The supermarket floral department continues to drive sales for supermarkets. While dollar and unit growth may have slowed, the department has maintained the growth it achieved during the pandemic. The floral department remains a very profitable department in 2023 with a gross margin of 48%. In addition to maintaining a healthy gross margin, floral departments managed to stabilize their shrink at 9%. The floral department is now 2.03% of store sales. This is the highest percentage of store sales since IFPA began tracking benchmarks.
For most of 2023, dollar floral sales continued to increase while unit sales decreased in comparison to 2022, until Jun 2023, the last point of sale report before the publication of these benchmarks. Inflation in the floral sector cooled in 2023 and most supermarkets were able to maintain the same average floral transaction as 2022. Although the floral department did not maintain its 5% growth from 2022, it increased its contribution to the overall profitability of the supermarket by 2%. The average square footage of the floral department increased over 2022 to 762 square feet creating a decrease in sales per square foot.
