The Best Supermarkets in America, Ranked

If you don't live in the Midwest — specifically Minnesota, South Dakota, Missouri, Illinois, Kansas, Iowa and Nebraska — then you probably don't shop at Fareway. But the family-owned supermarket has over 130 stores throughout these states, and its customers are certainly very happy. Fareway polled above the likes of the Giant Company, Brookshires, Food Lion, and Hy-Vee.

“We go above and beyond to provide the highest-quality grocery items at affordable prices with second-to-none customer service,” Fareway states on its website. And it seems that it delivers on these fronts. A 2017 survey from Consumer Reports found that Fareway’s visitors rated the grocery store “excellent” for the friendliness of its staff, the quality of its produce, and value for money.

BJs Wholesale didn’t manage to break into the top 15 of the dunnhumby RPI released in early 2021. But the membership-only store seemingly made a big impression on customers throughout the year. After all, BJs rose above the competition for the 2022 RPI edition, becoming one of the highest climbers in the rankings. The dunnhumby report tried to nail down exactly what BJs’ East Coast customers loved the most.

According to dunnhumby, BJs was one of three supermarkets — along with the Giant Company and Food Lion — that had concentrated on the “personalization of the customer experience.” That could include offering customers coupons and promotions that were meaningful for the individual. This, combined with a smooth operation and products that appear to be good value for money, were significant factors in BJs’ 2022 ranking.

President of North America for dunnhumby, Grant Steadman, stated, “2021 was the year that grocery retail became truly omnichannel,” when the RPI was released. “Retailers who delivered on their customers' evolving needs in-store and online performed best.” That might sound a little bit “inside baseball,” but it basically means that supermarkets such as Walmart offer a great digital service alongside their brick-and-mortar business.

In fact, the survey revealed that Walmart ranked as the fourth-best online supermarket. And it was this ranking more than anything else that put Walmart and other larger retailers way above their competition. Of course, Walmart has the huge advantage of being a massive multinational corporation. It boasts around 10,500 stores and websites worldwide and employs 1.6 million people just in America.

In September 2022 Newsweek magazine announced that Publix had topped its 2023 America’s Best Customer Service ranking for supermarkets. This probably came as no surprise to anybody who'd been paying attention to this annual poll — because Publix has now won it six years in a row. “Being recognized on this list is a testament to our employees’ dedication to serving our customers,” said Publix's director of communications, Maria Brous.

The other interesting thing to note about Publix is that its employees actually own the company. That's right: the 230,000-pius people who work across Publix's 1,304 stores each have the chance to purchase shares in the organization. Perhaps that's why it placed high on Fortune’s 2022 list of “best workplaces in retail.” Other employee benefits include paid parental leave and a student tuition reimbursement scheme.

In 2021 Target made an astounding $104.6 billion. That makes the company the seventh-largest retailer in the country in terms of sales. Of course, Target doesn't just sell groceries — but it has been making significant strides to get customers to buy produce from its aisles in recent years. The company boasted in 2021 that it had gobbled up over $2 billion of the grocery market share in a little over a year of concentrated effort.

But 2022 has proved to be a tough year for all retailers — especially those focusing on “non-essential” items such as electronics or home goods. Target, for example, saw its year-on-year profits dive off a cliff in the second quarter of 2022. Its share price dropped 30 percent as a result of this, too. Yet customers still need to purchase groceries — so this could be an area Target will focus on more in the future.

Out of the 5,320 stores the Walmart organization owns in the United States, only 682 of them are Walmart Neighborhood Markets. These are much, much smaller than your average Walmart Supercenter, and they are usually found in the kind of metropolitan areas that would never usually be big enough for a full-size Walmart. The Neighborhood Markets also focus on groceries and household goods.

It's interesting that in a “Special Inflation Edition” of the 2022 dunnhumby RPI — released in September 2022 — Walmart Neighborhood Market again ranked higher than Walmart. This ranking was different from the regular report because it looked specifically at how customers were responding to the increased costs of living. “Retailers who are focusing their customer value proposition on saving customers money are best positioned to meet the challenges of this prolonged period of inflation and economic uncertainty,” said Steadman.

It's official: people are happy with the experience Costco provides. In fact, Costco placed top of the table in the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) Retail and Consumer Shipping Study 2021-2022. This is a survey that evaluates replies from 36,517 customers about how they got on with various companies throughout 2021. Costco scored 81 — two points higher than its closest competition.

Even though times are hard across the retail industry, Costco could be better placed than its competitors to continue to thrive. Forbes magazine argued that Costco customers generally have more disposable income than those at other discount stores. And the fact that Costco charges its customers a membership fee could also help to offset the rising costs of retail.

Sam’s Club has 600 sites around the U.S. and Puerto Rico and is the biggest membership-based warehouse operator out there. It’s also owned by Walmart, so it has a fair few things going in its favor. But the retailer has fostered its own culture. Sam's Club claims on its website, for instance, that “75 percent of club management was promoted from hourly positions.”

