Grocery shopping apps sit between meal planning and purchase fulfillment. In 2022, 19.3% of U.S. people aged 15 and older who usually shopped for their household bought groceries online during the previous 30 days. Among online grocery shoppers, 44.7% made at least three purchases in that period. More recent FMI reporting shows that digital tools are also part of the in-store planning and shopping experience.
Table of contents
- Online grocery adoption and purchase frequency
- Delivery, pickup, and reasons for using apps
- Who uses grocery shopping apps
- Access gaps and modeled participation differences
- Retailer apps before and during the store visit
- Marketplace scale and basket activity
Online grocery adoption and purchase frequency
The USDA Economic Research Service provides a useful baseline for grocery shopping app statistics, while also defining an important boundary: its online measure includes both app and web ordering, not app-only use. The figures cover nationally representative American Time Use Survey Eating and Health Module data for 2022 and people aged 15 and older who usually did at least some grocery shopping for their household.
The USDA ERS report, “Who Shops for Groceries Online?” found that 19.3% of this group bought groceries online at least once in the previous 30 days. A broader 87.2% reported doing their household grocery shopping either online or in person. These measures describe participation, not the share of all grocery spending handled through apps.
Among U.S. online grocery shoppers in 2022, purchase frequency was distributed across three groups:
| Online grocery purchases in previous 30 days | Share of online grocery shoppers |
|---|---|
| Exactly one purchase | 30.2% |
| Exactly two purchases | 25.1% |
| At least three purchases | 44.7% |
The USDA ERS summary, “New Survey Data Show Online Grocery Shopping Prevalence and Frequency in the United States” reports these 2022 frequency figures. The distribution suggests that online grocery shopping was not limited to occasional trial: the largest reported group made at least three purchases during the measurement month. It does not, however, identify how many of those purchases were made through a mobile app versus a website.
The longer-term sales context is also notable. USDA ERS summarized FDA figures showing U.S. online grocery sales of $62 billion in 2019 and $96 billion in 2020, a reported increase of 55%. Those are sales totals for the online grocery channel, not a forecast and not an app-only total. The two-year comparison captures a major period of change but should not be read as a current annual growth rate.
Delivery, pickup, and reasons for using apps
Online grocery ordering can end with either a trip to the store’s pickup area or a delivery to the home. In the USDA’s 2022 data, 49.1% of U.S. online grocery shoppers obtained their groceries through pickup, while 48.7% used home delivery. Another 2.3% reported splitting access evenly between pickup and delivery. Because these categories describe reported access, they show how closely pickup and delivery were balanced among online shoppers in that period.
Time was the leading stated reason for ordering groceries online. In 2022, 40.5% of U.S. online grocery shoppers cited time constraints as their main reason. Convenience was the main reason for 10.6%, followed by physical safety concerns at 6.6% and price at 6.0%. These percentages are the reported main reasons, so they should not be added as if they represented every motivation a shopper might have.
The reasons given by people who did not buy groceries online show why an app strategy cannot assume universal adoption. Among U.S. shoppers who did not buy groceries online in 2022, 47.4% mainly preferred seeing and touching products in person. A further 5.2% mainly lacked access to the technology needed to place an order, while 4.3% mainly cited higher online prices.
For meal planning, the distinction matters. An app may help a shopper organize a list while the final purchase still happens in person. Likewise, pickup and delivery solve different time and access problems. The USDA figures measure online grocery shopping broadly and include app and web ordering, so they support conclusions about digital ordering behavior rather than standalone app adoption.
Who uses grocery shopping apps
The 2022 USDA profile of online grocery shoppers shows a concentration in working-age adults and metropolitan households. People aged 25–54 made up 66.6% of U.S. online grocery shoppers, while people older than 54 made up 21.2%.
Women represented 60.0% of online grocery shoppers, compared with 40.0% for men. People with a spouse or partner present made up 65.0%, and people with children under 18 made up 37.5%. These are shares of online grocery shoppers, not estimates of the online-shopping rate within each demographic group.
The same USDA profile reported that non-Hispanic White shoppers made up 66.6% of online grocery shoppers. By education, shoppers with a bachelor’s degree represented 28.9%, and shoppers with more than a bachelor’s degree represented 24.4%. Employed people made up 73.1%.
