Sales at UK supermarkets rose to their highest level for six months during the 12 weeks to July 11, according to new figures from Kantar Worldpanel.
The data shows that sales were up 4.4 per from the same period last year, as grocery retailers took advantage of the World Cup celebrations and the warm weather with aggressive promotions and special offers on traditional summer food and drink .
Fraser McKevitt, retail analyst for Kantar Worldpanel, said: “Despite England’s dismal performance in the World Cup, people continued to spend in June while they soaked up the sunshine.”
“We’ve seen consumers spending at the fastest rate since Christmas, taking advantage of extremely competitive promotions on traditional summer items such as beer and barbecue foods .”
It added that supermarket goods on promotion accounted for a record 34.5 per cent of total sales .
Morrisons was again the top performer of the major supermarket chains, posting growth of 6.6 per cent, followed by Sainsburys on 5.3 per cent.
However, the strongest performing chains were the Co-op with sales levels up 19.3 per cent, followed by frozen food specialist Iceland and upmarket chain Waitrose, which saw sales rise 11.4 per cent and 11.3 per cent respectively.
Tesco lagged the market with sales growth of 3.8 per cent, while Asda was further behind on 3.1 per cent.
