The Hidden Reality Behind Smaller Produce Aisles
Walk into your local grocery store today, and you might notice something feels different. The produce section that once greeted you with towering displays of fresh fruits and vegetables might seem… smaller. You’re not imagining things.
Across America, major supermarket chains have been quietly reducing their produce sections throughout 2025, making strategic changes that many shoppers haven’t even noticed yet. Traditional grocers are losing out on produce sales to supercenters and club stores. The shift represents a fundamental change in how Americans buy their fresh fruits and vegetables.
What’s driving this trend isn’t just about space or cost – it’s about survival in an increasingly competitive market where grocery stores’ share of total produce dollar sales fell from 42.9% in 2020 to 41.1% in 2023. These numbers tell a story that many shoppers are completely unaware of.
Target’s Strategic Produce Downsizing
Anyone who’s walked through Target on a search for strawberries already knows how trim the produce section is. Target has made deliberate choices about the size and scope of their fresh produce offerings, focusing more on packaged goods where they can compete effectively. The Minneapolis-based retailer discovered that their strength lies elsewhere in the grocery game.
While Target maintains produce sections in their stores, they’ve consistently kept these areas smaller compared to traditional supermarkets. Target came in second place for overall value according to Bank of America’s analysis, but the Minneapolis-based company emerged as the leader for packaged foods at the center of its stores. Packaged foods at Target were 3% cheaper than similar items at Walmart.
The strategy makes sense when you realize that Target isn’t trying to be your primary grocery destination. They’re positioning themselves as the convenient stop for specific items, not the place where families do their weekly produce shopping.
Safeway’s Florida Exit and National Reductions
Safeway’s story in 2025 tells us everything about the pressure facing traditional supermarkets. That same year, Albertsons closed several stores across multiple divisions, including all three Safeway stores in Florida. These stores were sold to Publix for an undisclosed price. The complete exit from Florida wasn’t just about store closures – it represented a strategic retreat from markets where produce competition had become too intense.
The remaining Safeway locations haven’t been immune to changes either. As of Wednesday morning, employees from 43 stores and one distribution center in Denver have walked off the job to protest what the union calls unfair labor practices. Workers are striking to fix understaffing and get guarantees that health and pension benefits will be fully funded. Understaffing directly impacts produce sections, where fresh items require constant attention and rotation.
When stores operate with skeleton crews, produce sections are often the first to suffer. Displays become smaller, variety decreases, and the overall shopping experience deteriorates.
Kroger’s Mariano’s Store Closures Signal Broader Changes
Even giants like Kroger aren’t immune to the pressure. The stores, in Buffalo Grove, Glenview and Bloomingdale, are set to shutter in August, reducing Mariano’s 44-store retail footprint by 7%, the company confirmed Tuesday. During a first quarter earnings report Friday, Kroger said it is planning to close about 60 stores across the country over the next 18 months.
These closures don’t just represent lost jobs – they represent lost produce buying power. When chains close stores, they lose the volume purchasing advantages that allow them to stock large, diverse produce sections. The remaining stores often compensate by reducing the space devoted to fresh produce, focusing instead on higher-margin packaged goods.
Kroger’s situation is particularly telling because they’re typically considered strong in the produce category. Kroger, the largest U.S. supermarket chain, placed third for overall value, but won first place for the cheapest organic produce. Yet even they’re feeling the pressure to optimize space allocation.
Walmart’s Produce Strategy Shift
Walmart presents an interesting case study because while they’re not necessarily shrinking their produce sections, they’re fundamentally changing how produce fits into their overall strategy. Produce is the first thing customers see when they enter Walmart and a key part of the retailer’s defense against Amazon. So Walmart is giving its produce aisles a makeover.
However, this makeover comes with trade-offs. While Kroger is adding more new stores, Walmart is widening aisles and installing bins to give their produce departments a more “farmers market” feel. The price of produce is important, but the freshness is key. But wider aisles and bigger bins don’t necessarily mean more variety – sometimes they mean fewer total SKUs presented in a more appealing way.
The quality concerns persist too. When it comes to fresh items, like meat and produce, Walmart’s quality is not as good as Kroger’s. Walmart may have cheaper produce, but their meat quality is lacking. This quality gap may be driving some of their strategic decisions about space allocation.
Albertsons’ Nationwide Consolidation Impact
Albertsons has been perhaps the most aggressive in reshaping their produce footprint across the country. The Florida division, which was always discontiguous with Albertsons’ main market, suffered a blow in June 2008 when Albertsons LLC entered into an agreement with Lakeland, Florida-based Publix stores to sell 49 Florida Albertsons locations to the chain. This included 15 stores in Northern and Northwest Florida, 30 locations in Central Florida, and four locations in South Florida. The sale was completed in September.
This wasn’t just about Florida – it represented a broader strategy of consolidation that affected produce operations nationwide. When you’re selling off entire divisions, the remaining stores often have to operate with reduced distribution networks and buying power.
The ripple effects continue today. With fewer stores and less negotiating power with suppliers, remaining Albertsons locations have had to make tough choices about how much space to dedicate to produce versus other categories that offer better margins.
Traditional Supermarkets Losing Market Share
The numbers paint a stark picture of why these changes are happening. While supermarkets remain the most commonly shopped, mass/supercenters gained big with 57% of Americans shopping there for fresh fruit and vegetables versus 50% in the 2023 study. This shift in shopping patterns has forced traditional supermarkets to reconsider their approach.
