U.S. Consumers’ Search for CBD Runs From Gas Stations to Grocery Stores

By William Sumner, Hemp Content Manager, New Frontier Data

In but a few short years, the total U.S. CBD market has grown from a cottage industry to one worth billions. New Frontier Data will be sharing the latest projections for the market later this month in the forthcoming U.S. CBD Spending Report, but as already detailed in the U.S. Hemp Market Report: Cannabinoids Edition, Volume 1, an estimated 73 million Americans are likely to purchase CBD by year’s end.

To better understand the numbers, it may be instructive to consider which and how many retailers are carrying CBD products, and their national reach. In gauging the CBD industry’s retail presence, while it is impossible to maintain a perfect inventory of each gas station and c-store that offers CBD products, one approach for sizing up the market’s retail presence is by tracking the large national retailers carrying CBD products, and examining their retail footprint.

While retail giants like Walmart have yet to step into the fray, smaller yet meanwhile significant companies have been stocking their shelves with CBD products through locations numbering more than 8,200 nationally. Some examples include:

Urban Outfitters
The clothing chain started stocking CBD products during the past year throughout its reported 522 retail locations.

Southeastern Grocers
Perhaps best known as the parent company of the Southern regional grocery chain Winn-Dixie, the Southeastern Grocers retailer sells CBD products in approximately 550 of its Winn-Dixie and BI-LO stores.

CVS
The pharmacy chain was among the first retail brands to start carrying CBD in select stores among its nearly 800 retail locations in eight states.

Dollar General
Though the discount chain refrains from offering any ingestible CBD products, Dollar General remains one of the largest CBD retailers in the U.S. Earlier this year, it started selling topical CBD products in more than 1,100 stores throughout Tennessee and Kentucky.

Walgreens
Walgreens has by far the largest current CBD retail presence nationally. Following on the heels of CVS’s CBD offerings, Walgreens dived headfirst into the market, offering CBD products through a reported 3,860 of its retail stores.

The identified retail outlets do not represent the entire market; the Kroger retail grocery chain reported distributes CBD products through more than 1,000 locations, and the health and wellness brand The Vitamin Shoppe has more than 700 stores carrying CBD products.