Food CPI to remain elevated (ACI)
The headline CPI index increased 7.0% in December. The Food at home CPI index increased 6.5% in December, accelerating 10bps from November. Of the food categories meat, poultry, fish & eggs led with a 12.6% YOY increase in December. Dairy inflation had the smallest increase of the food categories of 1.6% YOY. The index for alcoholic beverages increased 2.3% YOY, accelerating 40bps from November. The food away from home index increased 6.0%, accelerating 20bps. The food at home comparisons from a year ago become smaller each month for the next five months. Together with another round of price increases being implemented in Q1 by numerous CPG companies food inflation will remain elevated for at least the first half of 2022.
Online grocery hits 13% share in 2021 (KR)
According to the latest Brick Meets Click/Mercatus Shopping Survey online grocery sales grew 2% in 2021 to $97.7B. Online grocery sales comprised 13% of total grocery spend. More than 70% of U.S. households received one or more orders during 2021. In the month of December online grocery grew to $8.9B, up from $8.6B in November. Delivery/pickup sales increased from $7.0B in November to $7.1B in December. Pickup sales increased 5% points to 45% of online grocery sales while delivery remained steady at 33% and ship to home fell 5% points to 22%. The mass retailers continue to lead the way in online grocery. The share of monthly active grocery users who placed at least one online order with a mass retailer reached 29.1%, a high for that metric. In 2020 many in the industry were predicting a year of double-digit growth for digital grocery sales in 2021. Online grocery share accelerated during the pandemic, but all the gains are not permanent once COVID-19 cases fall. It is increasingly likely that the U.S. hits peak cases
Beer 2021 off-premise performance (STZ)
IRI reported a 0.4% decline to $44.3B for beer sales in the off-premise channel for 2021. Compared to 2019 beer sales grew 18.7%. In the grocery channel beer sales declined 4.6% YOY to $13.5B. In the C-store channel beer sales increased 2% to $24.2B.
The non-alcohol beer segment had the strongest growth rate in 2021 at 24%, but the total was a modest $236.4M. Hard seltzers grew 16.8% to $4.5B. FMBs grew 5.5% to $3.2B. Imports grew 4.8% to $9.3B. Domestic super premiums grew 0.4% to $4.1B while domestic sub-premiums decreased 8.3% to $5.2B and domestic premiums decreased 4.9% to $7.2B. Craft beer sales decreased 4.6% to $5.0B driven by a 7.5% decrease in the grocery channel. In the C-store channel craft beer sales grew 0.6% to $1.6B. Most of the growth among the top 25 beer brands were beyond beer offerings as seen below:
