Number Sense is a regular column that uses data to help understand the grocery landscape.
As a numbers-loving grocery industry journalist, nothing commands my attention quite like a supermarket chain's quarterly earnings report. That's where I find a bounty of financial details that let me look under the hood to get a true gauge of a retailer's performance.
But even with all the data bundled into those reports, I always gravitate to a single figure to get a quick sense of how well a company is doing: comparable store sales. And at least by that yardstick, it seems clear that the traditional grocery industry has stalled.
Kroger's identical store sales for its latest quarter put an exclamation point on an alarming trend I've been chronicling for the past year or so. Even with all the steps the nation's largest supermarket operator has taken to lure shoppers to stores and make the case that it offers great value on essential goods, Kroger has delivered steadily declining growth for four consecutive quarters when you measure its performance by how much money its existing stores took in compared to their sales a year ago.
The company's comparable-store sales moved up during its ...