America's Favorite Grocery Store Is… 7-Eleven?
Whether you love it or hate it, shopping for groceries is a necessary task for just about everybody. Where you choose to shop says a lot about you.
Some consumers opt for a one-stop shop such as Walmart to grab everything they need in one swift trip. Others are constantly on the hunt for the best deals and discounts at stores like Aldi or Lidl. Still others prefer the specific brands and specialty products of chains like Trader Joe's.
So, which grocery store is America's most popular and absolute favorite right now? According to a new survey from international research firm YouGov, the answer is . . . none of the above.
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In fact, it's not a traditional supermarket at all—it's 7-Eleven, the ubiquitous convenience store chain with over 9,400 U.S. locations and, of course, home of the Slurpee.
The self-described "world's largest convenience retailer" scored a 62% popularity rating on YouGov's most recent grocery survey for 2022, just ahead of runners-up Aldi and Kroger (61% each), with Trader Joe's (58%) and Whole Foods Market (53%) coming in at 4th and 5th place, respectively.
Honorable mentions in America's top 10 included Albertsons, Safeway, Piggly Wiggly and, notably, Circle K, one of 7-Eleven's chief convenience chain rivals.
While the survey doesn't go into detail as to why Americans voted the way they did—YouGov's popularity scores are based on over 20 million survey responses received from people all over the country, updated on a rolling basis every quarter—it does provide a demographic breakdown showing how each retailer fared among individual age groups and genders.
Which generation is driving the 7-Eleven love? Millennials, of course. Americans born between 1982 and 1999 gave the Slurpee shop its highest popularity score of 65%, while Generation X (born 1965-1981) and Baby Boomers (born 1946-1964) favored the midwest-based supermarket chain Kroger.
7-Eleven also proved most popular among male respondents, while females preferred the German-owned discount chain Aldi, one of America's fastest growing grocery chains with almost 2,300 stores.
What these results say about today's average American grocery shopper is open to interpretation. But the overwhelming popularity of 7-Eleven and Aldi would suggest a new twist on that old American slogan: "Give me convenience, or give me a discount."
