What you need to know

French spending on food, drink and tobacco grew strongly in 2018, by 1.5% to reach €205 billion. Grocery retailers capture around 70% of this, but specialists and markets are also significant channels. 2019 has been impacted on the one hand by the ongoing ‘gilets jaunes’ protests and on the other by restrictions on price cutting resulting from legislation to protect French agriculture.

The market leader is hypermarket operator Leclerc. Leclerc is a cooperative business, whose focus on low prices, together with its dominance of the Drive sector, has helped it maintain its position while other hypermarket operators have struggled with changing shopping behaviours. Lidl is the leading discounter, and one of the retailers seeing the strongest growth, having improved its store environments and expanded its ranges. Online grocery shopping remains dominated by the Drive click and collect model, but looks set to be invigorated when Monoprix launches its offer powered by Ocado technology in 2020.

Areas covered in this report

This report covers the grocery sector in France, with a focus on supermarket, hypermarket and convenience store operators. The report does not cover the smaller food retailers, such as specialists (bakers, butchers etc), markets, CTNs or wholesalers, in detail, nor does it cover food sold via non-food retailers, such as department stores.

The report combines analysis of the market in France, including market sizes and forecasts for consumer spending on grocery items and food retailers’ sales, along with our in-depth consumer data which analyses shoppers’ behaviours in France. We also include a number of relevant company profiles.

For our consumer research this year we asked questions on the following topics:

  • Who shops for groceries

  • How people shop for groceries.

  • Grocery retailers used

  • Attributes associated with different types of grocery store.

For the purpose of this report, Mintel has used the following definitions:

Consumer spending: The total amount spent by French households (including sales tax) on food, drink and tobacco. This is for retail purchases only, and excludes foodservice spending, such as through bars, hotels and restaurants. Tobacco is the exception to this rule.

Retail sales: Total sales of all types of goods and services (excluding sales tax) by grocery retailers. It includes online sales of these retailers where the majority of sales are in bricks and mortar outlets.

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