Market Overview: Pandemic Boosts Natural Products Sales 12.6% in 2020

Photo: Natural Foods Merchandiser, New Hope Network

This article originally appeared in Presence Marketing’s October 2021 Industry Newsletter

By Steve Hoffman

Many of the changes independent natural foods retailers adopted during the pandemic, such as digital ordering, curbside pickup, click-and-collect capabilities, traffic flow changes and more, may better help them compete going forward, writes Mark Hamstra in New Hope Network’s 2021 Market Overview Survey. And while natural foods retailers, like retailers everywhere, saw a decline in traffic, the uptick in basket size more than made up for it. 

The average sales gain in 2020 among independent retailers surveyed was 6.5%, compared to 1% growth for large natural products chains. In particular, conventional retailers experienced 14.4% sales growth in 2020, and online retailers saw a whopping 69.1% sales growth in 2020. Of note, sales of natural products among health practitioners grew 4.5% in 2020.

Overall, the natural products market, estimated at $189 billion, grew 12.6% in 2020. Product categories leading the growth included meat, fish and poultry, condiments, dairy, fruit and vegetables, breads and grains, packaged/prepared foods and vitamins.