Amazon's grocery marketplace has captured 18% of total online grocery sales in the US in Q2, the largest share by far of any retailer.
According to data compiled by One Click Retail, Amazon's grocery operation is growing at a rate of around 40% year-on-year, with almost every category in its grocery portfolio showing growth.
Coffee Climbs
Among these, Amazon's coffee range posted an estimated $135 million worth of sales in the quarter, and was responsible for seven of the ten biggest selling grocery items.
The biggest selling coffee item in the second quarter - which is also Amazon's biggest grocery seller overall - is The Original Donut Shop Regular Medium Roast Coffee, which comes in a pack of 72 single-serve coffee-pods. This item was the number one seller in 2017, One Click Retail said, as well as in Q1.
'It's impressive that The Original Donut Shop was able to retain the top rank even after going out of stock for most of April,' One Click Retail noted.
'Third-party sellers picked up the slack until the brand came back into stock and sales quickly recovered, but these stock issues likely allowed competitors to narrow the gap. If The Original Donut Shop experiences more out of stock periods in the future, the brand risks losing its valuable "bestseller" status.'
The second-biggest selling grocery item on Amazon in the second quarter was Soylent's ready-to-drink Meal Replacement Shake, which appeals to consumers owing to its convenience - it is also available in a powdered form.
Strong Categories
Other categories performing well on Amazon are Bottled Water, which grew by 65% last year to now outrank Energy Drinks as the largest beverage subcategory.
In terms of private label performance, the recently-launched Amazon Solimo coffee pods has been an 'overnight success', according to One Click Retail, and now records an estimated $60,000 in weekly sales.
'But not all private brands are home runs,' it added. 'Despite having an incredibly successful 2017 during which it ranked as the #5 overall snack food brand on Amazon, Happy Belly (pictured) has now fallen to #16, due in part to the discontinuation of its top-selling classic trail mix late last year.'
© 2018 European Supermarket Magazine – your source for the latest retail news. Article by Stephen Wynne-Jones. Click subscribe to sign up to ESM: The European Supermarket Magazine.
