Food & Beverage

Checkout Benchmarks

Indexed performance data for Food & Beverages brands on Shopify: conversion rate, AOV, free shipping behavior, and shipping revenue, tracked against a consistent baseline month over month.

Part of the PDQ Checkout Benchmarks: 130M+ checkout sessions across 500+ Shopify merchants, indexed to June 2024 = 1.0x.

Compare your Food & Beverages store

Food & Beverages Checkout Performance Index: March 2026

An index of 1.15x means that metric is 15% above baseline. 0.92x means it's 8% below. We publish relative change rather than absolute numbers because absolute rates vary too much by merchant size and category to be meaningful as cross-merchant benchmarks.

Shopify checkout benchmarks by vertical

Checkout behavior varies by category more than most merchants expect. Select your vertical for a full analysis.

March 2026: Food & Beverages Checkout Insights

Three signals worth acting on this month

Written for Food & Beverages operators. Every observation connects to a decision you can make this week.

1. Shipping revenue is the defining story of this vertical, and the numbers are unlike anything else in the dataset

   • No other vertical comes close to Food & Beverages on shipping revenue. The series peaked at 2.61x baseline in December 2024, more than two and a half times the June 2024 starting point, and while it has pulled back considerably since then, February 2026 still came in at 1.17x. The pullback from the December peak is worth understanding before acting on it. The holiday period drives a specific kind of Food & Beverages buyer: gift purchasers, corporate gifting, and subscription gift purchases, all of which skew toward higher-ticket items with premium shipping requirements.
   • What to do: Run a price sensitivity test on your standard shipping tier. A $2 to $3 increase on non-free-shipping orders may have less impact on conversion than you expect, and the margin recovery compounds quickly at volume.

2. Coupon usage has collapsed, and it's not coming back

   • Food & Beverages coupon usage is the most dramatic series in this entire dataset. It started at baseline in June 2024, peaked briefly, and then fell off a cliff: 0.46x in November 2024, 0.37x in December, and a floor of 0.27x in February 2026. The trend line hasn't shown any meaningful recovery.
   • What to do: Audit what share of your promotional spend is going toward discount codes versus other value mechanics. Consider redirecting that spend toward free shipping thresholds, loyalty points, or bundle discounts that don't require a code to unlock.

3. Conversion has held above baseline for twenty consecutive months.

   • Food & Beverages conversion has sat between 1.01x and 1.10x baseline for the entire run of this dataset, with February 2026 coming in at 1.01x. The buyer arriving at a Food & Beverages checkout is already highly committed.
   • What to do: Check whether your estimated delivery dates are accurate and visible before the payment step, and whether your subscription terms are unambiguous.

How does your Food & Beverages store's checkout compare?

Checkout Index tells you where your store sits inside this vertical: personalized Health Score, shipping signal analysis, and a revenue impact estimate based on your actual checkout behavior.

Monthly archive: Health & Wellness

Every monthly dispatch, indexed and preserved. Use the archive to track how Food & Beverages checkout behavior has shifted over time, to validate whether seasonal patterns in your own data match the vertical.

Methodology

About this dataset

The Food & Beverages dataset within the PDQ Checkout Benchmarks draws from aggregated, anonymized session data across food and beverage-categorized merchants on Shopify's platform. Merchants are classified using Shopify's standard industry taxonomy and must meet a minimum session threshold for inclusion. The Food & Beverages cohort spans packaged food, beverages, supplements, specialty grocery, and direct-to-consumer meal and snack brands.

All figures are indexed to June 2024 = 1.0x. Figures exclude bot traffic, draft orders, and point-of-sale transactions.