Supermarkets in Toronto, London and Sydney: what a low or high count means for a grocer

A city's supermarket count mostly tells you how its food shops are formatted and labelled, not how well people are fed. xMap's places database lists 1,332 supermarkets within 10 km of the centre of London, 190 in Sydney and 82 in Toronto (November 2026), a sixteen-fold spread between London and Toronto. Before a grocer reads Toronto as under-supplied or London as saturated, it needs to count the neighbouring formats too: grocery stores, convenience stores and hypermarkets.

This piece is for grocery retailers, independent grocers and the suppliers who sell to them. It explains the gap, sets out what each city's figures do say, and shows how to count a grocery market so that two cities can be compared fairly.

Why the counts are so far apart

Small formats carry the supermarket label in some cities

London's big grocers run large numbers of small city-centre shops alongside their large stores. When a small-format shop is listed as a supermarket, it lifts the count. The top of London's list makes this plain: of the 437 supermarkets nearest the centre, 110 are Tesco and 101 are Sainsbury's, nearly half between them. Many of those are likely to be compact shops a few streets apart; the names on a map make it easy to check.

Other cities label the same need differently

In Toronto, much of everyday food shopping happens in places that a database may file as grocery stores, specialty food markets or convenience stores rather than supermarkets. Those are real competitors for a grocer, but they are not in the 82. A count of one type measures the label as much as the market.

The figures cover different ground

Toronto's 82 and Sydney's 190 cover every supermarket in each 10 km circle. London's details are worked out from the 437 nearest the centre, about a third of its listing. Shares for London describe central London; shares for the other two describe the whole circle.

What each city's figures do say

xMap's places database, supermarkets within 10 km of each city centre, November 2026. London's figures are worked out from the 437 nearest the centre; Toronto's and Sydney's cover every supermarket in the circle.

Openings are quiet everywhere: 3 of 436 dated supermarkets near London's centre opened in the twelve months before November 2026, 2 of 190 in Sydney and 2 of 82 in Toronto. Supermarket supply changes slowly, which is one reason a new one nearby matters so much to the shops around it.

How to count a grocery market fairly

1. Decide what your shop competes with. A full-range supermarket competes with other supermarkets and hypermarkets; a small urban shop also competes with convenience and grocery stores.
2. Search all of those types together. Nearby places takes up to 12 types in one block, such as Supermarket, Grocery store, Hypermarket and Convenience store.
3. Keep each place's own type in the results, so you can report the mix as well as the total.
4. Use a smaller area than a whole city for the decision itself. A grocer's catchment is a walk or a short drive, so search a district or a 1 to 2 km circle around a candidate site.
5. Repeat the same search for the comparison city with the same types and the same radius. Only then compare.

A made-up example: one format, two cities

Imagine a grocer that runs compact urban supermarkets of about 400 square metres and is choosing between central Sydney and central Toronto. On supermarket counts alone, Sydney has more than twice as many rivals. Its team then searches both cities again with grocery and convenience stores included, inside 1.5 km of four candidate sites in each city. In this invented case, the Toronto sites turn out to be ringed by dozens of small grocery and convenience shops that the supermarket count missed, while two of the Sydney sites have fewer food shops of any kind within walking distance. The first reading pointed the wrong way.

The numbers in that example are made up; the lesson is not. A grocer's real competition is every shop that sells the same basket within the same walk.

Mistakes grocers make with city counts

• Calling a city underserved from one type's count.
• Treating a chain's branch count as its market share. A small-format branch and a large store each count once.
• Comparing a whole-circle figure with a centre-only figure.
• Forgetting people. A low count of food shops is only a gap if people live or work nearby. Demographics can add residents in Canada and Australia; xMap has no population figures for the United Kingdom.

Watching a grocery market with an AI employee

An AI employee in xMap Flows can keep this count for your own districts and tell you when it moves:

1. Schedule: every Monday.
2. Area of interest: your trading districts or circles around your shops.
3. Nearby places: Supermarket, Grocery store, Hypermarket and Convenience store, with brand and chain flag.
4. Only new: so only food shops not seen before go on.
5. Email: the new shops with their type and brand, and a map.

On a quiet week nothing arrives; when a rival opens near one of your shops, it lands in your inbox with its position. To look for gaps instead, Neighbourhoods without a grocery store finds areas with few food shops, New homes with no supermarket yet pairs new housing with missing shops, and Discount, mainstream and premium grocers, city by city sorts the market by price tier.