By industry · Grocery & food retail
Grocery & Food Retail
Affiliate Programs
You Are Paid on the Basket That Is Picked, Not the One That Was Ordered
A weekly shop can be edited until the cut-off, substituted at the shelf and discounted at checkout — all after your conversion has appeared. Add the departments that never earn at all, and the useful question stops being the rate and becomes what the campaign counts.
- Exclusions set per campaign
- No rates or rankings published here
- Qualifying action on the brief
- What you are paid on
- The basket that is picked, not the one ordered
- What keeps moving
- Edits, substitutions and out-of-stock refunds
- What rarely counts
- Whole departments — the brief names them
- What most campaigns buy
- A first basket from a customer they do not have
What is on this shelf
Eight kinds of grocery campaign, sorted by how the shop works
A full weekly delivery, a ten-minute top-up and a posted box of dry goods are all “grocery”, and they hand your reader over in completely different ways. Find the one your pages actually send people to before comparing any two campaigns.
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Supermarket home delivery
A full weekly shop picked from a store or a warehouse and delivered in a booked slot. The biggest baskets on this shelf, and the ones that change most between order and doorstep.
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Rapid convenience delivery
Small top-up orders delivered in minutes from a local hub. Usually app-first, so the payable action often sits on an install followed by an order rather than on the order alone.
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Click and collect
Ordered online, picked by the shop, collected by the customer. Substitutions still happen; the collection itself can be the event a brief validates on.
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Online-only pantry retailers
Ambient and dry goods posted like ordinary parcels. The closest thing here to standard retail rules, and usually the fastest to validate.
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World food & specialty grocers
Narrow ranges, loyal audiences and shipping that is frequently narrower than the brand's marketing. Read the market list beside the delivery promise.
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Delivery passes & memberships
A paid plan that removes delivery fees rather than a basket of food. Where a campaign pays on one, it is a separate qualifying action with its own terms.
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Produce & pantry box schemes
A repeating box rather than a shop. That makes the first box and the renewals two payout lines, which is a subject of its own rather than a row here.
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Bulk, trade & wholesale pantry
Case quantities behind an approved-buyer door, where a price is only shown after an account is opened. It leaves this shelf for the wholesale rulebook.
Two rows above are read somewhere else: repeating boxes are subscription box affiliate programs, where the first box and the renewals are two separate payout lines, and case quantities behind an approved-buyer account are wholesale affiliate programs. One whole question is elsewhere too: how far each kind of food can physically travel, and why a country list is not a delivery map, is the subject of food and beverage affiliate programs — this page assumes you can reach the reader and asks what the campaign counts once you do. The basket, the category rate and the return window are the parent's, e-commerce and retail campaigns. What is open to applications right now is in the campaign index.
The line that decides the rest
Five reasons the number keeps moving
In most of retail a conversion is fixed the moment the button is pressed, and only a return changes it. A grocery order is different: four separate things can move the value before anyone is paid, and the fifth is what that adds up to.
- 01
The order stays editable after you are credited
Most grocery orders can be amended up to a cut-off hours or days later: items added, items dropped, sometimes the whole slot cancelled. Your conversion can appear, sit pending, and then describe a different shop entirely by the time anybody picks it.
- 02
Stock, not the shopper, decides the final basket
Pickers meet empty shelves. An out-of-stock line becomes a substitution, a partial refund or nothing at all, and every one of those moves the value the commission is calculated on. It is the ordinary way this shelf works rather than an exception to it.
- 03
Whole departments are usually outside the commissionable value
A trolley is not one category. Alcohol, tobacco, pharmacy lines, baby formula, gift cards, fuel, delivery fees, bags and deposits are all candidates for exclusion, and which of them a campaign excludes is on the brief. Judging a rate without that list is guesswork.
- 04
Discounts come off the base before your share
Grocery runs on vouchers, loyalty prices and points. Where a campaign pays a percentage, what is left after those is normally what it applies to — so a promotion you did not publish can shrink a payout you already earned.
- 05
So the number settles at the door, not at the click
Add the four together and a grocery conversion is provisional in a way a parcel order is not: expect adjustments after it appears, judge a placement across weeks rather than days, and treat the delivered basket as the real unit of measurement.
Row three is a question rather than a claim: nothing here says what any campaign excludes, only that the list exists and belongs on the brief beside the rate. Row four is the discount-code mechanic the parent already sets out — e-commerce and retail campaigns — and where codes are your placement rather than the shop's, the sign-off rules are on cashback and coupon sites. The states a conversion passes through before any of it is money are on payouts.
Read the intent, then the rate
Three things a grocery campaign is actually buying
The rate is downstream of this. What the advertiser wants decides what your page has to do, which readers are worth sending, and which of the moving parts above can take the payout away again.
Shape three borrows a rulebook from outside retail: what an install is, what a store listing changes and how a first in-app action is validated are on mobile app campaigns. And where a campaign pays for a delivery pass rather than a shop, that is a plan with its own cycle — what a repeating payout is worth is on recurring commission affiliate programs.
