Every few years somebody declares the supermarket-anchored center dead. Amazon was going to kill it. Instacart was going to kill it. Dark stores were going to kill it. I have been leasing these centers for three decades, and the only thing that has actually happened is that they got more valuable and harder to buy.
The 2026 data is not subtle about it.
The Capital Has Already Voted
JLL’s 2026 U.S. Retail Thematic Outlook surveyed nearly 150 retail investors. The results are about as one-sided as this business gets.
Read that spread again: 64% want to buy, 48% want to sell. That gap is the whole story. More bidders, fewer sellers, no new supply. JLL clocked just 7.8 million square feet of new retail deliveries in Q1 2026 — 25% below the ten-year average. You cannot manufacture more grocery-anchored centers on Long Island. The land is gone, the entitlements take years, and construction costs do not pencil against in-place rents.
When investors were asked which tenants they most want to own, the top of the list was Whole Foods, then TJX brands, then Trader Joe’s, Target, Lululemon, and Publix. Grocery and discount department stores accounted for 56% of every retailer investors named. That is not a fad. That is capital picking non-discretionary categories on purpose.
Why the Format Actually Holds Up
Placer.ai’s Q1 2026 grocery data explains the resilience better than any cap rate table. U.S. grocery visits were up 1.7% year over year — the fourth straight quarter of growth. But dig into the segments:
- Fresh-format grocers (Trader Joe’s, Sprouts) led on total visit growth at +5.2% YoY, with per-location visits up 1.1%.
- Traditional supermarkets — the ones anchoring most of our centers — outperformed on a per-store basis at +1.5% YoY.
- Value grocers grew total visits through expansion, but per-location traffic was down 2.8%. They are growing by adding stores, not by winning trips.
Here is the piece I want landlords to sit with. Placer found that traditional grocers are the only grocery segment over-indexing on sub-10-minute visits. The fast fill-in run, the curbside pickup, the “I need milk and I’m going home” trip — the traditional supermarket owns it.
That is a moat. E-commerce can take the big stock-up basket. It cannot take the four-minute trip. And the four-minute trip is the one that puts a car in your lot next to the nail salon, the bagel store, and the urgent care.
The New York Wrinkle — and Why It’s an Opportunity
Nobody owns the New York grocery market. Placer’s chain-dominance data for June 2026 shows the most-visited grocery chain in New York State is Wegmans — with just 13.1% of industry visits. Compare that to New Jersey, where ShopRite holds 42.0%, or Connecticut, where Stop & Shop holds 34.1%.
New York is the most fragmented grocery market in the region. Thirteen percent for the leader. That has two consequences for landlords:
One: no anchor is untouchable. There is no single chain whose brand alone guarantees your trade area. Anchor selection is a real underwriting decision here, not a formality.
Two: competition for good sites is brutal, and that is good for you. Fragmentation means multiple operators are hunting the same limited box inventory. When a 45,000-square-foot anchor space with parking comes available in a decent Nassau or Suffolk trade area, you are not negotiating with one grocer. That is leverage — on rent, on term, on who pays for the build-out.
New York grocery visits were down 2.0% year over year in June 2026. I would not paper over that. But a soft traffic quarter in a fragmented market with zero new supply is a very different problem than a structural decline. Rents in these centers are not being set by last quarter’s visit count. They are being set by the fact that there is nowhere else for a grocer to go.
What This Does to Pricing
Fundamentals are doing exactly what you would expect. CBRE put national retail availability at 4.9% in Q1 2026 with asking rents up 2.4% year over year, on the back of historically low construction completions. Suburban retail is beating downtown retail — since 2022 downtown availability has risen 120 basis points while suburban availability has fallen 91. That is the Long Island story in two numbers.
On the debt side, JLL reports the number of lenders actively quoting retail deals is up 115% from the Q4 2023 trough, with retail spreads now within nine basis points of industrial. Retail is financeable again, at institutional pricing.
And the one number that should worry sellers who think grocery is a permanently premium asset class: JLL found the cap rate spread between grocery-anchored centers and power centers has compressed to just 50 basis points. Investors now view a good TJX-anchored power center as nearly as safe as a supermarket. The grocery premium is real, but it is no longer automatic — it has to be earned with a strong anchor, a defensible trade area, and clean traffic data.
The grocery premium survives because the supermarket sells the one thing the internet still cannot: the four-minute trip. Traditional grocers are the only segment over-indexing on sub-10-minute visits, and that recurring, non-discretionary traffic is what your inline rents are actually collateralized against. But do not get lazy about it. New York is a 13%-leader market — the most fragmented in the region — so the anchor you pick genuinely matters, and the spread between grocery and power centers has narrowed to 50 basis points. If you own one of these centers, hold it and re-tenant the inline aggressively. If you are buying, underwrite the anchor’s actual visit count, not its logo.
Sources
- JLL — “Retail investment hits mid-cycle sweet spot as buyer demand outpaces seller supply” (2026 U.S. Retail Thematic Outlook & Investor Survey), June 30, 2026
- Placer.ai — “Grocery in Q1 2026: Is Traditional Grocery Making a Comeback?”, May 19, 2026
- Placer.ai — Industry Trends: Chain Dominance by State & YoY Grocery Visits by State, June 2026 data
- CBRE — “Q1 2026 U.S. Retail Figures”, April 29, 2026
- Placer.ai — “June 2026 Mall Index”, July 8, 2026
Ken Schuckman is President & CEO of Schuckman Realty Inc., a retail-focused commercial real estate brokerage founded by Stanley Schuckman in 1978 in Hicksville, NY. With 30+ years of experience specializing in supermarket-anchored shopping centers, Ken is a CoStar Power Broker and member of X-Team Retail Advisors. He is also Co-Founder & Principal of BTF Capital Fund. SchuckmanRealty.com
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