Online Grocery Marketing Scorecard Report

Three-quarters of Americans’ calories come from food purchased at retailers, making grocery stores and the retail food environment key contributors to the diets and health of Americans. As the food environment evolves, it is becoming more digitized. The COVID-19 pandemic more than doubled sales in online grocery shopping in the U.S., and online grocery sales is projected to account for over ~21% of total grocery sales in the U.S. by 2025. The expansion of online grocery shopping presents new opportunities and challenges for improving food access and prioritizing healthy food marketing. Despite the growing use of online grocery platforms, there is limited research examining online food marketing practices. To address this gap, the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) conducted online shopping simulations in 2023 to assess the online food retail environments at 11 top revenue-generating online food retailers in the U.S. Our study scored and ranked these retailers based on the healthfulness of food marketing online with respect to the following four dimensions: • Pricing: healthfulness of products marketed with price marketing strategies (e.g., discounts, rewards, and time-limited deals) • Placement: healthfulness of products marketed with placement strategies (e.g., sponsored product recommendations, cross-promotions, search result ordering) • Promotion: healthfulness of products marketed with promotion strategies other than pricing (e.g., title cards, banner advertisements, branded site content, user feedback, links to social media pages, retailer-generated shopping lists) • Usability: prevalence of website tools or features that support an informed and equitable shopping experience for all customers (e.g., nutrition-related filters, online SNAP acceptance, and compliance with web accessibility guidelines) This report is the first of its kind to identify and rank individual online retailer performance—thus providing information retailers can use to increase healthy food marketing, decrease unhealthy food marketing, and make healthy food choices online accessible for all consumers.

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Public policy and the grocery store: improving access to healthy food

This toolkit is specifically designed to support your efforts to improve the retail food environment in your community through policy interventions at the state and local level.

Model Ordinances:Healthy Checkout and Keep Soda in the Soda Aisle

There are two model ordinances in this document. The first ordinance creates healthy checkout aisles. The second ordinance keeps soda in the aisle rather than the checkout and numerous other locations in grocery stores. These policies can be modified to meet your locality’s unique needs, but please note that changes should be made with guidance from a lawyer. Also note that citations in the Findings section are for advocates’ reference but are generally not included in codes and should be removed in the final version of your legislation.

Roadmap and Toolkit for a Healthy Checkout Ordinance

Healthy Checkout refers to efforts to improve the nutrition in the food and beverage products sold in areas where shoppers stand in line to purchase their groceries. It is a strategy that changes the shopping environment to make it easier for customers and their children to avoid both marketing and impulse purchases of sugary drinks and snacks high in sugar and salt.

CSPI applauds the expansion of online Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and urges for further strategies to support SNAP shoppers