This Is America’s Favorite Grocery Store Right Now

A lot of variables go into determining a favorite supermarket: location convenience, items retailed, prices, and quality of products are a few. Sometimes, it’s even nostalgia or a personal bias.

Thanks to a customer satisfaction survey from Morning Consult Intelligence, a public opinion data company, there’s some insight into what, broadly, is America’s favorite grocery store.

In the Spring 2017 Most Loved Brands list, the company surveyed 35,000 consumers in 200,000 interviews about 500 prominent brands in America. If you think it’s high-end retailer Whole Foods or the more affordable Trader Joe’s, think again!

Kroger is the standout winner of this particular survey with a favorability factor of 53 percent. The top five are as follows: Kroger, Whole Foods (48 percent), Safeway (40 percent), and Albertsons (33 percent) and Publix (33 percent) tied in fourth place.

University of Pennsylvania Professor David Reibstein told Morning Consult Intelligence that consumer’s preference of Kroger over Whole Foods shows that the grocery shopping experience is swayed by other variables like cost and convenience. “This goes beyond just brand,” Reibstein says. “It’s not just the name itself.”

The one limitation of the survey is that it studied brands based on market share, reports Food & Wine. As such, smaller brands like Trader Joe’s, which has 461 stores across the nation, did not make the cut. So it’s entirely likely that a small-scale chain is preferred more by consumers than Kroger, but we won’t find out with this particular survey.

Earlier this year, the American Customer Satisfaction Index surveyed 12,515 customers to see which retailers ranked best in terms of customer service. The ranking secured Costco a spot as the leading retailer in the specialty retail category, while Trader Joe’s topped the supermarket category. The grocery store chain was followed by Publix (84) and a three-way tie between Aldi, H-E-B, and Wegmans at 83.