Retail Tracker

Fresh Mushroom Sales Review: 04/23/23

Produced every four weeks, the Retail Tracker Report provides insight into category dollar sales, segment and variety sales, average price per pound, and other helpful metrics.

Download the Reports Below

Tracker 04/23/23

Sales Review 04/23/23

Performance PPT 04/23/23

Fresh Mushroom Sales Review; 4 and 52 w.e. 4.23.2023

NOTE

In the process of understanding the root cause of the sustained volume pressure, Anne-Marie Roerink, our retail channel consultant, discovered a substantial data problem in the Circana/IRI system. Upon noticing that the Walmart loss of households and trips more than tripled that of grocery stores, she launched an investigation into whether these numbers could be correct. Based on her other category work in meat, candy, deli and other areas of the store, Walmart has been an above-average performer in the past two years virtually all categories, which red-flagged the mushroom finding. Knowing that Walmart had required all grower/shippers to switch to private brands focused the investigation on those 10 Walmart private brand SKUs. Walmart does not allow SKU level access to their private brand items, but collaborated with us and IRI to dig into the issue. It turns out that the two biggest Walmart SKUs have not been captured as they are coded incorrectly as cereal. With grower/shippers having started to change branded SKUs to Walmart brand SKUs in the fall of 2022 into February of 2023, this means a large amount of volume/dollars has not been captured in the past nine months, in particular. Given Walmart’s size, this improves the national averages by some 7 percentage points and likely more in Walmart-centric Midwest markets. Here is an estimate for how Total US reported trends would adjust (based on last 13 weeks):

Model	Dollar Sales	Dollar Sales YA	% Change vs YA
iFresh (US MULO)	$308,136,988	$332,461,501	-7.3%
iFresh (US MULO-estimate with fix)	$330,136,988	$332,461,501	-0.7%

The SKU recode is in process but will not hit the data platform until 5/29. Rather than holding up the quad week data distribution, please be aware of the undercounting of Walmart sales in the 4/23/23 report and all reports going back. The minute the updated information is available, Anne-Marie will re-pull all data endings going back 52 weeks to ensure everyone can correct internal spreadsheets.

The Marketplace

As high levels of inflation persist, so are consumers’ money-saving measures. Most categories around the grocery store have experienced unit and volume (pound) pressure for a minimum of 18 months and running. Fresh vegetable sales are no exception. In the first quarter of 2023, inflation boosted dollar gains, but units and volume dropped 2% to 3% behind the levels seen in the first quarter of 2022. Mushrooms were the tenth-largest seller and experienced a below-average unit and volume sales performance (Note: Walmart under-counting).

Q1 ’23 vs Q1 ’22	Dollars	$ vs. YA	Units	Units vs. YA	Volume	Lbs. vs. YA	PPP	PPP vs. YA
Vegetables	$9.4B	3.5%	3.9B	-2.9%	4.6B	-2.5%	$2.05	6.1%
Tomatoes	$1.0B	5.0%	454M	-0.7%	425M	-0.6%	$2.42	5.6%
Potatoes	$997M	12.6%	261M	-3.4%	989M	-5.0%	$1.01	18.6%
Lettuce	$788M	9.1%	297M	-0.3%	299M	-0.9%	$2.65	10.1%
Salad Kits	$781M	-0.2%	202M	-7.2%	133M	-5.2%	$5.86	5.2%
Onions	$703M	6.4%	450M	-1.2%	577M	4.9%	$1.22	1.4%
Peppers	$654M	0.8%	467M	-2.7%	307M	-2.6%	$2.13	3.4%
Cucumbers	$381M	11.9%	204M	4.3%	200M	4.1%	$1.90	7.5%
Carrots	$373M	1.5%	201M	-5.0%	260M	-5.0%	$1.43	6.8%
Broccoli	$343M	3.9%	120M	-5.6%	133M	-5.6%	$2.59	10.0%
Mushrooms	$316M	-7.6%	104M	-14.9%	66M	-13.0%	$4.75	6.1%

Dollars, Units and Volume Performance

Total food and beverage dollar sales increased 5.6% over the quad-week period, but units were down 3.4%. Fresh produce has seen negative volume comp sales for 21 months running. In March, deflationary conditions in fruit did prompt a slight increase in pounds, but the improvement in fruit was negated by a larger decrease in units and volume in vegetables. For the four weeks ending April 23^rd 2023, fresh produce dollar sales were flat (+0.1%) and fresh mushroom sales were down 7.8% year-on-year.

Fresh mushrooms also experienced unit and volume declines during the shorter and longer time periods. Year-to-date, dollars were down 4.8% versus year ago and pounds -11.3%. Dollars remained ahead of 2020 in the longer-term view, but were down 21.8% in the short-term view. Pounds are now 10.3% behind those of 2020 in the year-to-date views and 29.3% in the quad-week view versus pre-pandemic.

Fresh Mushrooms	4 weeks ending 04/23/2023	VS. 2022	VS. 2020	4 weeks ending 04/23/2023	VS. 2022	VS. 2020
Dollars	$91.8 million	-7.8%	-21.8%	$1.2 billion	-4.8%	+1.5%
Units	30.2 million	-13.5%	-31.6%	$409.5 million	-12.3%	-13.1%
Volume	19.6 million	-10.6%	-29.3%	$261.0 million	-11.3%	-10.3%