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Bed Bath & Beyond returned to physical retail in August 2025, when the first store to carry the name since the chain's 2023 liquidation opened in Brentwood, Tennessee. The format signaled how much the strategy had changed. At roughly 15,000 square feet, in a former Kirkland's, the location is a fraction of the 25,000-to-50,000-square-foot stores the brand operated before bankruptcy, reflecting a deliberate move toward smaller, neighborhood-format stores.
The format shift is just one element of a broader restructuring. The name now belongs to Beyond Inc. – since renamed Bed Bath & Beyond Inc. – which is reviving the legacy brand through two distinct acquisitions. The company is acquiring Kirkland's, the home-decor chain, and converting select stores into small-format Bed Bath & Beyond Home locations, and has also agreed to acquire The Container Store and co-brand its stores as "The Container Store / Bed Bath & Beyond."
But in a category that increasingly rewards discounters and sharply differentiated retailers, is there still room for a brand like Bed Bath & Beyond, and in what form?
It is easy to forget how dominant Bed Bath & Beyond once was. In 2019, already past its heyday, it still captured the single largest share of visits to home furnishing retailers in the country, acting as the broad, generalist default for the category.
A lot has changed since. Visits to brick-and-mortar home furnishing retailers fell roughly 27% from 2019 to 2025, and within that smaller pie the leaderboard reshuffled around Bed Bath & Beyond's absence. HomeGoods now sits at the front, reflecting where the category's momentum has gone – toward off-price and sharply differentiated retailers. At the same time, no single full-price, national retailer moved into the position Bed Bath & Beyond vacated, the broad home brand that shoppers across very different incomes and life stages defaulted to.
That open role is the opening a revived Bed Bath & Beyond is built around. The brand is betting that what failed was the format – a massive store carrying an exhaustive, full-price assortment behind a coupon, which is a format that off-price now beats on price and that specialists beat on focus. But the recognition itself, a name a wide range of shoppers still associate with outfitting a home, has remained strong, and the comeback may work if it claims the role without rebuilding the format. That is what the unusual structure is designed to do.
Share of Total Home Furnishing Visits by Chain — the 20 Largest Plus All Others — 2019 vs. 2025
Circle area is proportional to each year's total visits, which fell about 27% from 2019 to 2025. Slices show each chain's share of all home furnishing visits; the 20 largest chains are shown individually and the remainder is grouped as "Other." Bed Bath & Beyond liquidated all its stores in 2023 (its small 2025 relaunch was too recent to register here); Christmas Tree Shops (2023) and Conn's HomePlus (2024) closed all locations and have not returned. Source: Placer.ai.
| Retailer | 2019 visit share | 2025 visit share |
|---|---|---|
| Bed Bath & Beyond | 23.7% | 0.0% |
| HomeGoods | 19.3% | 38.3% |
| IKEA | 11.5% | 11.2% |
| At Home | 7.5% | 10.5% |
| World Market | 5.3% | 7.2% |
| Ashley | 4.4% | 5.1% |
| Kirkland's | 4.0% | 3.0% |
| Christmas Tree Shops | 3.7% | 0.0% |
| The Container Store | 1.8% | 1.6% |
| Rooms To Go Furniture Store | 1.7% | 1.8% |
| Bob's Discount Furniture | 1.4% | 2.7% |
| Pottery Barn | 1.1% | 1.2% |
| Crate and Barrel | 1.0% | 1.4% |
| Old Time Pottery | 1.0% | 0.6% |
| Conn's HomePlus | 1.0% | 0.0% |
| La-Z-Boy | 0.9% | 1.0% |
| Value City Furniture | 0.8% | 0.9% |
| Raymour & Flanigan Furniture Store | 0.7% | 0.9% |
| Homesense | 0.7% | 2.9% |
| Living Spaces | 0.7% | 1.1% |
| RH (Restoration Hardware) | 0.0% | 0.8% |
| Norwalk Furniture | 0.0% | 0.6% |
| Furniture Row | 0.0% | 0.5% |
| Other | 7.8% | 6.8% |
Rather than reopen its own stores, Bed Bath & Beyond is returning through two retailers it is absorbing, both of which have been losing visits year over year. The declines are not one shared problem but two different ones, and the logic of the comeback is that the Bed Bath & Beyond name addresses each.
