Back-to-school shopping: Which retailers are winning food dollars?

Walmart and Costco get top marks for back-to-school food shopping. 

In Field Agent’s Back to School 2025 survey, the retailers tied for first place—each with 56% of Canadian parents saying they’ll shop there the most for food items for their kids’ lunches. They’re followed closely by Real Canadian Superstore (51%). For the past few years, all three retailers have held the top spots for food and school supplies purchases in Field Agent’s annual back-to-school surveys. 

“I think those big three will always be the highest because that’s where people do stock-up purchasing,” says Jeff Doucette, general manager of Field Agent.  

Other grocers rounding out the list of lunch-food stops are No Frills/Maxi (42%), FreshCo (28%), Sobeys/Safeway/IGA/Thrifty (21%), Food Basics/Super C (17%), Loblaws/Provigo/Atlantic Superstore/Dominion (16%) and Metro (13%). 

The vast majority of Canadian parents—95%—are planning to send their kids to school with a packed lunch and snacks from home. The top three food items are fresh fruit (88%), granola or protein bars (80%) and sandwiches with meat (73%). 

READ: Back-to-school boom: How to win the lunchtime crowd

For grocers wanting a bigger slice of the back-to-school pie, Doucette draws inspiration from a “mealtimes made easy” concept he recently saw at a Calgary Co-op. A refrigerated bunker and display by the front door featured everything needed for a barbecue, including burgers, buns, condiments and toppings such as lettuce, tomatoes and onions. 

That sparked an idea for a back-to-school solution centre built around the theme of “tomorrow’s lunch–solved,” Doucette says. The display could include lunch-box staples such as juice boxes, chopped fruit and granola bars, along with sandwich ingredients and fun lunch ideas. “That’s a cool opportunity for full-service retailers—to be more helpful in the ‘what’s for lunch tomorrow’ solution,” he says. “It doesn’t have to change every day, obviously, but they could mix it up from week to week and pull in items from the whole store.” 

When it comes to school supplies, dollar stores have an edge. While 94% of parents say they’ll visit a Walmart store for school supplies, Dollarama is the second favourite stop (66%), followed by Costco (58%) and Real Canadian Superstore (50%). Dollar Tree came in at 26%, just behind Shoppers Drug Mart/Pharmaprix (27%). For those buying school supplies online, Amazon takes the cake (79%), followed by Walmart (28%) and Costco (24%). 

As kids gear up for back-to-school, the economic climate weighs on parents’ minds. More than two-thirds (67%) say inflation will impact their back-to-school shopping more than last year, while 27% expect the impact to be about the same.

“It’s not just in back-to-school—it’s across the board. We see this in practically anything we ask about inflation,” says Doucette. How it might play out in back to school, though, is people shopping earlier out of fear of sudden price hikes. In addition, more Canadians could turn to online Chinese retailers such as Temu for their hard-goods shopping. 

“On the qualitative side, what comes through in the verbatims is people are not necessarily going out and buying new everything like they might have in the past,” Doucette says. “Maybe that backpack from last year is good enough or the runners they bought for summer will become their outdoor shoes for back to school, instead of buying an outdoor and indoor pair. So, there’s a bit of thriftiness.”