Every year at Excel Recruitment we sit down with retailers, HR teams and grocery managers across the country to ask the question everyone is thinking but not always saying out loud: how do my salaries actually stack up against everyone else’s?

Our annual, industry-wide grocery retail salary guide exists to answer exactly that. It gives a clear snapshot of the market, highlights what has shifted since last year and shows where your pay scales sit in relation to your competitors. This year’s guide has just landed and while there are few real surprises, there are some very strong themes running through the data.

Management pay steps up

After a couple of settled years for store managers’ pay, 2026 will bring some movement. Store managers have seen salaries rise by roughly 5%, with many now sitting materially ahead of where they were just twelve months ago. The ripple effect of repeated minimum wage increases means junior management has moved even more. Trainee managers and department or duty managers are up in the region of 5% to 7% across most banners. That might not feel dramatic in isolation, but it is crucial in protecting the gap between supervisors and the general assistants working beside them. If that differential disappears, motivation tends to follow it out the door. For retailers, the message is simple: if your management team had not seen an adjustment since pre-2025, you may already be behind the curve.

Fresh food and specialists still rule the roost 

If you are tired of hearing that fresh food talent is in short supply, I have bad news, it still is. Both the 2025 and 2026 guides show retailers doubling down on deli, bakery and butcher roles as their main competitive edge in-store. Deli managers have picked up modest pay increases, often in the region of an extra €1,000 a year, but the bigger change is how they are being treated. Many can now set or strongly influence their own schedules, with later starts, condensed weeks or guaranteed weekends becoming part of the conversation. Bakers and butchers remain firmly on the “most wanted” list with salaries to match, and where retailers cannot win the bidding war with specialist independents, they are increasingly upskilling their own sales assistants into these roles. An other specialist area on the rise is security. With retail crime still a live issue, demand for experienced retail security officers has increased, although a relatively healthy talent pool has kept pay levels fairly stable year on year.

From hiring at all costs to keeping who you have

One of the clearest shifts in this year’s guide is a move away from pure recruitment firefighting toward a genuine retention strategy. It can cost up yo 30% of a manager’s annual salary to replace them when you factor in notice periods, temporary cover, agency fees and the inevitable honeymoon-period mistakes. Suddenly, that extra few thousand on a retention raise looks like good value. Retailers are widening their focus from “what is the salary” to “what is the package”. Contract hours have been trimmed back in many cases to around 39 per week to support work life balance. Every second weekend off is becoming a realistic expectation for managers, not a mythical perk reserved for head office. Flexible rotas, input into a start and finish times and genuine notice of changes are now powerful selling points. On top of that, employers are layering in benefits: health insurance, extra annual leave, birthday days off, staff discounts and even profit share schemes. Performance-linked bonuses tied to shrink, waste or customer satisfaction scores are appearing more often, allowing retailers to reward high performance without permanently increasing base pay.

All of this against a tougher backdrop 

Of course, all these positive stories sit on top of a cost base that has rarely felt heavier. The National Minimum Wage has jumped again to €14.15, almost 40% higher than it was in 2020 and worth roughly €8,200 a year more for a full-time employee. Pension auto-enrolment, enhanced sick pay, DRS infrastructure, rising insurance and energy costs and the ongoing impact of retail crime are still squeezing margins. At the same time, regional differences are widening, Dublin and commuter belt stores are now looking at salary expectations around 10% higher than many rural locations, which means a standard national pay grid often fails the reality test on the ground. The retailers who are coping best are not necessarily the ones paying the most but those who understand exactly where they need to be competitive and where a smarter package can do the heavy lifting.

Salary is only half the story

The big takeaway from this year’s survey is that salary still matters, but it is only part of how candidates judge an offer. A slightly lower headline figure with every second second weekend off, predictable evenings, extra annual leave and a clear development route will beat a “big money” role that eats into every family occasion! For retailers, the challenge is to know your numbers, know your market position and then design a package that makes sense for both your P&L and your people.

If you would like to benchmark your own pay scales or sense, check a particular role, you can download a free copy of our full grocery retail salary guide 2026 at: https://www.excelrecruitment.com/download-salary-guide/