What it is
FMI, the food retailers’ association, whose shopper research is fielded by the Hartman Group, a consumer research consultancy. The association has an interest in the store looking healthy.
FMI’s annual shopper study is the food retail industry’s own measure of how Americans shop. The 2026 edition was fielded from 4 to 18 February 2026 with a nationally representative sample of 2,023 shoppers, plus online ethnography, and published on 20 May 2026.
The two figures the report leans on are the trip rate, 2.8 grocery trips a week per household (1.6 per individual shopper, 1.8 in households with children), and the spread, 5.4 separate store banners visited in a month. Together they describe a routine that is frequent, repetitive and shared across stores rather than loyal to one.
What the commerce leader should take from it
- Grocery is a habit measured in trips a week, not orders a month. Anything that makes one trip easier is competing for about 145 occasions a year per household.
- Households already split the routine across more than five banners. The fill-in trip goes to whichever store is easiest that day.
- The survey is the industry’s own and the method is published in outline. Treat the figures as the best available estimate, not a census.
Where to start
Finding 2.4 uses the trip rate to size the weekly shop that still starts from an empty cart. Put your own household’s online order rate beside 2.8 trips a week and the gap is the routine that has not moved online.
The banner count is the argument for finding 1.1: a shopper with 5.4 banners in play does not wait for the one that cannot say whether the item is in stock.
Keep in mind
Trade association research with the method published in outline. The single most load-bearing demand statistic in the report’s primer, which is why it is quoted verbatim and not extended.