The Grocer Paywall: How to Read The Grocer Articles for Free

The Grocer is the weekly trade magazine for the UK grocery and FMCG industry, published by William Reed. It is read by supermarket buyers, suppliers, brand managers and the analysts who follow them, and it covers retailer results, supplier deals, brewery closures, category trends and the politics of food. Its stories are picked up by the national press and shared on LinkedIn, and a reader who follows one of those links usually meets a sign-in box or a subscribe prompt. This guide explains how the paywall works, what happened when we tested it, and how to read a full article.

How The Grocer paywall works

The Grocer uses a registration wall combined with a subscriber paywall. Visitors are asked to create a free account to read, and registered users then get a small number of free reads before the site asks them to subscribe. Much of the analysis, data and in-depth features is reserved for subscribers from the start. The count is tracked in your account and in a browser cookie.

The gate is applied in the browser. The article text is delivered in the page so that search engines can index it, and a script hides the body behind the sign-in or subscribe prompt. A reader that fetches the page without running that script receives the complete article. Our explainer on metered versus hard paywalls sets out why that distinction matters.

There is a caveat. On 8 October 2026 thegrocer.co.uk blocked our reader and we listed it as not working. On 13 October 2026 three of three articles loaded in full. It works today, but it blocked us only days earlier and may do so again, so treat it as a site that is currently working rather than one we can guarantee.

Our tests on 13 October 2026 through Skip the Paywall:

• A 554-word The Grocer news report on Carlsberg Britvic announcing a plan to close Marston's Brewery loaded in full, all 16 paragraphs.
• A 1,603-word The Grocer comment piece on Sainsbury's, Morrisons, Tesco and Majestic and grocery's consolidation rush loaded in full, all 38 paragraphs.
• A 366-word The Grocer report on Diageo culling its breakthrough innovation team in a restructure loaded in full, all 15 paragraphs.

Read a The Grocer article in full

• Copy the article link. The Grocer links look like thegrocer.co.uk/news/headline-slug/724601.article, with a section such as news or comment-and-opinion and a six-digit article number at the end.
• Paste it into the box on the home page and press Read Article.
• The story appears in a clean reader view with the headline, byline and full text.

If the reader returns an error instead of the article, the site is probably blocking automated access again, as it did on 8 October. Trying later sometimes works, but we cannot promise it.

Other approaches

• Free registration. A free account gives a limited number of reads, which is enough for the occasional story that reaches you through LinkedIn or a newsletter.
• Newsletters. The Grocer sends free daily and sector email bulletins that summarise the day's stories, and the summaries often carry the key facts even when the full article is gated.
• Library and business access. Some business libraries and university libraries with food or retail courses hold The Grocer in print or through a trade-press database. Many suppliers and retailers also hold corporate subscriptions that staff can use.
• Related free sources. Retailer and supplier results are published on company investor pages and at Companies House, and the Competition and Markets Authority publishes its merger decisions, so much of what The Grocer reports can be traced to primary documents.

How it compares with other trade titles

HSJ, the health service trade title, loads in full, as do The Loadstar for freight and logistics and Skift for the travel industry. The Grocer is the only one of the four that has blocked us in the past week, which is why we flag it separately. Other William Reed titles have not been tested, so we cannot vouch for them. The full list of sites that work is kept current.

Subscribe if you read it regularly

The Grocer is a specialist newsroom whose reporting on supermarkets, suppliers and food policy is rarely matched by the general press, and its revenue comes largely from subscriptions. If you work in grocery or FMCG and rely on it to follow the trade, a subscription is the right way to keep that coverage going.