M&S has overtaken Co-op to become the UK’s seventh-biggest grocer in food and drink sales, according to unpublished Worldpanel data seen by The Grocer.
M&S’s food and drink market share was 5.1% in the 52 weeks to 13 July 2025, compared with Co-op’s 4.7%. The pair have swapped places since the previous 52-week period, when M&S had a 4.7% food and drink market share and Co-op had 4.9%.
M&S’s food and drink sales have grown by 11.5% year on year while Co-op’s were flat, changing by 0.0%.
It makes M&S the UK’s seventh-biggest grocer in food and drink sales behind Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Aldi, Asda, Lidl and Morrisons, in descending order, with Co-op eighth and Waitrose ninth.
The food and drink market share data, which is distributed privately to retailers, includes sales of fresh, chilled and ambient groceries but not alcohol, household, toiletries or healthcare. It is different to the grocery market share data published monthly by Worldpanel – formerly Kantar – which relates to all expenditure through store tills excluding petrol and in-store concessions.
The monthly published data also does not include a market share figure for M&S, on the basis it falls outside Worldpanel’s definition of a grocer because of its clothing & home divisions.
Read more: Lidl overtakes Morrisons to be UK’s fifth-biggest supermarket in food and drink sales
M&S and Co-op were hit by major cyberattacks within days of each other earlier this year, with M&S discovering the attackers on 19 April and Co-op spotting malicious activity on 25 April.
M&S acknowledged having “pockets of limited availability” in Food Halls as it took systems offline later in April.
Co-op suffered severe and widespread availability issues over a number of weeks as it shut down parts of its IT estate that deal with supply chain and logistics operations.
Despite the cyberattack, M&S has also increased its lead over Waitrose in food and drink sales. Waitrose’s food and drink market share was 4.5% in the 52 weeks to 13 July 2025, up from 4.4% in the previous 52 weeks. It means M&S’s lead grew from 0.3 percentage points to 0.6% percentage points.
Read more: Has M&S or Co-op done a better job in evolving cybercomms?
“We’re working hard on the transformation of M&S Food, to become a store customers can trust with their shopping lists,” said M&S Food MD Alex Freudmann.
“We have a long way to go, but it’s encouraging to see customers are responding to our investment in quality, price, availability, store formats and, above all, the hard work of our 65,000 colleagues around the country.”
Co-op sees Worldpanel’s take-home methodology as an incomplete gauge of its performance, arguing it ignores a large chunk of its sales as a convenience retailer.
“We are proud to be the leading UK convenience retailer, not a supermarket, with a market share 12.7%, as reported by Circana, who measure all convenience categories, whilst Kantar [Worldpanel] excludes circa 30% of our sales, including many food and drink categories such as food to go, confectionery and soft drinks,” said a Co-op spokesperson.
“We continue to grow ahead of the convenience market and also hold nearly 25% of the UK quick commerce market.”
A Worldpanel spokesperson said: “We do not publish retailer market share data for select categories. Our grocery market share release provides a full view of grocers’ performance, including all expenditure through store tills except petrol and in-store concessions.”
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