The Container Store's difficulty is frequency, with a business organized around storage and home organization – a category shoppers turn to only in occasional project bursts, and affluent customers likely have few reasons to come back between closet overhauls and moves. Co-branding the stores as Bed Bath & Beyond is meant to widen that reason to visit, folding in the everyday kitchen, bath, and bedding categories the name is known for, and lifting trip frequency without pushing away the premium shopper the chain already has.
Meanwhile, Kirkland's is a broad home-and-decor generalist without a sharp identity, sitting in the same exposed middle that off-price and specialists have been pulling apart – its stores draw a mainstream suburban shopper but offer little specific reason to choose them. Converting them to Bed Bath & Beyond Home is meant to supply that reason, a more recognized name with broader pull than the Kirkland's banner generated on its own.
Beyond improving the assortment, Bed Bath & Beyond can also boost traffic to converted Kirkland stores and co-branded The Container Stores by bringing in an audience that each chain lacks.
The Container Store draws a narrow, premium audience organized around storage and home organization, while Kirkland's draws a broader, more middle-income suburban shopper for general home goods and decor. Analysing each chain's trade area composition as well as Bed Bath & Beyond's 2019 audience suggests that Bed Bath & Beyond can help each one reach the half of the market it currently misses: In its last pre-COVID year, Bed Bath & Beyond over-indexed both among the premium households The Container Store already draws and among the mainstream suburban families that have long anchored Kirkland's.
And for Bed Bath & Beyond, the arrangement supplies two store networks aimed at different shoppers, one more affluent, one more mainstream, reached through a single name both still recognize.
At the same time, the challenges should not be understated. A recognized name is the beginning of a value proposition rather than a substitute for one, and the proposition the brand carried into bankruptcy, an exhaustive assortment paired with a coupon, is the one that ultimately failed.
But two years after the chain closed, many consumers still think of Bed Bath & Beyond as a destination for home essentials, the kind of store associated with furnishing a first apartment, outfitting a dorm, or building a wedding registry. And familiarity has proven effective at generating first visits, as a range of revived retailers from Abercrombie to Polaroid suggests, but converting those visits into a habit is a separate question. Whether shoppers return will depend less on the name above the door than on what the reformatted stores actually offer.
For more data-driven insights, visit placer.ai/anchor
When Red Lobster filed for bankruptcy in May 2024, much of the blame landed on a single menu item: a $20 Ultimate Endless Shrimp deal that proved far too popular for its own margins. The chain shuttered roughly 130 locations, was acquired by Fortress Investment Group, and brought in a new CEO to steady the brand.
So the decision to bring Endless Shrimp back in spring 2026 – this time as a limited-run promotion – wasn't an obvious one. We dove into the data to see how the relaunch is landing, and what it would take for Red Lobster's comeback to hold.
In the weeks before the Endless Shrimp relaunch, the average number of visits to each Red Lobster location was running below year-ago levels – down by as much as 8.7% year over year (YoY) the week of April 13, and lagging the broader full-service restaurant segment.
Then came April 20. During the first full week of the Ultimate Endless Shrimp promotion, Red Lobster's per-location visits flipped sharply positive and have stayed there since, peaking at 24.3% YoY the week of April 27 and holding double-digit gains into early June – though the magnitude of the boost has gently eased over time. Notably, this outperformance came while full-service restaurant traffic remained roughly flat YoY.
The traffic surge suggests that Red Lobster's brand equity remains strong. Even after bankruptcy, store closures, and years of operational challenges, the chain was able to generate a meaningful visitation lift by bringing back one of its most recognizable promotions.
But Endless Shrimp can only do so much – and the pressures facing the chain, from elevated seafood costs to a burdensome lease portfolio, will remain even after the promotion inevitably ends. As the company continues to rightsize and improve profitability, the key question is whether its investments in menu innovation and customer experience will be enough to garner lasting customer loyalty. Will Endless Shrimp have a better ending this time around?
Visit Placer.ai/anchor to find out.
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Anchored Ep 7: The Data-Driven Customer Era
Zora Sentat has spent her career at the intersection of data, marketing, and commerce. As Chief Commercial Officer at cubeiQ, she's seen how businesses are – and aren't – making the most of what they know about their customers.
In the latest episode of Anchored, Zora joined Ethan Chernofsky to discuss the state of the data landscape, where retail media is falling short, and why human expertise still matters in an increasingly automated world.