This is not down to luck, either. In 2020 Sam’s Club’s former CEO John Furner revealed that the retailer invested in employee retention after shoppers asked to see familiar faces in stores. “The team leader lives in the community, probably went to school in the city, and he wants to be there,” Furner said. “So, retaining that team leader is just great business for us.”

According to the ACSI Retail and Consumer Shipping Study 2021-2022, Trader Joe’s has the most satisfied customers in the supermarket category. The grocery store has actually topped the survey for the past three years, with its score rising by 1 percent in 2022. The bosses were no doubt also pleased to hear that Trader Joe’s was the leader across the whole index.

Forbes published a report in 2020 that revealed a whole bunch of reasons why people love to shop at Trader Joe’s. Among the enlightening revelations was that the retailer’s staff seem to focus on the customer experience more than anything else. After all, to get a job at Trader Joe’s, interviewees are asked questions including, “Do you possess a sense of adventure?” and “Do you like to make people smile?”

In April 2022 Joson Hart — the CEO of Aldi U.S. — published a letter to its customers. In it, Hart promised that “no matter what happens in the world around us, Aldi will always be the low-price leader in every community we serve.”

And it is this attitude that has helped Aldi earn the best ranking in price perception for five years in a row on the dunnhumby RPI.

The letter from Hart came as Aldi continued to execute its expansion scheme in the U.S. The company has laid out a plan to spend $5 billion to grow its presence on these shores, with a target of 2,300 U.S. Aldi stores set for the end of 2022. That is in addition to the Trader Joe’s stores that also make up part of the Aldi family.

Amazon Fresh marked its first foray into the dunnhumby RPI with an impressive ranking at the number five position. It’s possible, of course, that the supermarket would have placed higher if it had more of a physical presence throughout the U.S. Amazon Fresh currently lists just 44 stores across the country — but more are on the way. And there are at least a couple of customer-friendly advantages to an Amazon Fresh shop.

Amazon Fresh can offer Amazon Prime discounts to its members, for one thing. And the stores use electronic labels for their products, so the prices can change at the drop of a hat — in a good way! But the other thing that will appeal to many people is that you don't have to wait in line to check out of an Amazon Fresh store. There is still that option, but you can otherwise use your phone and your Amazon account to pay for goods and just... leave the store.

Great Place to Work puts together a lot of insightful lists about businesses each year — and Wegmans has scored highly in a bunch of them. In 2022 the luxury supermarket was ranked first in Fortune's Best Workplaces in Retail list and its Best Workplaces in New York list. Wegmans also achieved fourth place in People magazine’s Companies that Care ranking and — most significantly — number three in the Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For table.

“Our philosophy has always been to take care of our people, so they can take care of our customers,” said Wegmans’ president and CEO Colleen Wegman after hearing the news. “It is extremely inspiring how our employees rise to every occasion to help others, beginning with each other. We believe this caring culture is what has earned us a spot on this list for the past 25 years and we could not be more grateful.”

Market Basket may be at number three on this list — rising three places from its slot in the 2021 ranking — but it was number one on the Special Inflation Edition of dunnhumby's RPI. It achieved this remarkable feat by scoring well in both the “base price perception” and “mass promotions perception” metrics. Importantly, though, customers felt Market Basket was the supermarket most likely to save them money.

“Market Basket has shown itself to be the best-performing retailer in these times of economic uncertainty, by being the best in the country at saving customers money while simultaneously building stronger emotional connections with their shoppers and thereby increasing their shopper visits faster than most other retailers,” Steadman reported. Market Basket didn't score well in the “save-me-time” metric — but shoppers seem okay with that at the moment.

Texas and Mexico are well served by H-E-B. The grocer has 425 stores in these areas and is among Texas’ biggest employers with 145,000 workers. These days, the stores generate $34 billion in revenue each year — not bad going for a company that’s 117 years old. Most impressively of all, though, is that H-E-B beat all of its competition to be the top grocery e-commerce destination in America.

“H-E-B’s impressive performance proves that it’s possible to compete and win against Amazon when it comes to grocery e-commerce. Their success offers mid-size and regional retailers a roadmap on how to succeed online,” said dunnhumby’s Steadman. The supermarket scored big for its “emotional connection” with customers and for successfully increasing shoppers’ online spending by 27 percent.

“Amazon, for the second year in a row, is the retailer with the strongest customer value proposition, a spot it took only for the first time last year,” the dunnhumby RPI revealed. “Amazon continues to benefit from the growing importance of digital and speed, which already happen to have been its biggest competitive advantages before COVID.”

Shoppers’ habits have changed dramatically over the course of the past few years, of course. And as digital grocery sales have doubled thanks to the pandemic — it now accounts for 10 percent of all grocery sales — Amazon has gained a lot of momentum and customer trust. In fact, dunnhumby claimed that these days a robust digital experience is just as important as the quality of the product.