It’s not just about price competition either. Consumers purchase fresh produce at an average of two to three different store channels—illustrating the fractured nature of the fresh produce dollar. When customers split their produce shopping across multiple retailers, no single store can justify maintaining massive produce sections.
The economics are brutal: if customers are only buying some of their produce at your store, you can’t afford to maintain the same level of variety and freshness that you could when they did all their produce shopping with you.
The Shrink Problem Driving Space Reductions
Behind the scenes, there’s another factor forcing supermarkets to reconsider their produce sections: shrink. The National Retail Federation’s (NRF) 2022 National Retail Security Survey revealed a staggering loss of $94.5 billion due to shrink in 2021. That figure represents a substantial increase from the previous year’s total of $90.8 billion.
Produce is particularly vulnerable to shrink. The 2011–2012 average annual shrink rates for individual fresh vegetables varied from 2.2 percent for sweet corn to 62.9 percent for turnip greens and for individual fresh fruit ranged from 4.1 percent for bananas to 43.1 percent for papayas. When you’re losing that much product to spoilage, theft, and damage, the financial pressure to reduce produce space becomes overwhelming.
Smart retailers have learned that sometimes less is more. Ultimately, Price Chopper was able to reduce shrink from about 25% to 15% in their fresh foods departments. Vanderlinden said he felt comfortable with the 15% range, because reducing shrink even further in a fresh department could lead to out-of-stocks. Smaller, more manageable produce sections can actually improve profitability.
Club Stores and Supercenters Changing the Game
The rise of club stores and supercenters has fundamentally altered how Americans think about produce shopping. These formats offer a different value proposition that traditional supermarkets struggle to match. The shift to buying more produce from mass merchants and club stores is not because traditional stores are doing anything wrong; it is just that these other formats have a specific formula for success which includes the efficiencies coming from selling larger bulk packages.
When customers can buy a week’s worth of produce in one bulk purchase at Costco or Sam’s Club, they don’t need the daily-shopping-friendly displays that traditional supermarkets have built their produce sections around. This shift has allowed traditional stores to reduce their produce footprint without necessarily losing customers.
The math is simple: if customers are shopping for produce less frequently but buying more per trip, stores can accommodate them with smaller but more efficient produce sections.
Supply Chain Disruptions Affecting Section Sizes
The produce supply chain has faced unprecedented challenges in 2025. In 2025, shoppers could notice a lack of fresh produce on the shelves for various reasons. In 2025, shoppers could notice a lack of fresh produce on the shelves for various reasons. These supply disruptions have forced stores to adapt by reducing the variety they attempt to carry.
President Donald Trump has vowed to enact greater restrictions on immigration and conduct mass deportations of undocumented migrants. As his administration begins implementing these policies, concerns are growing in the agricultural sector. If immigration policies tighten to the point where farm workers become harder to find or hire, it could lead to significant labor shortages. When certain products can’t be reliably sourced, retailers and suppliers may shift focus to more stable categories.
Climate change adds another layer of complexity. Climate change is another factor that can lead to food shortages. Extreme weather events, like floods and droughts, can impact growing in farming regions, which may limit crop yields. Stores are responding by focusing on core produce items they can consistently source rather than maintaining large sections with unpredictable inventory.
The Technology Factor in Space Optimization
Modern supermarkets are using sophisticated data analytics to optimize their space allocation, and the results often favor reducing produce sections. Most retailers have been doing category management in center store for a long time, but the problem with perishables is that they really lack the detailed information at the item level.
When retailers finally get this detailed data, they often discover that their produce sections are far less profitable than they imagined. For example, an item-level profit analysis made with Fresh Market Manager category management software made by Park City Group, indicated that 379 of the company’s 1,500 fresh bakery SKUs had a negative net contribution. More than 680 items were cut, reducing shrink by $2 million and producing a 3% lift in sales the first year after implementation.
Similar analysis in produce sections often reveals that stores can maintain customer satisfaction while significantly reducing the number of SKUs they carry. This translates directly into smaller physical footprints for produce departments.
Consumer Shopping Patterns Drive Changes
Perhaps most importantly, the way Americans shop for groceries has fundamentally changed. For most of us, the food system isn’t a distant farm or a produce distribution center. It’s the grocery store. We push carts through brightly lit aisles where abstract forces—supply chains, agricultural policy, consumer trends—become tangible reality.
But those shopping patterns are evolving rapidly. Meanwhile, 70% of shoppers are concerned with rising prices at the grocery store, according to a 2024 report from the Food Industry Association. With potential shortages ahead, food prices are expected to continue to rise: the latest prediction from the Institute of Grocery Distribution expects food price inflation will increase by nearly 5% in 2025.
Price-conscious consumers are changing where and how they shop for produce. They’re more likely to compare prices across multiple retailers, shop sales more strategically, and buy in bulk when they find good deals. This behavior supports the trend toward smaller, more focused produce sections in traditional supermarkets.
The quiet shrinking of produce sections in America’s supermarkets reflects a complex web of economic pressures, changing consumer behaviors, and strategic adaptations to new competitive realities. While shoppers might not immediately notice these changes, they represent a fundamental shift in how we think about grocery shopping and fresh food access in America. As these trends continue to evolve, the traditional supermarket produce section as we knew it may become a thing of the past. What will replace it remains to be seen, but one thing is certain: the grocery industry’s relationship with fresh produce will never be the same again.
