Grocery sales across UK supermarkets jumped by 2.3 per cent over the four-week period to 3 November, the latest figures from Kantar show.

Take-home sales at the grocers hit £11.6 billion, making October the biggest sales month of the year so far.

According to Kantar, the sales boost coincided with an increase in the number of shopping trips made by households, hitting a four-year high at 480 million.

“October 2024 was the busiest month for the supermarkets since March 2020, when people were preparing for the first national lockdown,” said Fraser McKevitt, head of retail and consumer insight at Kantar. “Trip numbers have been going up gradually for some time, but this steady march hasn’t reached pre-covid levels of shopping frequency just yet.

"The average for each household is slightly over four trips per week.”

The results reveal that Halloween played a role in improving sales, while there were also signs that some consumers had already started their Christmas shopping.

648,000 shoppers have already bought a Christmas cake, while 14 per cent of households picked up mince pies last month.

Last week the British Retail Consortium (BRC) and KPMG released data which showed that fashion sales took a hit in October in a month that was disappointing overall for the UK retail sector.

Non-food sales decreased by 0.1 per cent during the three months to October, with clothing seeing the largest drop across all categories. Beauty sales however remained strong over the period, with the number of sales increasing.

Overall, food sales were more successful with 2.9 per cent growth during the 12-week period. However, they still remained lower than the 7.9 per cent hike recorded in October last year.

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