Here are 5 key takeaways from the conversation:
Memorial Day weekend is the unofficial start of summer – and this year it arrived amid mounting cost pressures. Gas prices were at their highest Memorial Day level since 2022, while domestic airfare had risen more than 20% year over year – although travelers who booked early were often able to secure better deals.
That makes the holiday weekend a useful bellwether for the summer season ahead. Which corners of the travel economy are thriving, and where are consumers pulling back as budgets tighten? We dove into the data to find out.
Visits to gas stations and convenience stores - a reasonable proxy for how much Americans are driving – fell 7.0% YoY over the four-day Memorial Day weekend, measured from Friday through Monday. The decline pushed visits below their 2021 level for the first time since the pandemic-era baseline.
The drop is even more striking when viewed against the holiday's typical pattern. Over the past four years, Memorial Day weekend has consistently generated roughly 2% to 3% more traffic than a typical weekend, measured against the average of the preceding six Friday-to-Monday periods. This year, that premium disappeared. Instead, visits ran 3.1% below the recent norm, marking the first time in at least four years that the unofficial start of summer drew fewer fuel-and-snack stops than an ordinary weekend.
This suggests that forecasts of record-setting Memorial Day travel may have overstated the strength of road-trip demand as fuel costs surged. But another possible explanation is that Americans still traveled, just not as far – an interpretation supported by the decline in travel distances across most hotel tiers (see below). Surging fuel costs may also have nudged some travelers who had planned to drive toward air travel instead.
Nationwide Gas Station Visits, Memorial Day Weekend 2026 (Fri–Mon)
Memorial Day weekend failed to lift gas-station traffic, with visits falling below even 2021’s pandemic-era levels.
And indeed, airport visits by domestic travelers in the lead up to the holiday were comparatively resilient, slipping just 0.5% YoY on the Thursday and Friday before Memorial Day.
Compared to airports' prior six-week baseline, demand heading into the holiday weekend actually increased. Airport visits during the Thursday-Friday travel rush ran 9.7% above the average of the previous six weeks, up from 8.2% in 2025 and 7.1% in 2024. That resilience was likely driven, at least in part, by travelers who secured lower fares by booking well in advance. And because air travelers tend to skew more affluent than road trippers, those who did book later may have been more willing to absorb higher travel costs despite the sticker shock.
Major Airport Visits During Lead-Up to Memorial Day Weekend (Thu–Fri)
Although airport traffic remained flat YoY, the pre-holiday surge was more pronounced against a backdrop of softer recent demand, with visits running 9.7% above the prior six Thursday–Friday average.
Hotels, meanwhile, saw declines in domestic traveler visitation across all tiers as some travelers likely looked for ways to reduce lodging costs, whether by staying with friends and family, choosing lower-cost accommodations, or taking shorter trips.
But the pullback was far from uniform. Economy hotels took the hardest hit, with visits down 7.2% YoY – the steepest decline of any segment. Midscale, upper-midscale, and upscale properties landed in the middle, posting declines between 4.3% and 5.0%. At the top end of the market, the softness was more limited: Upper-upscale hotels slipped just 2.2%, while luxury hotels declined 2.7%.
The same K-shaped pattern showed up in how far guests were willing to travel. The share of hotel visitors coming from more than 100 miles away declined across nearly every tier – most sharply at the lower end of the market. Only luxury hotels saw their share of long-distance guests actually increase by 1.2 percentage points – showing that affluent domestic travelers were still traveling the distance.
Memorial Day Weekend (Fri–Mon): May 22–25 ’26 vs. May 23–26 ’25, U.S.
Hotel Visits, Year-over-Year Change
Visits slipped across every hotel class, but the high end held up best – and luxury was the only segment to draw a larger share of guests from 100+ miles away.
Percentage Point Change* in Share of Visitors From 100+ Miles Away, 2026 vs. 2025
*A percentage-point change is the difference between the two years’ shares – e.g., Luxury rising from 51.3% to 52.5% is a 1.2-point gain.
The unofficial start of summer revealed a widening split in how Americans allocate their travel spending. Driving-related stops and budget hotels bore the brunt of the pullback, while air travel and higher-end lodging continued to hold steady.
Whether this divide narrows or widens will depend largely on the path of gas prices and consumer confidence. As fuel costs ease, will budget-conscious travelers return to the road in greater numbers? Will air travel rebound, and will hotel visitation follow?
