How Many Grocery Stores Are in the US? #
The United States had 99,939 grocery stores with paid employees (Census County Business Patterns, 2023). A further 73,117 food retail businesses filed with no paid employees (Census Nonemployer Statistics, 2023), on a different edition of the industry classification that does not cover the same set of stores.
Those two figures should not be added, and the method section below explains why. For grocery retail the employer count is the usable answer: 99,939 staffed stores in 2023.
That figure covers supermarkets, neighbourhood grocers, delicatessen-style general food stores and convenience stores. It does not cover the formats that sell the largest share of the country's groceries, which federal statistics classify as general merchandise rather than food retail. Any use of a grocery store count needs that caveat attached, and the section below sets out exactly which stores fall outside.
Supermarkets and Convenience Stores #
Census splits food stores in two, and the split matters more than the total.
| Type | Locations with paid employees | Employees |
|---|---|---|
| Supermarkets and other grocery stores | 62,947 | 2,808,118 |
| Convenience stores | 36,992 | 166,083 |
| All grocery stores | 99,939 | 2,974,201 |
Source: Census County Business Patterns (2023). Convenience stores make up more than a third of the locations and a small fraction of the employment. A supermarket runs a bakery, a deli counter, a meat and fish counter, a produce department and a set of checkouts, each of which carries staff. A convenience store is typically one or two people on a shift.
The practical consequence is that a store count is a poor proxy for the size of the grocery sector, and an employment figure is a better one. It is also why a report on supermarkets and a report on convenience stores describe two different businesses despite sitting under the same heading.
Want the full how many grocery stores in the us data?
Complete data with 5-year forecasts, geographic breakdowns, and competitive analysis. Every data point sourced and cited.
Need the numbers only? Data Pack $99
What Counts as a Grocery Store #
Supermarkets and Other Grocery (except Convenience) Stores (NAICS 445110) comprises establishments generally known as supermarkets and grocery stores primarily engaged in retailing a general line of food, such as canned and frozen foods, fresh fruits and vegetables, and fresh and prepared meats, fish and poultry. Delicatessen-type establishments primarily engaged in retailing a general line of food are included in this industry.
The phrase that does the work is "a general line of food". A shop selling only cheese, only meat or only produce is a specialty food store in a different industry. A delicatessen that also functions as a general grocer belongs here; one that is essentially a sandwich counter does not.
Convenience Stores (NAICS 445120) comprises establishments known as convenience stores or food marts, except those with fuel pumps, primarily engaged in retailing a limited line of goods that generally includes milk, bread, soda and snacks.
Two boundaries follow from that definition and both catch people out. The first is that the line between a convenience store and a grocery store is the scope of the selection, not the floor area: a small shop carrying a full food range is a grocery store, and a large one carrying essentials is a convenience store. The second is the fuel pump. A convenience store attached to fuel pumps is not a convenience store in federal data at all; it is classified as a gasoline station, and the great majority of the country's convenience retailing sits there rather than here.
Where the Largest Grocery Sellers Are Counted Instead #
The formats that dominate grocery sales are classified outside food retail entirely, and this is the most important thing to understand before quoting any grocery store count.
Warehouse clubs and supercenters (NAICS 452311) are establishments primarily engaged in retailing a general line of groceries, including a significant amount and variety of fresh fruits, vegetables, dairy products, meats and other perishable groceries, in combination with a general line of new merchandise such as apparel, furniture and appliances. Census places them in general merchandise stores, because the defining feature is the combination rather than the food alone. Every supercenter and membership warehouse in the country sits in that code and none of them are in the figures above.
Dollar stores and variety stores (NAICS 452319) are also general merchandise, listed by Census alongside general stores and variety stores. Many now carry a meaningful food assortment, and none of that shows up in a grocery store count.
None of this is a flaw in the data. NAICS classifies establishments by their primary activity, and a store selling food, clothing and televisions under one roof is genuinely not the same kind of business as a supermarket. The error is only in reading one figure as though it answered the other question.
Grocery Businesses Without Employees #
73,117 food retail businesses filed with no paid employees (Census Nonemployer Statistics, 2023). That figure is published on the 2022 edition of the industry classification, which draws the grocery boundary differently from the 2017 edition used for the employer count, so the two are not directly comparable.
Nonemployer Statistics is assembled from business tax records rather than a survey, so it reaches businesses too small to appear in an employment program. In food retail that group is mostly owner-run: single-owner corner shops where the proprietor and unpaid family members do the work, market and stall traders, online sellers of packaged and specialty food, and seasonal operations.
These businesses have receipts and a tax filing under a food retail code, and no payroll. They add nothing to employment, because by definition they employ nobody.
How We Counted #
Stores with paid employees come from County Business Patterns, which counts each location that had payroll during the year across the 50 states and the District of Columbia. A chain with 400 supermarkets is 400 establishments, not one. The reference period is the pay period including 12 March.
Businesses with no paid employees come from Nonemployer Statistics, which Census builds from tax records. No business appears in both, because one with any payroll is excluded from the nonemployer file. Non-overlapping is not the same as comparable, and here the classification edition breaks the comparison.
The two programs are published on different editions of the industry classification, and for grocery retail the editions do not agree. County Business Patterns uses the 2017 edition, where grocery stores (4451) means supermarkets plus convenience stores, and vending machine operators are a separate industry outside food retail. Nonemployer Statistics uses the 2022 edition, where the same 4451 heading was rebuilt as grocery and convenience retailers and took vending machine operators in with it.
That is why this page gives no combined total. The nonemployer figure of 73,117 includes 21,746 vending machine operators (Census Nonemployer Statistics, 2023) that the employer count of 99,939 excludes by construction, and the 2022 edition also absorbed other retail codes that were eliminated outright, so the overlap cannot be reconciled from published totals alone.
Both programs suppress figures that would disclose an individual business, and suppression is heaviest at detailed geography. National totals are therefore more complete than the county figures beneath them.
What the Count Does Not Show #
A national count answers how many and nothing else.
| Question | On this page | In the report |
|---|---|---|
| How many grocery stores are there | Yes | Yes |
| Supermarket versus convenience split | Yes | Yes |
| Industry receipts | No | Yes |
| Store counts across years | No | Yes |
| Employment across years | No | Yes |
Get the reports: Supermarkets and grocery stores → · Convenience stores →
Revenue and the trend over time are in our Convenience Stores and Supermarkets reports, each figure carrying the dataset and year it came from. State-level store counts and the published concentration ratio are in the Standard Supermarkets report specifically; the Basic Convenience Stores report is national only.
For the economics of running a store, see grocery store profit margins. For the wider sector, see retail industry trends.