Video: eGrocery Insights - October 2025

Welcome to a new episode of US eGrocery Sales Trends from Mercatus, featuring David Bishop, Partner at Brick Meets Click. Top-line: October’s eGrocery results reveal both resilience and strain across the market. Total online grocery spending rose 10.5% year over year (YOY).

Watch the full episode to learn:

• Why Delivery’s slowdown may be temporary and what’s driving Ship-to-Home’s surge.
• How economic anxiety is reshaping where and how customers buy groceries.
• What to expect from SNAP benefit delays in the coming months.
• Why average order values are falling and what that means for customer behavior.
• How regional grocers can strengthen loyalty and relevance amid uncertainty.

Summary of the Video

David begins by unpacking the pullback in Delivery sales that stood out from this month’s numbers and the continued surge in Ship-to-Home. 

He explores whether Amazon’s fresh grocery expansion is cannibalizing Delivery or simply reshaping the cost equation and explains that Ship-to-Home is becoming a lower-cost substitute for delivery, especially for Prime members seeking convenience without tips or added fees. 

Next, David examines how growing economic anxiety is reshaping shopping behavior. Inflation, rising insurance costs, and the government shutdown have customers “stretching the buck,” trading off what, where, and how they buy groceries. 

Turning to spending patterns, David explains why average order values for Pickup and Delivery fell while Ship-to-Home increased YOY. Shoppers aren’t abandoning online grocery, he notes. They’re just buying more carefully, building smaller baskets, and shifting to lower-cost channels or in-store trips to save money. Even heavy, established users are tightening spending, underscoring how widespread the pressure has become. 

David dicusses whether eGrocery adoption is nearing a ceiling. Despite the slower sales growth, the base of monthly active users hit another record high. Most of that growth, however, is coming from infrequent and returning shoppers rather than deeper engagement among loyal users. 

David closes by outlining how regional grocers can turn that renewed activity into lasting loyalty by reinforcing value and trust. These are aspects of a grocer’s reputation that larger retailers can’t easily match. 

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