LOS ALTOS, CALIF. – Since the start of the pandemic, Placer.ai has been following the performance of a handful of grocery chains in the United States, and for the first time the data analyst firm is releasing data on Sprouts, Weis and Winn-Dixie. 

Heading into 2020, Sprouts started off the year strong. Between 2018 and 2019, the brand saw visitor growth of 3.2%, and into 2020 saw year-over-year increases of 0.2%, 3.5%, and 2.1% for January, February and March, respectively. Going into April 2020, Sprouts experienced a sharp decline with visits falling 25.4% below visits in April 2019. The retailer is slowly recovering with visits down 14.1% and 11.7% in May and June, respectively. 

Weis and Win-Dixie experienced the opposite. Heading into 2020, both grocers saw a loss in year-over-year growth in January at a 5.9% and 0.3% loss for Weis and Winn-Dixie respectively. By March both grocers were seeing significant growth with Weis seeing a 17.7% increase and Winn-Dixie seeing growth of 16.3%. Both grocers took a hit in April, but quickly recovered to traffic gains over 2019 in both May and June. 

“While Sprouts is being impacted by resurgences of cases in California and Texas, two of its largest states for locations, the grocer is still seeing progress,” said Ethan Chernofsky, vice president of retail for Placer.ai. “For the weeks of June 29 and July 6, the brand saw an average decline of 4.7%, an improvement on overall June numbers even amidst the rise in cases. The same was true for Weis and Winn Dixie which saw visit averages for those two weeks of 4.6% and 11.5% growth year over year. A continuation of this trend would push both brands even farther ahead than they had been in June.”