For more data-driven consumer and travel insights, visit Placer.ai/anchor.
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In recent years, Best Buy has faced significant challenges – from intensifying e-commerce competition to a slower housing market weighing on major categories like appliances.
But the retailer hasn't been resting on its laurels, rolling out a range of initiatives aimed at unlocking value from its physical and digital assets, including an expanded online Marketplace to enhanced retail media offerings and a strategic partnership with IKEA.
So how are these efforts playing out on the ground? We dove into the data to explore the rationale behind these initiatives and see what foot traffic data can tell us about their impact and future potential.
One of the more visible ways Best Buy is making new use of its physical footprint is through its shop-in-shop partnership with IKEA, which launched in fall 2025 across 10 stores in Florida and Texas.
The concept, designed to give customers an integrated way to upgrade their homes, pairs IKEA furnishings with Best Buy's kitchen and laundry offerings. By helping shoppers visualize complete home projects, the shop-in-shop creates natural cross-selling opportunities across complementary categories while providing an additional reason to visit segments that have faced persistent headwinds.
And foot traffic data suggests that the bet may be paying off. Through the first four months of 2026, Best Buy stores with IKEA shop-in-shops outperformed the national Best Buy fleet – as well as the chain's Texas and Florida benchmarks – every single month. And with Best Buy now opening consultation spaces inside IKEA stores in Frisco, Texas, and Tampa, Florida, the partnership between the two brands appears poised to deepen further.
Best Buy is also unlocking additional value from its store fleet through an expanded physical retail media network. Beyond traditional in-store advertising placements, the company monetizes its growing volume of pickup visits through Curbside Cinema displays, giving brands access to shoppers during a brief but highly attentive moment when there are few competing distractions for their attention.
And the visit data shows just how significant that opportunity is. In Q1 2026, more than 20% of Best Buy visits lasted under ten minutes – well above the 14.2% logged across discretionary chains. By serving short, brand-safe content during those windows, Best Buy is turning idle waiting time into measurable ad impressions, monetizing a moment most retailers let slip by unused.
Best Buy is also experimenting with increasingly sophisticated in-store advertising activations. The retailer recently partnered with a sports streaming platform on an immersive store takeover, using exterior signage, digital displays, and branded experiences to engage shoppers at multiple touchpoints. The campaign built on a broader recognition that Best Buy's customer base skews heavily toward sports enthusiasts - with the retailer reporting that its shoppers are 26% more likely than average to be sports fans. And this affinity has helped drive partnerships with organizations such as the NFL while creating new opportunities for Best Buy Ads.
Placer data from four of Best Buy's most-visited locations in Q1 2026 shows that while sports fandom is a consistent thread across markets, the specific interests vary considerably. Brooklyn's Bay Parkway location, for example, draws especially high concentrations of NHL and baseball fans, while Holyoke, Massachusetts skews more heavily toward NFL enthusiasts. Each market has its own distinct mix. And in a retail media landscape where targeting precision is the primary selling point, these market-level differences are another opportunity Best Buy is well positioned to capture.
As Best Buy seeks to become more than just a retailer, its stores are increasingly serving multiple functions at once – driving merchandise sales, supporting advertising initiatives, and helping brands connect with consumers. Given the early signs of traction behind these strategies, it may come as little surprise that incoming CEO Jason Bonfig plans to build on them as he pushes Best Buy further toward becoming "a retailer, media, advertising, and technology company."
For more data-driven retail insights, follow Placer.ai/anchor
The U.S. matches of the FIFA World Cup kicked off at Los Angeles Stadium (aka SoFi Stadium) in Inglewood, CA, on June 12, 2026 with the highly-anticipated USA vs. Paraguay matchup and a star-studded opening ceremony.
Across the Los Angeles area, watch parties and fan activations drew supporters eager to take part in the matchday atmosphere. Among them was the City of Inglewood's “The Wood Cup”, a street festival just a short walk from the stadium itself, which Inglewood Mayor James Butts called “a free alternative to attending the very expensive World Cup soccer match in person”.
With just a few city blocks separating the two events, we examined how their audiences of U.S-based fans differed and how this multi-layered engagement translated into broader economic benefits for the surrounding community.
