What supermarkets beyond REWE and Carrefour have tested or listed 3D‑printed food products and with what sales results?
Executive summary
Three clear supermarket rollouts are documented: Revo Foods’ mycoprotein “3D‑printed” salmon appeared in REWE Group outlets (including Billa Pflanzilla) and select Austrian retailers and direct‑to‑consumer channels [1] [2] [3], while Spanish startup Cocuus placed plant‑based 3D‑printed bacon into Carrefour stores in Spain [4]. Beyond those named retail partnerships the publicly available reporting shows few additional supermarket chains explicitly listing 3D‑printed products, and hard sales figures remain scarce or described as “low” by regulatory review [5] [4].
1. What supermarkets beyond REWE and Carrefour are documented?
The reporting does not establish other major supermarket chains by name that have listed 3D‑printed foods: Revo’s launches are repeatedly tied to REWE Group outlets (Vienna’s Billa Pflanzilla and select Austrian supermarkets) and its own direct‑to‑consumer shop rather than additional supermarket brands [2] [3] [4], while Cocuus’s first retail placement is explicitly Carrefour in Spain [4]. Market research summaries assert wider distribution footprints — for example claiming Revo reached “over 1,000 points of sale” and Cocuus “400 Carrefour supermarkets” — but those are industry report assertions rather than named, independently verified additional supermarket partnerships in the provided sources [6] [7].
2. What sales results and performance metrics are reported?
Concrete sales numbers are largely absent in independent coverage; Cocuus describes the Carrefour placement as having “good performance” and yielding lessons for further rollout [4], and Revo’s consumer price point for its fillet is reported online (€6.99) with company claims about environmental benefits but without retailer sales volumes [4]. By contrast, the UK Food Standards Agency frames the current retail footprint and market penetration as limited — noting few food printers globally and that sales “appear to be in low numbers” — which suggests early commercial scale rather than blockbuster retail performance [5].
3. Conflicting claims and the reliability of distribution numbers
Industry forecasts and commercial press releases paint a rosier, wider distribution picture — some market reports and company claims say Cocuus products were in 400 Carrefour stores and Revo in more than 1,000 outlets across Europe [6] [7] — but such figures should be treated cautiously: they originate in market‑research and company statements included in paid or promotional releases and are not corroborated by independent retail sales data in the sources provided. The independent trade press and regulators emphasize pilot deployments and low absolute sales rather than mass adoption [4] [5].
4. Why broader supermarket listing is limited and what that implies
Technical constraints, product categories suited to 3D printing, and nascent commercial models limit which supermarkets will trial printed foods; experts and reviews repeatedly caution that 3D printing makes sense for specific product types (seafood analogues, novel textures or personalized nutrition) rather than broad‑spectrum substitution, which helps explain why retailers have pursued targeted trials rather than chain‑wide launches [4] [8] [9]. Regulators and reviewers also flag food‑safety, manufacturing scale and consumer acceptance as open hurdles that keep sales modest and deployments experimental [5] [9].
5. Bottom line and reporting limits
Beyond REWE Group’s documented Revo Foods rollout and Carrefour’s Cocuus placement, the provided sources do not name additional supermarket chains that have stocked 3D‑printed foods; reported “good performance” is qualitative and company or industry reports claim wider points of sale but do not supply verifiable sales volumes, while regulatory review characterizes current sales as low [3] [4] [6] [5]. Any definitive claim about supermarket‑level sales results outside REWE and Carrefour would require retailer POS data or audited company sales figures, which are not present in the supplied reporting.