Before you apply
Eight lines a grocery brief has to answer
None of these is the headline rate, and every one of them can change what a good-looking campaign is worth. Where a brief is silent, the campaign's own terms are the answer — not anything on this page.
| The line | What it decides | Where it usually sits |
|---|---|---|
| When the basket is valued | Whether the commission is calculated at checkout or after picking, which is the difference between a fixed number and a provisional one. | Validation rules |
| Substitutions | Whether a substituted item still counts, counts at a different rate, or drops out of the basket entirely. | Validation rules |
| Amendments before cut-off | Whether items added after the click are included, and what happens if the shopper removes what they originally bought. | Validation rules |
| Excluded departments | Which parts of the trolley never earn — the single most important line on this shelf, and the one most often skimmed. | Payout terms |
| Vouchers and loyalty prices | What the percentage is applied to once discounts are taken off, and whether a code you did not publish removes the conversion. | Payout terms |
| Fees, bags and deposits | Whether delivery charges, service fees, carrier bags and container deposits sit inside or outside the commissionable value. | Payout terms |
| Cancelled and missed slots | What happens to the commission when a slot is cancelled, missed, or the order is refused at the door. | Validation rules |
| Licensed and restricted lines | What a campaign requires of a placement where alcohol, pharmacy or age-restricted goods are in range, and which markets it is open in. | Brief, before you apply |
Not every brief carries every line, and asking whether one says something is not the same as claiming it does. What a reviewer opens when you apply is on how approval works; link anatomy and the five sub ID slots — worth setting up before a deals page gets busy — are on tracking links; and the dates money moves on are on the payment schedule.
Creative
What is yours to say, and what is the retailer's
Grocery moves faster than any other retail shelf: prices change weekly, offers rotate and stock turns over daily. That makes the split between your experience and the retailer's facts unusually strict.
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Yours to say
- What you ordered, what arrived and what was swapped
- Your own photographs of a delivery or a shop
- How the ordering, slot and collection process actually went
- A comparison built on terms both retailers publish themselves
- A price you saw, carried with the date and the market you saw it in
- The disclosure, on every page where the link appears
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The retailer's to state
- Prices, promotions and which lines are on offer this week
- Delivery areas, slot availability and minimum spend
- Ingredients, allergen wording and nutrition information
- Substitution policy and what a refund covers
- Alcohol, pharmacy and age-restriction requirements
- Product photography and copy, unless the creative pack gives it
The first line on the right is what dates a grocery page fastest: a price quoted without a date is wrong within the week, and creatives have to reflect current pricing accurately. The third and fifth lines are stricter still — allergen wording, and anything about alcohol, pharmacy or age-restricted goods, belong to the retailer in the retailer's own words. After a breach the ladder runs in three rungs: the campaign is paused with a notice, the affected conversions are invalidated, and severe or repeated breaches end the account.
Questions
Grocery questions, answered plainly
What publishers ask before building deals pages, switching comparisons or household content around a grocery campaign.
How do grocery affiliate programs actually pay?
Three shapes turn up on this shelf: a bounty for a genuinely new customer, a share of the commissionable basket, and — on rapid delivery — an install with a first order behind it. No rates are published here, so the useful comparison is which shape a campaign uses and what it excludes, not whose headline number looks larger. What is open to applications right now is in the campaign index.
Why did my commission change after the order went through?
Because the basket kept moving. The shopper can usually amend an order until a cut-off, pickers substitute or refund whatever is out of stock, and vouchers come off the base. Where a campaign values the basket after picking, the number you first saw was always provisional — which is why the delivered shop, not the click, is the unit to plan around.
Which parts of a grocery basket usually do not count?
That list belongs to each campaign and it is on the brief. The candidates worth checking for are alcohol, tobacco, pharmacy lines, baby formula, gift cards and top-ups, fuel, delivery and service fees, carrier bags and container deposits. Nothing here says what any campaign excludes — only that a rate without the exclusion list beside it cannot be compared.
Do I get paid when my reader does their next weekly shop?
Usually not, unless the brief says so. Most campaigns on this shelf buy the first basket and keep the habit that follows. The general case for a repeating payout is on recurring commission programs, and what repeat purchase does to a food publisher's economics is covered on food and beverage programs.
What counts as a new customer?
Whatever the campaign defines and can enforce — typically an account or address that has not ordered before. It matters more here than almost anywhere else in retail, because a large share of grocery traffic is people who already shop there. Treat any new-customer bounty as conditional on that check passing.
Are grocery programs worth it for a national audience?
It depends on where delivery actually reaches, which is a separate line from the market list. That whole question — how far a food product can travel and what a country list really promises — is the subject of food and beverage affiliate programs, and it is worth reading before you buy reach for this shelf.
Can I promote grocery vouchers and codes?
Where the campaign permits it, and codes have their own sign-off. Grocery is where voucher placements concentrate, so the rules about which codes may be published, and what happens when an unpublished one is used, matter more here than elsewhere — they are on cashback and coupon sites and in the campaign guidelines.
What about alcohol in a grocery basket?
Read it as a restricted line rather than an ordinary category. Licensing and age requirements are the advertiser's to state, the market list follows the licence, and a campaign may exclude those items from commission entirely. Nothing on this site says what is permitted in any market.
Do produce boxes and meal kits belong here?
No — a repeating box is a subscription, so the first box and the renewals are two payout lines with their own mechanics. That is subscription box affiliate programs. Bulk and case quantities behind an approved-buyer account are wholesale rather than retail.
How should I report on grocery placements?
Label links so a rare, valuable first basket is traceable to the page that earned it, and read results over weeks rather than days because adjustments arrive late. Link anatomy and the five sub ID slots are on tracking links; the states a conversion passes through before it is money are on payouts.
Keep reading
- E-commerce & retail campaigns The parent: the basket, the rate table and the return window
- Food & beverage programs The same shelf sorted by how far each product can travel
- Subscription box programs Produce and pantry boxes, where renewals are a second line
- Wholesale programs Case quantities behind an approved-buyer door
- Cashback & coupon sites Where grocery codes live, and how one is signed off
- Mobile app campaigns Installs, first actions and what a store listing changes
- Recurring commission programs What a repeating payout is worth, and for how many cycles
Apply with the exclusion list in front of you
Create your publisher account, then read each grocery brief for what it counts — when the basket is valued, what is excluded and who qualifies as new — before you decide what a campaign is worth.