The U.S. grocery slowdown is becoming harder to ignore.
Shoppers are buying fewer items than a year ago, and grocery sales are declining as weakening unit sales are now outweighing rising prices. That is according to new analysis from Bain & Company using NielsenIQ grocery data shared exclusively with CNBC.
Grocery units, which refer to individual items or products sold, fell 1.8% in June from a year earlier, a sharp reversal from the 0.1% year-over-year growth recorded in June 2025. While prices continue to rise about 2% to 3% year-over-year, that inflation cushion for the industry is no longer enough to keep overall sales growing.
This is because of all the people who just got kicked off food stamps because of the big beautiful bill
Probably has a lot to do with it. A friend says his retired, low income parents had their SNAP benefits cut from $300 / month to $30.
Don’t forget food banks got their funding cut
Well I’m sure that has a lot to do with it, I would expect it’s simply also just due to the massively inflated prices of many foods and the massively increasing costs of other standard expenses like rent