Location was another strong characteristic: people living in metropolitan areas made up 87.6% of U.S. online grocery shoppers in 2022. That figure describes the composition of the online shopper group. It does not mean that 87.6% of metropolitan residents used grocery apps.
These composition statistics are useful when reading grocery app research, but they require careful interpretation. A group can make up a large share of online shoppers because it is large in the population, because its members participate at a higher rate, or both. The figures above do not independently establish which explanation applies.
Access gaps and modeled participation differences
The USDA also modeled differences in the likelihood and frequency of past-month online grocery shopping. These are modeled associations for 2022, not simple descriptive comparisons and not predictions of an individual shopper’s behavior.
Age showed one of the largest reported differences: people aged 15–24 were 16 percentage points more likely than people aged 55 and older to buy groceries online in the past month. Men were 4 percentage points less likely than women to do so.
Household structure was associated with higher modeled participation. Having a spouse or partner present was associated with a 3-percentage-point higher likelihood of past-month online grocery shopping. Having children under 18 was associated with a 4-percentage-point higher likelihood.
The model also reported differences connected with race and education. Non-Hispanic Black shoppers were 4 percentage points less likely than non-Hispanic White shoppers to buy groceries online in the past month. People with a bachelor’s degree were 13 percentage points more likely than people without a high school education to do so.
Two additional comparisons concerned food assistance status and shopping habits. Income-ineligible SNAP nonparticipants were 4 percentage points more likely than income-eligible SNAP nonparticipants to buy groceries online in the past month. Frequent grocery shoppers were 3 percentage points more likely than nonfrequent grocery shoppers to buy groceries online.
The frequency model adds a different dimension. Men bought groceries online 0.16 fewer times than women during the past month. People with children under 18 bought groceries online 0.22 more times than people without children under 18. These are modeled frequency differences, not percentages of shoppers.
Retailer apps before and during the store visit
Grocery apps are not only delivery tools. FMI’s U.S. Grocery Shopper Trends 2026 reports that 77% of grocery shoppers were digitally engaged before shopping and 71% were digitally engaged while shopping. The displayed FMI summary identifies these as U.S. grocery shopper percentages but does not expose the survey field dates.
At their primary store, 54% of grocery shoppers always shopped in-store, 20% mostly shopped in-store, and 15% shopped in-store and online about equally, according to the 2026 FMI reporting. The categories describe shopping patterns at the primary store and do not represent a complete mutually exclusive distribution in the supplied summary.
During an in-person trip, 54% used retailer apps. Web search was reported by 39%, and 37% visited retailer or manufacturer websites on their phones. These figures show that digital planning and digital assistance can coexist with physical shopping.
FMI’s 2024 reporting also identified common pre-shop actions. Fifty-nine percent of grocery shoppers prepared by looking for coupons or discounts on a store website or app, while 33% used a store website or app to look up product information before shopping. For meal planning, these behaviors connect list creation with price checking and product research before the store visit.
Marketplace scale and basket activity
Instacart’s company-reported figures provide a platform-scale view of grocery app activity. According to Maplebear Inc.’s 2024 Form 10-K, Instacart processed 294.0 million orders in 2024, 9% more than in 2023. Its gross transaction value was $33.461 billion, 10% higher than in 2023.
The company reported $3.378 billion in revenue and $2.542 billion in gross profit for 2024. It also reported more than 7,000 active brands as of December 31, 2024. These figures describe Instacart’s platform and financial reporting, not the entire grocery app market.
Instacart estimated that its advertising delivered more than a 15% average incremental sales lift for brand partners in 2024 internal tests. This is a company estimate from internal tests, so it should not be treated as an independently verified industry-wide effect.
The SEC filing notes that Instacart’s operational metrics are tracked with internal systems and are not independently verified. It also defines gross transaction value as including products, applicable taxes, deposits, local fees, tips, customer fees, and other fees as defined by Instacart. As a result, GTV should not be interpreted as a measure of grocery product revenue alone.
Taken together, the available statistics describe a grocery app landscape with several overlapping uses: recurring online orders, pickup and delivery, coupon and product research, and in-store retailer assistance. The clearest adoption figures are from nationally representative U.S. 2022 data and measure online ordering through apps or websites; the later FMI and Instacart figures provide more recent views of digital shopping behavior and one major platform’s scale.