2025 Supermarket Floral Benchmarks: A Guide to 2026 Strategy

In today’s market, floral success is driven by disciplined execution rather than just expanding floor space. As a high-margin, impulse-driven category, floral performance relies on a retailer's ability to convert foot traffic into emotional, incremental purchases.

To capitalize on these insights for 2026, these benchmarks provide a vital "reality check," helping leaders distinguish between structural challenges and operational execution gaps.

2025 Performance Highlights

The 2025 data reveals a high-productivity category characterized by strong growth and significant margins:

Growth & Revenue: Annual sales per store reached nearly $99,000 (a 9.9% YoY increase).
Profitability: Floral maintains an impressive 48% gross margin and a 29% net contribution after labor and shrink.
Efficiency: Despite a small average footprint of 600 sq. ft., the department generates $163 per sq. ft.
Operational Focus: Labor (10%) and shrink (9%) remain the primary areas requiring tight management.

Why Benchmarking Matters

Retailers utilize this data to:

Validate Productivity: Confirm that floral space generates high incremental value compared to other perimeter departments.
Optimize Labor: Pressure-test service models in a labor-constrained environment.
Manage Risk: Quantify shrink exposure and guide assortment simplification to reduce complexity.
Regional Strategy: Tailor pricing and mix to local trends, such as the surging Northeast market (16% YoY growth).

To drive 2026 profitability, treat floral as a strategic profit engine—leveraging its high margins and impulse appeal through localized assortment and rigorous operational controls.

Colleen Fagundus ”Supermarket floral sales success is no longer about adding space or expanding assortment, but about disciplined execution in a constrained labor environment. With floral being a high margin, impulse driven category that is disproportionately affected by labor availability, shrink, and execution quality our supermarket floral benchmark data becomes a very important industry tracker for your business. Unlike core grocery categories, floral performance is less about baseline demand and more about how well retailers convert traffic into incremental, emotional purchases tied to occasions and seasonality. Benchmarks give retailers a reality check on whether floral is underperforming due to structural issues (space, assortment, labor model) or execution gaps (availability, freshness, display quality), helping leaders separate demand risk from operational risk as they plan for the year ahead.”
Colleen Fagundus,
IFPA Director of Floral

Purpose

International Fresh Produce Association (IFPA) provides supermarket floral department benchmarks so floral managers and buyers can compare their business with their competition to identify opportunities to drive stronger results.

Executive Summary

In today's margin-sensitive retail landscape, floral is not just a specialty category—it is a disciplined, stable profit engine quietly delivering returns. In 2025, supermarket floral departments are delivering nearly $99,000 per store with strong 9.9% year-over-year growth, while accounting for just 1.4% of total store sales. Yet with a 48% gross margin and an estimated 29% contribution rate, floral continues to outperform its size in profitability. Operating in roughly 600 square feet and generating solid sales productivity, floral remains a high-return perimeter category in an otherwise tight-margin grocery environment. While shrink (9%) and labor (10%) require disciplined management, the department's performance underscores its strategic value: floral drives incremental revenue, supports impulse purchasing, and contributes meaningful profit dollars per store.

2025 Average Floral Department Benchmarks

Average annual floral sales per store: $98,892
% growth over prior year: 9.9%
Floral sales as % of store sales: 1.4%
Average sq ft: 602
Sales per sq ft: $163
Avg dollars per item: $10.65
Gross margin: 48%
Labor % of sales: 10%
Shrink: 9%
Contribution estimate (% of sales): 29%*

*Computed as gross margin minus labor costs minus floral shrink.

**Data from Circana POS system.

Regional Overview

Floral is not a one-size-fits-all category. Pricing strategy, assortment mix, and growth investment should be regionally calibrated to maximize both revenue and margin performance. The data shows that supermarket floral performance is highly regionalized. The West and California lead in total revenue and price realization, while the Northeast is emerging as the fastest-growth market. Lower-priced regions in the Midwest and Southeast remain steady but more value-sensitive.

Regional Performance Data

California

Average annual floral sales per store: $159,543
% growth over prior year: 9.2%
Avg dollars per item: $13.54
Units per Store % Change vs YA: 2.8%

Great Lakes

Average annual floral sales per store: $84,900
% growth over prior year: 8.2%
Avg dollars per item: $9.73
Units per Store % Change vs YA: 0.1%

Mid-South

Average annual floral sales per store: $73,768
% growth over prior year: 9.1%
Avg dollars per item: $9.58
Units per Store % Change vs YA: 0.9%

Northeast

Average annual floral sales per store: $82,996
% growth over prior year: 16.0%
Avg dollars per item: $10.46
Units per Store % Change vs YA: 6.2%

Plains

Average annual floral sales per store: $87,887
% growth over prior year: 10.9%
Avg dollars per item: $9.73
Units per Store % Change vs YA: 4.0%

South Central

Average annual floral sales per store: $98,670
% growth over prior year: 10.7%
Avg dollars per item: $12.28
Units per Store % Change vs YA: 3.4%

Southeast

Average annual floral sales per store: $79,735
% growth over prior year: 8.9%
Avg dollars per item: $9.52
Units per Store % Change vs YA: 1.1%

West

Average annual floral sales per store: $188,974
% growth over prior year: 8.4%
Avg dollars per item: $10.73
Units per Store % Change vs YA: 3.0%

A U.S. map showing regional floral department sales with color-coded areas and associated sales data.

Methodology

To help you benchmark your supermarket floral department, IFPA incorporates Circana POS data and sends floral buyers an online questionnaire each year. The results are aggregated and reported to our members to help them determine the health of their supermarket floral department. In 2026, 28 supermarket chains, representing over 30,295 stores responded to our survey.

Glossary

Average floral transaction: Measures the average dollar amount each shopper spends on floral per trip to the supermarket.
Gross margin %: Measures the percent of each sales dollar that is required to cover the cost of floral products sold.
Store Labor %: Measures the percentage of each sales dollar that is required to cover the cost of store labor.