When will online grocery sales reach the $100 billion threshold? Whereas previous estimates anticipated a date around 2025, more recent predictions now have moved it up to 2022, reflecting consumers’ rapid, extensive adoption of the task of shopping for groceries online. Already nearly half of all U.S. consumers skip the store and go online to purchase groceries, and within five years, approximately 70 percent are expected to do so. Moreover, these purchases come from consumers across the age spectrum; though Millennials tend to be particularly likely to shop online, 41 percent of Baby Boomers do so too. But as these rates of adopting continue to accelerate, the lack of preparedness by retailers is also becoming increasingly clear. Few retailers, or their manufacturing partners, possess the capabilities required to support a consumer population that mainly buys food online, especially when it comes to integrating their operations and promotions across channels, engaging in true omnichannel retailing, or sharing shopper data with channel partners.

Source: George Anderson, Retail Wire, January 30, 2018