Walmart is the most popular grocery chain - with 25.2% of market share (2024)

When it comes to grocery shopping amidst soaring inflation rates, consumers are up in arms with the high price at the checkout lane, grumbling how it's costing them twice the price for half the amount of food.

But one thing is for sure: They love Walmart...a lot.

Walmart won the favor of fans as it was rated the most popular grocery chain with 25.5 percent of market share - dwarfing runner-up Costco and popular Whole Foods, which only holds 7.1 percent and 1.8 percent,respectively, according to a study by Chain Store Guide.

Ohio-based grocer, Kroger - which is mainly located in the Midwest and the South - rang in third place, with 5.6 percent, taking up only a fifth of what Walmart does.

Sam's Club - which is owned by Walmart - came in fourth place with 4.7 percent and Target found itself in sixth place with 3.5 percent, while Whole Foods landed in ninth.

Surprisingly on the list was Dollar General, which tied with Whole Foods at 1.8 percent. Although the convenience store is not typically known for its small selection of frozen TV dinners packed in a single cooler in the back of the store, the company has tried to change that image.

Where mega-giant Walmart won't go, Dollar General has built- even purchasing old Walmart stores to do the trick. Every small town in America seems to have a Dollar General as the company has increasingly targeted rural areas where other larger grocers won't go near.

'We went where they ain't,' former CEODavid Perdue previously told the Wall Street Journal.

The company's plan worked as it now finds itself in the top 10 US grocery stores with 18,774 locations across America and Mexico.

Although it might have ranked last in popularity, among those analyzed, it beat Walmart by far in number of stores. Walmart has only around a quarter of the stores, with4,635.

Walmart still highly outranks its other competitors like Kroger and Target, which have2,800 and1,948 US locations, respectively.

Sam's Club, a bulk-item grocer, only has 600 stores, while health-nut store Whole Foods - which is popular in big cities - only has 514 locations.

However, Whole Foods - which was acquired by Amazon in 2017 for $13.7billion - has rapidly expanded its grocery services, even allowing Amazon customers to make online grocery deliveries from the store to their homes.

Last year, it was revealed that Americans were flocking to dollar stores more oftenfor groceries as inflation began its dramatically sharp increase, causing consumers' pockets to shrink.

Grocery sales at discount stores spiked 71 percent between October 2021 and June 2022, the analytics firm InMarket found, while sales of the same items in grocery stores dropped five percent.

The shift comes as 61 percent of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck, according to a Lending Club report at the time, and affordability-branded chains like Walmart warn prices won't be dropping anytime soon.

Despite brand loyalty among customers, American consumers have started to spend less inside grocery stores, as well, and more on eating out.

People spent 20.7 percent more at restaurants than they spent on groceries in 2022, according to Commerce Department. That figure has since risen to 29.5 percent in the early months of 2023.

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