You might have seen news about our recent product launch for 2026: Channel Track. After months of planning and a soft launch last Autumn, we are delighted to announce Channel Track is now live. We are combining multiple data sets to create one product which will provide subscribers with total / multi channel insights.
Channel Track’s base data is 10+million consumers’ debit and credit card spend in 40,000 grocery/convenience stores and 145,000 foodservice outlets. This data will quantify spend, frequency and customer demographics across all 185,000 outlets – by outlet type, brand, region, day of week/time of day and much more.
We are complementing this card spend data with tens of thousands of customer research interviews per annum (70,000 in year one alone) to understand WHY customers are visiting outlets (What missions or occasions are they on? What drives purchase?) – with consumers being interviewed every day about the shopping behaviour in the previous 24 hours.
For more information about Channel Track, please click here.
The first full wave of Channel Track results will be available next month (covering both retail and hospitality) but we are able to share hospitality performance figures now. In 2025:
Hospitality channel sales rose 2.3% in 2025.
Transactions INCREASED by almost 1% in 2025
Visits per week INCREASED by 1.7% in that same period
And spend per visit rose 1.5% last year.
And while total channel sales grew by 2.3% overall, that growth wasn’t even across the sector. We’re delighted to announce that sales through independent hospitality outlets far outweighed the growth in hospitality chains: by 4.2% (independents) vs 0.8% (chains). Growth in sales were particularly strong in independent restaurants, coffee shops, cafes and fast food outlets – typical customers for many of our wholesale customers.
Not only this, transaction numbers and visits per week are all in significantly higher growth in independent outlets than outlets part of a chain.
We shall shortly be announcing the date for our 2026 Channel Track ‘State of the Nation’ presentation (February 2026) to present channel trends for 2025.
Sales through independent convenience stores continue to be under pressure – but we’ve seen a slight upturn in channel performance (wholesaler supplied independents) in the most recent data roll (this week).
Read more on our top insights below:
UK consumers are still eating out – even as pressures persist
The rise of “Coasting” and lower-ABV choices
Impulse is alive and well in retail and NPD could be a game changer for independent convenience stores
Summary
At TWC Group, we remain confident in the sector’s ability to adapt and thrive. The consumer hasn’t disappeared – they’ve simply evolved. Our job is to make sure the wholesale industry evolves with them.
To book a Channel Track discovery call – click here
