Americans spend $170m more on table grapes

The fresh table grape category was worth $2.7 billion in retail sales in the United States in the 52 weeks to May 28 this year, a figure 6.7% higher – equal to  $169.6 million – than that for the same period a year ago.

Nielsen figures also show that the volume of fresh table grapes sold at retail also increased, rising 6.2% to a total of more than 1.21 billion pounds.

Indeed, there was not just growth in the overall grape category but in all subcategories, and in both volume and value.

Red grapes account for about half of America’s total spend on grapes and half the total grape volume sold at retail there. This sub-category grew 5.2% in value to $1.38 billion – boosting the total spend on grapes by $67.8 million – off a volume up 4.7% to 636.14 million pounds.

But it was white (green) grapes that made the biggest contribution to growth in the grape category in the last year in absolute terms. Though accounting for a smaller share of the overall grape category – 40.2% of the total volume and 41.2% of total value – white grapes generated 53% of the increase in spend (compared to 40% for red grapes), equivalent to more than $90.1 million.

Americans spent a total of nearly $1.12 billion at retail on white grapes over the year to May 28, which was 8.8% more than in the previous year. Similarly, the volume of white grapes sold was up 8.7%, to 489.2 million pounds.

As for black (blue) grapes, the growth here was more modest, namely by 4% in value to $185.8 billion and by 3% in volume to 82.26 million pounds .

The ‘other’ subcategory saw the highest rate of growth in both value and volume at retail, shooting up 21.4% in spend to $19.56 million and 10.3% in volume to 6.7 million pounds.

And the ‘mixed’ subcategory logged the second highest growth rate, with a 14.5% upswing in value to $7.7 million and a solid 9.8% in volume to just over 3 million pounds.