Audience segmentation reveals that visitors to The World Cup U.S. opener skewed more affluent than visitors to The Wood Cup festival – a finding that aligns with the premium cost of attending a globally significant sporting event. According to Spatial.ai’s PersonaLive dataset, Ultra Wealthy Families represented the largest audience segment at the stadium, accounting for nearly 30% of visitors – a share on par with recent Super Bowls. As the tournament progresses to later-stage matches with even greater demand, this trend could become even more pronounced.
Meanwhile, The Wood Cup street festival attracted a more diverse and less wealthy visitor base. Near-Urban Diverse Families made up the largest share of attendees by a wide margin, while City Hopefuls – lower-income urban households – also accounted for a significant portion of festival visitors.
Diving deeper into visitor travel patterns provides further insight into the stadium versus street festival audiences. Location intelligence shows that many stadium visitors came from throughout Southern California and beyond, while the street festival appears to have functioned as a primarily local gathering. The stadium saw a significantly larger share of visitors traveling more than 10 miles, with more than a third traveling over 250 miles, underscoring the event's broader regional draw and national appeal. On the other hand, nearly 70% of street festival attendees traveled less than 10 miles, highlighting the neighborhood orientation of the event.
This contrast reinforces the role of fan activations alongside major sporting events. While the stadium attracted affluent visitors who traveled significant distances, the street festival engaged a highly local audience unlikely to attend the match itself – playing an important role in broadening participation and capitalizing on World Cup excitement across the host city.
One of the clearest ways that broad participation in a major sporting event benefits host communities is by driving traffic to nearby businesses from travelers and locals alike.
On the day of the 2026 World Cup U.S. opener, several restaurants near Los Angeles Stadium and The Wood Cup festival experienced visit boosts far exceeding typical levels. The Pollo Campero location on W. Century Boulevard experienced the largest foot traffic increase among the restaurants analyzed, with visits spiking 264.0% compared to the average Friday – a surge that may have been aided by the chain's World Cup-themed "Pollito Campeón" campaign. Other nearby establishments also posted significant gains, including Sizzler (+185.9%), Carl's Jr. (+128.9%), and El Pollo Loco (+105.3%).
These foot traffic gains illustrate the ripple effects of major sporting events and adjacent fan activations beyond the stadium and festival grounds.
The World Cup’s opening match in the U.S. transformed Los Angeles into a hub of activity both inside and outside the stadium, creating pathways for fans of all types to participate in the event and driving significant traffic to nearby businesses. With additional fan zones planned across multiple host cities – and demand rising as the stakes increase – The World Cup’s impact could continue to grow.
For more data-driven event insights, visit Placer.ai/anchor.
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1) Broad-based growth: All four grocery formats grew year-over-year in Q2 2025, with traditional grocers posting their first rebound since early 2024.
2) Value grocers slow: After leading during the 2022–24 trade-down wave, value grocer growth has decelerated as that shift matures.
3) Fresh formats surge: Now the fastest-growing segment, fueled by affluent shoppers seeking health, wellness, and convenience.
4) Bifurcation widens: Growth concentrated at both the low-income (value) and high-income (fresh) ends, highlighting polarized spending.
5) Shopping missions diverge: Short trips are rising, supporting fresh formats, while traditional grocers retain loyal stock-up customers and value chains capture fill-in trips through private labels.
6) Traditional grocers adapt: H-E-B and Harris Teeter outperformed by tailoring strategies to their core geographies and demographics.Bifurcation of Consumer Spending Help Fresh Format Lead Grocery Growth
Grocery traffic across all four major categories – value grocers, fresh format, traditional grocery, ethnic grocers – was up year over year in Q2 2025 as shoppers continue to engage with a wide range of grocery formats. Traditional grocery posted its first YoY traffic increase since Q1 2024, while ethnic grocers maintained their steady pattern of modest but consistent gains.
Value grocers, which dominated growth through most of 2024 as shoppers prioritized affordability, continued to expand but have now ceded leadership to fresh-format grocers. Rising food costs between 2022 and 2024 drove many consumers to chains like Aldi and Lidl, but much of this “trade-down” movement has already occurred. Although price sensitivity still shapes consumer choices – keeping the value segment on an upward trajectory – its growth momentum has slowed, making it less of a driver for the overall sector.
Fresh-format grocers have now taken the lead, posting the strongest YoY traffic gains of any category in 2025. This segment, anchored by players like Sprouts, appeals to the highest-income households of the four categories, signaling a growing influence of affluent shoppers on the competitive grocery landscape. Despite accounting for just 7.0% of total grocery visits in H1 2025, the segment’s rapid gains point to a broader shift: premium brands emphasizing health and wellness are emerging as the primary engine of growth in the grocery sector.
