Grocery price inflation fell by 2.2 percentage points to 12.7% in the four weeks to 6 August 2023, new data reveals.
Kantar’s latest figures show that overall take-home grocery sales increased by 6.5% over the same period, down from 10.4% a month earlier.
The latest slowdown in price rises is the second sharpest monthly fall since Kantar started monitoring grocery inflation in this way in 2008.
Fraser McKevitt, Head of Retail and Consumer Insight at Worldpanel Division, UK, said: “Prices are still up year-on-year across every supermarket shelf, but consumers will have been relieved to see the cost of some staple goods starting to edge down compared with earlier in 2023.
“Shoppers paid £1.50 for four pints of milk last month, down from £1.69 in March, while the average cost of a litre of sunflower oil is now £2.19, 22 pence less than in the spring.”
The data shows that on-label goods remained popular in the latest four-week period, with sales up by 9.7%, while branded products rose by 6.4%. Own-label sales continue to outpace branded, although the gap between the two is closing.
Unseasonable weather in July put the dampeners on sales of usual summer favourites, Kantar reveals. Volume sales of ice creams were down by 30% on last year’s figures, while soft drinks sales were nearly a fifth lower than 12 months ago. Halloumi, a new staple of the British summer menu with shopper numbers growing by 218% since a decade ago, was also down by 27%.
The data shows that consumers have been turning to more traditional winter warmers instead. The amount of soup bought has gone up by 16% year-on-year, while roasting joints have grown by 5%.
In addition, cooler temperatures and a wetter-than-average month may have also put people off from venturing to the shops. Footfall was down for the first time in 18 months with people making 320,000 fewer trips to physical supermarkets than a year ago.
