eGrocery’s Hyper-Growth Stage: How Traditional Grocers Can Fight Back

If you’re in grocery retail and you feel like the ground is shifting beneath your feet, it isn’t your imagination. One of the physical grocery stores strongest draws—the "quick trip" for fresh everyday essentials—is facing its biggest threat yet.

According to the new data from the ongoing Brick Meets Click Grocery Shopper Survey, total U.S. eGrocery sales surged more than 20% year-over-year in Q4 2024 and have remarkably sustained that hyper-growth rate for six consecutive quarters right through Q1 2026.

Online’s share of total grocery spending skyrocketed from less than 15% at the end of Q3 2024 to more than 19% in Q1 2026. Even if you exclude Ship-to-Home services, the online share jumped from 12% to nearly 16% over that same period.

The message is clear: more shoppers are fundamentally changing their grocery buying behaviors.

What’s Fueling the Surge?

This next wave of growth, lapping prior year’s surges, is being driven by two distinct fulfillment innovations designed to offer lightning-fast cycle times:

• Ultra-Fast Delivery: Getting orders to a customer’s door in under an hour.
• Sub-Same-Day Ship-to-Home: Offering rapid shipping of fresh groceries.

While your Pickup business might still be seeing healthy gains, it is likely falling further behind as Delivery and Ship-to-Home are growing nearly three times as fast as Pickup. These dual innovations are capturing a larger share of wallets and eroding the need for customers to make a quick stop at your physical store.

Who's Winning?

Unsurprisingly, the two retail giants are leveraging these innovations to expand their dominant positions:

Walmart

• Strategy: Rapidly deliver orders within one hour of checkout
• Current standing: Approaching 40% share of total U.S. eGrocery sales.

Amazon

• Strategy: Expand availability of fresh groceries within its same-day fulfillment network and introduce ultra-fast, sub-same-day options.
• Current standing: Expanded market share by growing customer share-of-wallet.

During Q1 2026, Brick Meets Click estimates that same-day eGrocery orders accounted for nearly 80% of all Delivery orders and over 30% of Ship-to-Home orders across the entire retail landscape. Even more telling: ultra-fast fulfillment (one hour or less) made up 18% of Delivery and 10% of Ship-to-Home orders.

How Do Traditional Grocers Respond?

The big question for traditional grocers – and especially regionals – is how can you to accelerate online growth and remain relevant while protecting profit margins and the customer experience.

• You can’t afford to ignore this shift, but you also can’t risk burning capital trying to match Amazon or Walmart’s moves.
• You NEED a specific, and individualized strategic map to find growth opportunities that are a good fit for your business.

Benchmark and Map Your Path Forward

To help regional operators navigate this terrain, Brick Meets Click has integrated growth opportunity mapping into its 2026 eGrocery performance benchmarking initiative.

If you are a qualifying regional grocer operating a first-party ecommerce site or mobile app, this program offers a way to evaluate where you stand. The initiative strictly protects your anonymity while evaluating the strategic and economic role third-party marketplaces should play in your broader omnichannel strategy.

Participating banners can receive:

• Tailored recommendations based on performance gaps against top-performing peers.
• A comprehensive assessment of your current practices regarding customer acquisition, basket building, and retention.
• Actionable data to identify and prioritize specific opportunities that will drive stronger financial and operational results over the next 12 to 24 months.

Don't Plan 2027 in the Dark

The timing for this initiative is deliberate. Data and insights will begin flowing in late August, perfectly aligned to directly support and fuel your annual planning process.

Grocery retailing continues to transform and affect how people shop and buy essential groceries online and in-store. By leveraging data-driven benchmarking, growth mapping, and tailored recommendations, you can better protect margins, elevate your customer experience, and pursue a more profitable path forward in an increasingly interconnected world.

Are you ready to see how your digital performance stacks up against the competition? Contact Brick Meets Click to see if you qualify for the 2026 benchmarking initiative.