to the report. Sprouts Farmers Market, which targets affluent, health-conscious shoppers, saw Q1 traffic rise nearly 12% over the first quarter of 2024.
But consumer household income isn’t the only factor driving consumers to specialty grocers. As shorter grocery store trips increase, specialty grocers are appealing to convenience and fueling quick mission trips, according to Placer. Data shows the share of grocery visits under 10 minutes rose from 23.3% in the first half of 2019 to 24.5% in the first half of this year. The average dwell time in fresh-format food stores is shorter than in the other grocery formats as shoppers seek out specific goods like unique items, high-quality produce or prepared meals, Placer said. However, this attraction to convenience-driven trips also means that specialty grocers attract the smallest share of “loyal visitors,” who are consumers who visit more than four times a month.
Discount grocers are holding onto their role as the primary fill-in store, serving as the in-between of specialty grocery shoppers’ mission-based trips and traditional grocery customers’ frequent, full-basket shopping trips.
While discounters saw traffic boosts between 2022 and 2024 by consumers trading down, momentum for value grocers has recently slowed. Placer said this is due to the fact that many consumers who would make that shift already did so during that two-year period.
