The Grocer Gold Awards 2026: Grocer 33 — availability award

Winner: Sainsbury’s

Sainsbury’s triumphed in our annual competition to find the retailer with the best availability.

On the basis of who could most consistently deliver a full weekly shop, Sainsbury’s showed huge a improvement over the past 12 months: our mystery shoppers checked out with full baskets 10 times at Sainsbury’s – well up on last year’s three. It also picked up the most availability wins this year with 26, another massive improvement of 12.

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In second place, Tesco also improved from three to six full baskets, and all supermarkets reduced the number of gaps on their shelves. The measure known as availability percentage, which focuses purely on out-of-stock items, improved for all five retailers but again Sainsbury’s led the way. It had no out-of-stocks for 20 weeks out of 50, scoring an average availability of 96.5%. Hot on its heels came Waitrose (96.4%) and Tesco (96.3%), though Asda (93.9%) and Morrisons (92.9%) weren’t too much further behind in a clear sign of improved availability across the board. Morrisons’ performance was the least consistent. It had an impressive eight full baskets but recorded availability of less than 85% in six of its mystery shops.

Those small percentage points translate into huge numbers, of course. Some £2.1bn of grocery sales are at risk each year from stock gaps, according to research by DHL supply chain and Retail Economics, as customers abandon the item all together or turn to rivals.