Retail industry: number of stores of the leading retailers in Italy 2018

In 2018, the leading retailer in terms of number of stores in Italy was Crai. With 3.6 thousand stores, the supermarket chain is present all over the country and registered a turnover of approximately 1.7 billion euros in 2017. Second in the ranking came Conad, another supermarket chain and food cooperative which registered a turnover of 1.3 billion euros in 2017.

Food retail industry in Italy

The food retail industry in Italy is dominated by superstores and supermarkets. These retail formats detain over 40 percent of the market share of food retail industry. The polarization of the market is extremely harmful for smaller and traditional groceries, whose market share has been decreasing constantly and is expected to decrease further, reaching 16.3 percent of the total market in terms of retail sales.

Organic food on the rise

A relatively new trend in the food industry is the organic segment. Since 2010, sales of organic food in Italy increased steadily, reaching a value of approximately 3.1 billion euros in 2016. Moreover, according to a survey published at the beginning of 2019, 19 percent of Italians planned to increase their expenditure on organic and healthy food in the future.