The fact that value grocers and fresh-format grocers – segments with the lowest and highest median household incomes among their customer bases – are the two categories driving the most growth underscores how the bifurcation of consumer spending is playing out in the grocery space as well. On one end, price-sensitive shoppers continue to seek out affordable options, while on the other, affluent consumers are fueling demand for premium, health-oriented formats. This dual-track growth pattern highlights how widening economic divides are reshaping competitive dynamics in grocery retail.
1) Broad-based growth: All four grocery categories posted YoY traffic gains in Q2 2025.
2) Traditional grocery rebound: First YoY increase since Q1 2024.
3) Ethnic grocers: Continued steady but modest upward trend.
4) Value grocers: Still growing, but slowing after most trade-down activity already occurred (2022–24).
5) Fresh formats: Now the fastest-growing segment, driven by affluent shoppers and interest in health & wellness.
6) Market shift: Premium, health-oriented brands are becoming the new growth driver in grocery.
7) Bifurcation of spending: Growth at both value and fresh-format grocers highlights a polarization in consumer spending patterns that is reshaping grocery competition.
Over the past two years, short grocery trips (under 10 minutes) have grown far more quickly than longer visits. While they still make up less than one-quarter of all U.S. grocery trips, their steady expansion suggests this behavioral shift is here to stay and that its full impact on the industry has yet to be realized.
One format particularly aligned with this trend is the fresh-format grocer, where average dwell times are shorter than in other categories. Yet despite benefiting from the rise of convenience-driven shopping, fresh formats attract the smallest share of loyal visitors (4+ times per month). This indicates they are rarely used for a primary weekly shop. Instead, they capture supplemental trips from consumers looking for specific needs – unique items, high-quality produce, or a prepared meal – who also value the ability to get in and out quickly.
In contrast, leading traditional grocers like H-E-B and Kroger thrive on a classic supermarket model built around frequent, comprehensive shopping trips. With the highest share of loyal visitors (38.5% and 27.6% respectively), they command a reliable customer base coming for full grocery runs and taking time to fill their carts.
Value grocers follow a different, but equally effective playbook. Positioned as primary “fill-in” stores, they sit between traditional and fresh formats in both dwell time and visit frequency. Many rely on limited assortments and a heavy emphasis on private-label goods, encouraging shoppers to build larger baskets around basics and store brands. Still, the data suggests consumers reserve their main grocery hauls for traditional supermarkets with broader selections, while using value grocers to stretch budgets and stock up on essentials.
1) Short trips surge: Under-10-minute visits have grown fastest, signaling a lasting behavioral shift.
2) Fresh formats thrive on convenience: Small footprints, prepared foods, and specialty items align with quick missions.
3) Traditional grocers retain loyalty: Traditional grocers such as H-E-B and Kroger attract frequent, comprehensive stock-up trips.
4) Value grocers fill the middle ground: Limited assortments and private label drive larger baskets, but main hauls remain with traditional supermarkets.
5) Fresh formats as supplements: Fresh format grocers such as The Fresh Market capture quick, specialized trips rather than weekly shops.
While broad market trends favor value and fresh-format grocers, certain traditional grocers are proving that a tailored strategy is a powerful tool for success. In the first half of 2025, H-E-B and Harris Teeter significantly outperformed their category's modest 0.6% average year-over-year visit growth, posting impressive gains of 5.6% and 2.8%, respectively. Their success demonstrates that even in a polarizing environment, there is ample room for traditional formats to thrive by deeply understanding and catering to a specific target audience.
These two brands achieve their success with distinctly different, yet equally focused, demographic strategies. H-E-B, a Texas powerhouse, leans heavily into major metropolitan areas like Austin and San Antonio. This urban focus is clear, with 32.6% of its visitors coming from urban centers and their peripheries, far above the category average. Conversely, Harris Teeter has cultivated a strong following in suburban and satellite cities in the South Atlantic region, drawing a massive 78.3% of its traffic from these areas. This deliberate targeting shows that knowing your customer's geography and lifestyle remains a winning formula for growth.
1) Traditional grocers can still be competitive: H-E-B (+5.6% YoY) and Harris Teeter (+2.8% YoY) outpaced the category average of +0.6% in H1 2025.
