Specialist Food Stores Outperform Supermarkets in April
Den Haag, maandag, 2 juni 2025.
Revenue figures for April 2025 demonstrate a remarkable trend: specialist food stores experienced a significant revenue increase of 7.7%, far surpassing supermarkets, which only grew by 1.8%. This shift hints at changing consumer behaviour, with customers leaning more towards quality products. This occurs while the overall sales volume in the food sector fell by 2.4%, suggesting that valuable purchases are playing the leading role, despite the pressure on large supermarkets. Retailers need to face this tightening in purchase choices and potentially consider strategic adjustments to maintain their competitive position in a market increasingly leaning towards unique and specialised products. Alongside an overall retail growth of 4.2%, these developments highlight the potential of both physical specialist stores and online sales channels in the current retail landscape.
The Growth of Specialist Food Stores
Specialist food stores have further strengthened their leading position over supermarkets with a substantial revenue increase of 7.7% in April 2025. In contrast to the modest growth of 1.8% among supermarkets, specialist stores have gained favour with consumers who increasingly value unique and high-quality products [1][2]. This trend is confirmed by the Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS), which provides insight into the shift in consumer behaviour and the pressure on supermarkets in their reporting [3].
Declining Sales Volume in the Food Sector
Despite the strong performance of specialist stores, the entire food sector recorded a decline in sales volume of 2.4%. This suggests that consumers may be buying less frequently but opting for healthier and more expensive alternatives [1][4]. This picture, supported by CBS figures, underscores the need for supermarkets to review their strategies and focus more on quality and diversity in their offerings to maintain a competitive edge [3].
Retail Progress Through Innovation
In the retail sector, total revenue increased by 4.2%, partly due to the performance of non-food-related and online retail channels. Notably, the online retail sector showed significant growth, with webshops increasing their revenue by 7%, indicating that the digital market remains an integral part of retail strategy [3][5]. Multichannel retailers, however, who rely on both physical and online sales, saw a revenue decline of 4%, pointing to possible strategic weaknesses in their current approach [1].