For six straight quarters, US online grocery sales have grown by more than 20% a year. Brick Meets Click tracked the run from the fourth quarter of 2024 through the first quarter of 2026, and over that stretch online's share of US grocery spending climbed from under 15% to more than 19%. Nobody planning a 2027 budget is short of demand.
The constraint is serving it at a profit. The online grocery trends that matter for 2027 are mostly about execution: how fast, how complete, from where, and at what cost. Here are the seven I'd plan around.
US growth stays strong, and the forecasts keep rising
The Brick Meets Click series shows growth holding into the middle of 2026. In July 2026, US eGrocery sales were up 21.5% on the year, and delivery generated 60% of that growth, according to the firm's monthly report.
Forecasters looking further out are just as bullish, using their own definitions. FMI and NielsenIQ expect total US online grocery sales to reach $452 billion by 2028, growing at 11.6% a year, and found that online drove close to 75% of grocery dollar growth in 2025. The two sources measure the market differently, so read them as separate signals pointing the same way.
For a grocery leader, the planning assumption for 2027 is simple: the online channel will be bigger next year, and it will carry most of the growth.
Same-day is the default delivery promise
Same-day orders made up nearly 80% of US grocery delivery orders in the first quarter of 2026, Brick Meets Click found. Shoppers expect it, too. In McKinsey's 2026 consumer survey, 39% of US and Canadian shoppers said they expect an order to arrive the same day, more than any other window.
Next-day delivery is turning into a fallback option. A grocer whose online promise starts with "tomorrow" is competing against a market where most orders arrive today.
Full baskets matter more than raw speed
This is the trend most likely to save someone a bad investment. When McKinsey asked consumers to choose, 90% preferred a wider selection of everything they could find in the store delivered the same day. Only 10% preferred a narrow range of critical products in under 30 minutes.
Ultra-fast still has a market. Brick Meets Click put delivery in an hour or less at 18% of US delivery orders in early 2026, and in the UK, Tesco's rapid-delivery service Whoosh grew sales by 51% to more than £400 million in its latest year, according to the company's preliminary results. Sainsbury's OnDemand grew 69% to more than £700 million, per its full-year results. Both run from existing stores.
Read together, the data describes two missions. The weekly shop wants the full range on the same day. The top-up wants a handful of items fast. Plan capacity for both, and size each for what it is.
Online grocery is becoming profitable
The old assumption that e-commerce loses money for grocers is breaking down. McKinsey's survey found that 46% of grocers say e-commerce is already profitable, and 72% expect it to become more profitable than in-store within two to three years, as The Shelby Report summarized. The sample is small, 43 grocery executives, so treat it as a direction rather than a census.
The direction has company-level evidence behind it. Ahold Delhaize reported reaching e-commerce profitability on a fully allocated basis in 2025. In Europe, McKinsey and EuroCommerce report that online operations are beginning to break even on a fully allocated cost basis.
Profitability won't arrive evenly. The grocers getting there are the ones treating each fulfillment model as its own business, with its own costs, and fixing the expensive steps one at a time.
Store picking reaches its ceiling
Most US online grocery orders are still picked in stores, by staff walking the same aisles as shoppers. McKinsey's 2026 report says manual store-based fulfillment "tends to hit a ceiling at around 12-15% online penetration." On Brick Meets Click's measure, online already accounts for more than 19% of US grocery spending, though the two sources define the market differently.
McKinsey's modeling puts a number on the gap: $20 billion to $30 billion of US online grocery demand that current fulfillment methods won't be able to serve by 2030, even after every expansion grocers have announced. That's a model, not a forecast anyone can bank, but it explains why 2027 network plans are adding dedicated capacity alongside stores rather than more pickers inside them.
The shift won't be all-or-nothing. Store picking will keep serving low-density areas well. The change is in the busy metros, where a few stores already carry more online orders than their aisles can handle.
Europe grows more slowly and more unevenly
European online grocery is still growing faster than grocery overall, but more slowly than it was. According to McKinsey and EuroCommerce, online grocery sales in Europe grew 6.8% in 2025, down from 7.8% in 2024, while total grocery sales grew 3.4%.