2) H-E-B’s strategy: Strong urban focus, with 32.6% of traffic from major metro areas like Austin and San Antonio.
3) Harris Teeter’s strategy: Suburban and satellite city focus, with 78.3% of traffic from South Atlantic suburbs.
1. The hypergrowth of Costco, Dollar Tree, and Dollar General between 2019 and 2025 has fundamentally changed the brick-and-mortar retail landscape.
2. Overall visits to Target and Walmart have remained essentially stable even as traffic to the new retail giants skyrocketed – so the increased competition is not necessarily coming at legacy giants' expense. Instead, each retail giant is filling a different need, and success now requires excelling at specific shopping missions rather than broad market dominance.
3. Cross-shopping has become the new normal, with Walmart and Target maintaining their popularity even as their relative visit shares decline, creating opportunities for complementary rather than purely competitive strategies.
4. Dollar stores are rapidly graduating from "fill-in" destinations to primary shopping locations, signaling a fundamental shift in how Americans approach everyday retail.
5. Walmart still enjoys the highest visit frequency, but the other four chains – and especially Dollar General – are gaining ground in this realm.
6. Geographic and demographic specialization is becoming the key differentiator, as each chain carves out distinct niches rather than competing head-to-head across all markets and customer segments.
Evolving shopper priorities, economic pressures, and new competitors are reshaping how and where Americans buy everyday goods. And as value-focused players gain ground, legacy retail powerhouses are adapting their strategies in a bid to maintain their visit share. In this new consumer reality, shoppers no longer stick to one lane, creating a complex ecosystem where loyalty, geography, and cross-visitation patterns – not just market share – define who is truly winning.
This report explores the latest retail traffic data for Walmart, Target, Costco, Dollar Tree, and Dollar General to decode what consumers want from retail giants in 2025. By analyzing visit patterns, loyalty trends, and cross-shopping shifts, we reveal how fast-growing chains are winning over consumers and uncover the strategies helping legacy players stay competitive in today's value-driven retail landscape.
In 2019, Walmart and Target were the two major behemoths in the brick-and-mortar retail space. And while traffic to these chains remains close to 2019 levels, overall visits to Dollar General, Dollar Tree, and Costco have increased 36.6% to 45.9% in the past six years. Much of the growth was driven by aggressive store expansions, but average visits per location stayed constant (in the case of Dollar Tree) or grew as well (in the case of Dollar General and Costco). This means that these chains are successfully filling new stores with visitors – consumers who in the past may have gone to Walmart or Target for at least some of the items now purchased at wholesale clubs and dollar stores.
This substantial increase in visits to Costco, Dollar General, and Dollar Tree has altered the competitive landscape in which Walmart and Target operate. In 2019, 55.9% of combined visits to the five retailers went to Walmart. Now, Walmart’s relative visit share is less than 50%. Target received the second-highest share of visits to the five retailers in 2019, with 15.9% of combined traffic to the chains. But Between January and July 2025, Dollar General received more visits than Target – even though the discount store had received just 12.1% of combined visits in 2019.
Some of the growth of the new retail giants could be attributed to well-timed expansion. But the success of these chains is also due to the extreme value orientation of U.S. consumers in recent years. Dollar General, Dollar Tree, and Costco each offer a unique value proposition, giving today's increasingly budget-conscious shoppers more options.
Walmart’s strategy of "everyday low prices" and its strongholds in rural and semi-rural areas reflect its emphasis on serving broad, value-focused households – often catering to essential, non-discretionary shopping.
Dollar General serves an even larger share of rural and semi-rural shoppers than Walmart, following its strategy of bringing a curated selection of everyday basics to underserved communities. The retailer's packaging is typically smaller than Walmart's, which allows Dollar General to price each item very affordably – and its geographic concentration in rural and semi-rural areas also highlights its direct competition to Walmart.
By contrast, Target and Costco both compete for consumer attention in suburban and small city settings, where shopper profiles tilt more toward families seeking one-stop-shopping and broader discretionary offerings. But Costco's audience skews slightly more affluent – the retailer attracts consumers who can afford the membership fees and bulk purchasing requirements – and its visit growth may be partially driven by higher income Target shoppers now shopping at Costco.
