Shoppers Still Split Their Grocery Trips Across Five Banners A Month. The Store Is Where Walmart Defends Its Share.

Americans still value buying groceries in person, and they are not loyal to any single place to do it. The U.S. Grocery Shopper Trends 2026 report, released May 20 by FMI-The Food Industry Association in partnership with The Hartman Group, found that consumers visit 5.4 separate grocery banners in an average month, a sign that shoppers are actively dividing their baskets across competing stores rather than consolidating their spend. The report draws on a nationally representative survey of 2,023 respondents fielded February 4 to 18, 2026, and pegs average weekly grocery spend at $169 as of February.

What shoppers say they value about the store should hold a grocery supplier’s attention. Asked what they would miss most if they could no longer shop in person, 48% of respondents named the ability to select products themselves, the single most-cited answer and well ahead of human connection and enjoyable experiences, each at 22%. FMI reported that in-person shopping gives consumers a greater sense of control and confidence, particularly when choosing perishable items such as produce and meat. The implication for suppliers is that the physical shelf, where a shopper picks up the package and decides, remains the decision point that pack design and in-store presence are competing for.

That finding lands against a Walmart that is pulling more of those in-person trips into its stores. FMI found that 67% of Americans name a mass store as a primary place they buy groceries, second only to supermarkets at 77%, and mass is Walmart’s channel. In its first quarter of fiscal 2027, reported May 21, Walmart U.S. posted net sales of $117.2 billion, up 4.5%, with comparable sales up 4.1% that the company attributed to accelerated customer transactions and increased unit volumes. Transactions excluding fuel rose 3.0%. The FMI data and Walmart’s results come from separate research and describe different things, but read together they point the same direction: the store trip is not going away, and at Walmart it is intensifying.

Walmart is putting capital behind that trip. The company said in April it would complete more than 650 remodels of supercenters and Neighborhood Markets in 2026 and open about 20 new stores into early 2027, following roughly 675 remodels completed in fiscal 2026. Walmart framed the investment around connecting its physical stores with digital tools to give customers more flexibility, with remodeled stores featuring wider aisles, expanded pickup and delivery areas, and new digital touchpoints. For a supplier, a remodel is a reset of the shelf and the in-store environment their products live in, and 650 of them in a single year is a large share of the fleet changing shape at once.

The store trip is now a digital event as much as a physical one. FMI found that 77% of grocery shoppers use digital technology before shopping and 71% use it while shopping, which means the path to the shelf increasingly runs through a screen even when the purchase happens in person. Walmart’s own results reflect the same blur: eCommerce sales rose 26% in the quarter, led by store-fulfilled delivery, and the company now reaches 95% of U.S. households with store-fulfilled delivery in three hours or less. The 1P and 3P read diverges here. For 1P suppliers, the live question is how product content, ratings, and search presence on Walmart’s app shape a purchase that may still close in the aisle. For 3P Marketplace sellers, whose grocery and consumables presence is overwhelmingly digital, the FMI finding is a reminder that the in-store half of Walmart’s traffic is volume they are largely not in front of.

The banner-spreading number is the one to sit with. By FMI’s own framing, a shopper visiting more than five grocery banners a month is dividing loyalty across stores that each offer something different, choosing one for stock-ups and another for bargains. A supplier whose product sits in Walmart’s aisle holds a place in one of those baskets, on one of those trips, and the other four are being decided somewhere else, which is exactly why the store Walmart is remodeling and the shelf the supplier is fighting for is the ground where that divided loyalty gets won or lost.

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