What it is
FMI, the food retailers’ association, reporting on its own members’ economics. The association has an interest in the margin looking thin.
FMI’s Food Industry Facts page is the association’s running summary of the industry’s size and economics. The two figures the report uses are the average net profit for food retailers, 2.1% in 2025, and average weekly sales per supermarket, about 668 thousand dollars.
Only the current year is retrievable from the page; the longer margin series sits behind an interactive chart. The margin is an industry average across members of different sizes, not any one company’s figure.
What the commerce leader should take from it
- Two cents on the dollar is the margin the whole report is set against. An online order that loses two dollars is not a rounding error at that margin.
- An average supermarket at about 668 thousand dollars a week is about 35 million dollars a year; twenty stores in a pilot are a 700 million dollar business.
- The figure is the association’s own. Company filings in this catalog give the same order of magnitude for the largest operators.
Where to start
Use it whenever a decision in the report asks for a number per order or per 1,000 orders. Against a 2.1% margin, the contribution margin per order that finding 3.2 asks finance to produce is the difference between growth and loss.
Keep in mind
An industry average from the industry’s own association, for one year, with the series behind an interactive chart.
Where the report uses it
Read during the report design; not cited in a finding or a perspective yet.