Best selling foods of 2020

Grocery stores had their busiest year ever in 2020 and it had a lot of drama: toilet paper hoarding, yeast and flour flying off the shelves, delays in producing and shipping, putting up plexiglass partitions in the checkout lanes, and more. Grocery store workers were on the front lines of this pandemic, and our hats are off to them as they worked at a frantic pace and had to deal with plenty of disgruntled customers. Looking back at the year in grocery store sales, Kroger (the largest chain in the US) has put together a list of the top selling foods in 2020.

Kroger used year-over-year sales growth across their nearly 2,800 stores to create a list of which items saw the biggest increases this year. While you might expect that comfort foods like macaroni and cheese or snacks like candy bars would be at the top, it was instead an item associated with diets: calorie-free soda sales climbed the most of any product. The comfort foods we expect were hot on the soda’s heels, however, with the remainder of the top five being Mexican blend shredded cheese, flavored potato chips, Sauvignon Blanc wine, and heavy whipping cream.

Photo of Ham, Brie, and apple French toast from from Panini Express by Daniel Leader and Lauren Chattman