Foodservice commissary sales in 2024 were essentially flat as the category confronted an increasingly budget-conscious consumer on one hand and continued loss of foodservice share to prepared food on the other. Still, vendors and distributors maintain that the commissary category plays an important role for retailers.
Flat commissary sales in 2024 “was not an anomaly,” said Matt Hautau, vice president of merchandising at Core-Mark, in the NACS Magazine article Commissary: A Shrinking Slice of a Growing Pie. “We’re in a recessionary environment. Trips are down and basket size is down,” he explained. “The recent inflationary environment is dragging down c-store consumers and challenging significant behaviors that we’ve benefitted from for a long time. Commissary isn’t being challenged any more than other commodities.”
Overall foodservice sales—which includes prepared food; commissary; and hot, cold, and frozen dispensed beverages—accounted for 27.7% of in-store sales and 38.6% of in-store gross margin dollars in c-stores in 2024, according to the NACS State of the Industry Report of 2024 Data. Prepared food is the dominant player, with a 72.5% share of foodservice sales in 2024.
Among commissary subcategories, sandwiches and wraps (43.9% of category sales in 2024) and ready-to-eat meals (34.8%) dominate.
Want to know more about commissary and how other categories performed in 2024? The NACS State of the Industry Report of 2024 Data is available for purchase.