Dollar Tree, meanwhile, showcases a uniquely balanced real estate strategy. The chain's primary strength lies in suburban and small cities but it maintains a solid footing in both rural and urban areas. The chain also offers a unique value proposition, with a smaller store format and a fixed $1.25 price point on most items. So while the retailer isn't consistently cheaper than Walmart or Dollar General across all products, its convenience and predictability are helping it cement its role as a go-to chain for quick shopping trips or small quantities of discretionary items. And its versatile, three-pronged geographic footprint allows it to compete across diverse markets: Dollar Tree can serve as a convenient, quick-trip alternative to big-box retailers in the suburbs while also providing essential value in both rural and dense urban communities.
As each chain carves out distinct geographic and demographic niches, success increasingly depends on being the best option for particular shopping missions (bulk buying, quick trips, essential needs) rather than trying to be everything to everyone.
Still, despite – or perhaps due to – the increased competition, shoppers are increasingly spreading their visits across multiple retailers: Cross-shopping between major chains rose significantly between 2019 and 2025. And Walmart remains the most popular brick-and-mortar retailer, consistently ranking as the most popular cross-shopping destination for visitors of every other chain, followed by Target.
This creates an interesting paradox when viewed alongside the overall visit share shift. Even as Walmart and Target's total share of visits has declined, their importance as a secondary stop has actually grown. This suggests that the legacy retail giants' dip in market share isn't due to shoppers abandoning them. Instead, consumers are expanding their shopping routines by visiting other growing chains in addition to their regular trips to Walmart and Target, effectively diluting the giants' share of a larger, more fragmented retail landscape.
Cross-visitation to Costco from Walmart, Target, and Dollar Tree also grew between 2019 and 2025, suggesting that Costco is attracting a more varied audience to its stores.
But the most significant jumps in cross-visitation went to Dollar Tree and Dollar General, with cross-visitation to these chains from Target, Walmart, and Costco doubling or tripling over the past six years. This suggests that these brands are rapidly graduating from “fill-in” fare to primary shopping destinations for millions of households.
The dramatic rise in cross-visitation to dollar stores signals an opportunity for all retailers to identify and capitalize on specific shopping missions while building complementary partnerships rather than viewing every chain as direct competition.
Walmart’s status as the go-to destination for essential, non-discretionary spending is clearly reflected in its exceptional loyalty rates – nearly half its visitors return at least three times per month on average -between January to July 2025, a figure virtually unchanged since 2019. This steady high-frequency visitation underscores how necessity-driven shopping anchors customer routines and keeps Walmart atop the retail loyalty ranks.
But the data also reveals that other retail giants – and Dollar General in particular – are steadily gaining ground. Dollar General's increased visit frequency is largely fueled by its strategic emphasis on adding fresh produce and other grocery items, making it a viable everyday stop for more households and positioning it to compete more directly with Walmart.
Target also demonstrates a notable uptick in loyal visitors, with its share of frequent shoppers visiting at least three times a month rising from 20.1% to 23.6% between 2019 and 2025. This growth may suggest that its strategic initiatives – like the popular Drive Up service, same-day delivery options, and an appealing mix of essentials and exclusive brands – are successfully converting some casual shoppers into repeat customers.
Costco stands out for a different reason: while overall visits increased, loyalty rates remained essentially unchanged. This speaks to Costco’s unique position as a membership-based outlet for targeted bulk and premium-value purchases, where the shopping behavior of new visitors tends to follow the same patterns as those of its already-loyal core. As a result, trip frequency – rooted largely in planned stock-ups – remains remarkably consistent even as the warehouse giant grows foot traffic overall.
Dollar Tree currently has the smallest share of repeat visitors but is improving this metric. As it successfully encourages more frequent trips and narrows the loyalty gap with its larger rivals, it's poised to become an increasing source of competition for both Target and Costco.
The increase in repeat visits and cross-shopping across the five retail giants showcases consumers' current appetite for value-oriented mass merchants and discount chains. And although the retail giants landscape may be more fragmented, the data also reveals that the pie itself has grown significantly – so the increased competition does not necessarily need to come at the expense of legacy retail giants.
The retail landscape of 2025 demands a fundamental shift from zero-sum competition to strategic complementarity, where success lies in owning specific shopping missions rather than fighting for total market dominance. Retailers that forego attempting to compete on every front and instead clearly communicate their mission-specific value propositions – whether that's emergency runs, bulk essentials, or family shopping experiences – may come out on top.
