An extra £380 has been added to the average UK household supermarket bill compared to last year, the latest industry data has shown, £100 more than the figure reported a month ago.
Data from Kantar revealed grocery price inflation reached 8.3% over the past four weeks, up 1.3 percentage points on May and hitting its highest level in 13 years.
The big increase in grocery bills since April, shows “just how sharp price increases have been recently and the impact inflation is having on the sector”, said Kantar’s head of retail and consumer insight, Fraser McKevitt.
“The inflation number makes for difficult reading and shoppers will be watching budgets closely as the cost-of-living crisis takes its toll.”
Amid the rampant shop price rises, supermarket shoppers are switching from branded goods to lower-cost products.
Branded items have declined 1%, McKevitt said, while sales of supermarket own-label products have risen 2.9%.
“We can also see consumers turning to value ranges, such as ASDA Smart Price, Co-op Honest Value and Sainsbury’s Imperfectly Tasty, to save money and together all value own-label lines grew by 12.0%,” he said.
Another shift in the grocery sector is the return to some pre-pandemic habits, with the share of online food shopping falling to its lowest proportion of the market since May 2020 at 12.0%, with a twelfth monthly fall in a row and a 9% slide in digital orders in June.
“This drop could be the result of shoppers looking to cut costs by avoiding delivery charges,” McKevitt said, also suggesting that sunnier weather may also prompt people to walk or cycle to their local shop, with store footfall climbing 3.4%.
But he said the UK is far ahead of most of Europe on buying groceries online, with the one in five British households making an order each month being the highest proportion in Europe.
Overall, supermarket sales fell 1.9% over the past 12 weeks, with market leader Tesco PLC (LSE:TSCO) outperforming the market with a 1.1% decline.
Ocado Retail, the joint venture between Ocado Group PLC (LSE:OCDO) and Marks and Spencer Group PLC (LSE:MKS) saw sales fall 2.3%, while sales at J Sainsbury PLC (LSE:SBRY) fell 3.9%.
Worst of the big chains was Morrisons, down 7.2%, and Waitrose, down 6.4%, while top of the gains were Lidl and Aldi at 9.5% and 7.9%.