Amazon Leads Grocery Share Gains as Kroger and Albertsons Slide
- Jul 30
- 3 min read
What's Happening
Numerator has released new U.S. market share data covering the 12 months ending June 30, 2026, reported by Grocery Dive on July 28. The pattern is consistent: grocery share is moving toward Amazon, Costco, and Walmart, while several of the largest traditional supermarket operators continue to lose ground.
Among the 15 food retailers Numerator tracks, Amazon and Whole Foods Market combined posted the largest year-over-year grocery market share gain just over half of a percentage point. Costco recorded the second-largest increase, followed by Walmart. H-E-B, Publix, and Target were flat. Kroger, Albertsons, and Ahold Delhaize USA each contracted by a fraction of a percentage point.
The two-year view shows this is not a one-year blip. Over that longer window, Costco and Amazon/Whole Foods again led. Publix, Aldi, Dollar General, and Trader Joe's each picked up a fraction of a point, while Kroger, Albertsons, ADUSA, Target, H-E-B, and Wakefern Food Corp. all contracted. Walmart — which commands about a fifth of U.S. grocery share, the largest of the 15 companies analyzed — held its share level with where it stood two years ago.
Numerator ran the same analysis for total CPG spending, which adds baby, health and beauty, household, and pet to grocery, and found a similar result: Costco and Amazon/Whole Foods posted the strongest share gains, while Kroger, Albertsons, and ADUSA all declined. Numerator noted the findings show Amazon closing in on becoming the second-largest CPG retailer in the United States.
One forward-looking item: Numerator estimated that if Kroger's proposed acquisition of Giant Eagle is approved, Kroger's food and beverage share would rise from 8.3% to 8.7%, moving it ahead of Costco to become the country's second-largest grocery retailer by share.
What This Means for Suppliers
Half a percentage point is easy to dismiss until it is converted into dollars. Numerator put Amazon and Whole Foods' one-point CPG share gain at more than $16 billion in consumer packaged goods spending. For suppliers building 2027 plans, five things in this data should shape where people, trade dollars, and promotional investment go:
• Walmart is still the anchor account, and this data reinforces that. Walmart holds the largest grocery share of the 15 retailers tracked, grew share year over year, and held flat on a two-year basis. The internal read, though, is that growth at Walmart now has to come from winning items, modules, and category share, not from the banner's own share expansion carrying you along.
• The club channel is not moving as one. Numerator data reported by Supermarket News shows Costco grew CPG share by 0.46 percentage points year over year while Sam's Club lost 0.45 points. Among current Sam's Club shoppers, Amazon gained 0.8 points of CPG spending compared with 0.4 points for Costco. Suppliers should not treat "club channel growth" as an automatic tailwind for Sam's Club items, the competitive pressure there is real and comes from two directions.
• Amazon and Whole Foods are the fastest-growing grocery destination in this data set. Suppliers without a deliberate Amazon plan, accurate and complete listings, Amazon Fresh or Whole Foods placement where the item fits, and funded participation in advertising programs are ceding share to competitors who have one.
• A Kroger-Giant Eagle combination would change the negotiating table. Kroger has agreed to acquire Giant Eagle, a family-owned regional chain of roughly 197 supermarkets and 11 standalone pharmacies across northern Ohio, western Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Maryland, and Indiana, with about $9 billion in annual sales for $1.65 billion, with closing expected in 2027 pending regulatory review. Kroger has said it expects to divest a limited number of locations, and press reports have pointed to Columbus as the market with the most store overlap. Suppliers with items in either banner should watch for distribution changes as the review progresses.
• Declines at Kroger, Albertsons, and ADUSA raise resource-allocation questions. All three lost both grocery and CPG share over the same period. That does not automatically argue for pulling back, but it is a reasonable trigger to test whether current trade spend at those accounts is still earning its return or whether those dollars would work harder where share is growing.
July 30, 2026 | 4 min read | Sources:
