Nearly 4,000 U.S. food and beverage retailers – including nearly 3 % of U.S. grocery stores – shut their doors last year, according to a study sponsored by the convenience store industry.
The number of U.S. convenience stores declined by 1.5% last year, falling to 148,026 locations, according to the 2022 National Association of Convenience Stores (NACS)/Nielsen Convenience Industry Store Count. Additionally, nearly 1,400 grocery stores closed, dropping from 47,066 to 45,687 (-2.9%).
The closures come as the brick-and-mortar retail industry faces supply chain and labor challenges amidst the ongoing global pandemic and also a U.S. consumer base that is increasingly willing to embrace online shopping – a shift that both allows retailers to take advantage of click-and-collect services but also diverts some sales on a direct-to-consumer basis.
After making steady gains from 2012 through 2018, convenience store counts have fallen in each of the past four years, yet the overall number of stores is approximately the same as a decade ago (148,126 stores in 2012).
Single-store operators, which account for over 60% of all convenience stores, saw the biggest drop-off, falling 3.1%. New York (-248), Florida (-219) and North Carolina (-200) reported the most losses. Out of the top 10 states for the channel, Texas is the only state to see an increase in stores (+47).
Drug stores (-1.5%) also declined, with dollar stores being the only segment to report gains (+3.8%).
In Goldman Sachs’ recent “Beverage Bytes” survey of nearly 40,000 U.S convenience outlets, vendors reported that inventory issues, labor shortages, trucking and manufacturing disruptions and uncertainty around the omicron COVID variant continue to generate challenges within the channel. About 40% of retailers said they are positive on the beverage category, while around 14% said they had a negative outlook on beverage sales in 2022 (compared to 0% negative in Q3).