The averages hide wide gaps. The same research finds online adoption ranging from more than 20% in some affluent urban areas to less than 5% in rural regions. Flink's chief executive put online grocery penetration at roughly 3.5% in Germany, 6.0% in the Netherlands, and about 14% in the UK, in a Prosus announcement in March 2026.
For European grocers, the 2027 question is where online grows. A national average of 6% can mean 20% in a capital city, which is a very different fulfillment problem.
AI goes to work in operations first
The most useful AI in grocery for 2027 is unglamorous. BCG's 2026 analysis expects AI applied to forecasting, routing, and substitution to cut inefficiencies by 10% to 20% over the next few years, without materially changing labor needs. McKinsey estimates that AI could deliver savings of about 15% in stores and supply chain if it scales, and calls the shift "less a near-term disruption and more a multiyear transformation."
That framing is a good filter for budget meetings. The AI projects worth funding in 2027 are the ones that change a number operators already track: forecast accuracy, substitution rate, drops per hour.
What these trends mean for 2027 plans
Put the seven together, and the plan for most grocers looks similar. Assume the online channel keeps growing. Make same-day the standard promise and keep the full range in it. Treat rapid delivery as a separate mission with its own economics. Add dedicated capacity where store picking is running out of room. Measure profitability separately for each fulfillment model.
That is an operating plan, and each part depends on the next: same-day needs capacity, capacity needs volume, and volume needs a promise customers come back for.
Questions grocery leaders ask about online grocery trends
How big will US online grocery be by 2028?
FMI and NielsenIQ forecast $452 billion in total US online grocery sales by 2028. That forecast uses its own market definition, so compare it only with other FMI and NielsenIQ figures.
What share of US grocery is bought online?
More than 19% of US grocery spending in the first quarter of 2026, according to Brick Meets Click.
Is ultra-fast grocery delivery the future?
It is a growing part of the market, at 18% of US delivery orders in early 2026, but most shoppers prefer the full assortment delivered the same day. Ultra-fast suits top-up orders.
Is online grocery growing in Europe?
Yes. European online grocery sales grew 6.8% in 2025, slower than the 7.8% of 2024 but well ahead of total grocery growth.
Matching the promise to the operation
The grocers who will look smart at the end of 2027 are the ones who match the promise to the operation behind it. Rohlik Group is one example of what that looks like at scale. Its German business, Bringmeister, moved from next-day to same-day delivery on Veloq's platform, and monthly orders went from 57,756 to 134,860 in the same fulfillment center, as our Bringmeister case study shows. Our report on profitable same-day grocery delivery covers how the economics work.
Six quarters of 20% growth is the easy part to read. Serving it at a profit is the part that shows up in next year's results. See how Veloq runs same-day grocery from storefront to doorstep.
Sources
- Brick Meets Click, "U.S. eGrocery Hyper-Growth Trend Driven by Dueling Fulfillment Innovations" (June 16, 2026)
- Brick Meets Click, "July 2026 eGrocery Sales Jump 21.5% Versus Year Ago" (August 7, 2026)
- FMI and NielsenIQ, "Online Grocery Sales Power Omnichannel Growth as Market Poised to Reach $452 Billion by 2028" (April 22, 2026)
- McKinsey & Company, "The State of Grocery North America 2026" (June 2026)
- The Shelby Report, "McKinsey & Co.: Seven forces shaping '26 grocery landscape" (September 14, 2026)
- McKinsey & Company and EuroCommerce, "The State of Grocery Retail Europe 2026" (April 21, 2026)
- Ahold Delhaize, Q4 and full-year 2025 results (February 11, 2026)
- Tesco PLC, Preliminary Results 2025/26 (April 16, 2026)
- J Sainsbury plc, Preliminary results for the 52 weeks ended 28 February 2026 (April 23, 2026)
- Prosus, "Prosus leads US$100 million funding round in Flink" (March 3, 2026)
- BCG, "The Race to Automate the Last Mile of Grocery Deliveries" (May 5, 2026)
- Veloq, "Bringmeister Case Study: From Next-Day to Profitable Same-Day Grocery"
