W. Rodney McMullen
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at Kroger
Thank you, Rob. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. The Kroger team delivered another strong performance during the quarter, fueled by our strategy, Leading with Fresh and Accelerating with Digital. these consistent results underscore the resiliency and flexibility of our business model, along with our associates' passion to delivery fresh convenient customer experience with zero compromise on quality, selection and affordability. Customers continue to adjust their shopping habits in response to ongoing inflation. We are doing everything we can to help our customers stretch their dollars with high quality fresh products at everyday low prices and industry-leading fuel rewards program and personalized savings on the items that matter most to them.
Our customers are looking for ways to save, and we are there for them. During the quarter, digital coupon engagement hit an all-time high with 750 million digital offers downloaded, totaling almost $1 billion in savings. Our fuel rewards program continues to resonate with customers as more than 600,000 incremental households engaged with our fuel rewards program this quarter compared to last year. And our fuel reward redemption rates were also up significantly.
We continue to see more customers cooking from scratch and eating out less often. Our broad assortment of products that's meeting the need for customers to buy what they want on their terms. For example, some customers are continuing to buy more of their favorite fresh products like apples, tomatoes and grapes, while other customers are choosing products like frozen fruit and vegetables, allowing products to last longer in their homes. Overall, customers are looking to save money and make healthier choices by cooking more meals at home rather than eating out.
Kroger's strong value proposition drove positive household growth and meaningful loyal household growth both online and in-store. Digital sales also returned to positive growth, driven by our one-of-a-kind Boost membership program and expansion of our Kroger Delivery network, It's clear our go-to-market strategy is connecting with customers, and we continue to build long-term customer loyalty through fresh, Our Brands, personalization and our seamless ecosystem.
Leading with Fresh. We are dedicated to serving our customers the freshest products, so when they think food, they think Kroger. To achieve this goal, we are utilizing technology and deploying fresh innovation to deliver products faster, which stays fresher or longer for our customers to enjoy and it's working. In our 864 fresh certified stores, customers are purchasing more fresh products and overall store sales are growing faster than the rest of the business.
Supply chain remains an important part of our fresh strategy as well. In order to maximize freshness, we are utilizing our data science and collaborating with our partners to minimize dwell time in our distribution network and maintaining the integrity of the cold chain. We are also improving productivity in our supply chain. During the quarter, we reduced fuel cost headwinds through technology and process efficiencies such as controlling more product movement across the value chain and maximizing our trucking capacity. While some categories remain challenging, supplier in-stocks are improving and we are cautiously optimistic this will continue in the back half of the year.
Turning to Our Brands, we saw incredible engagement in Our Brands during the quarter with identical sales growth of 10.2% compared to last year. This increase was led by our Kroger and Home Chef brands. Convenience remains a priority and Home Chef is meeting that need by providing high-quality family meals as a budget-friendly alternative to eating out at restaurants.
For other customers who are enjoying cooking from scratch, Our Brands are delivering innovative products at a great value. So, Our Brands' product strategy is rooted in quality, providing customers with memorable meal experiences they crave, and these products continue to earn world-class recognition. Most recently, Murray's Cheese varieties won five awards at the highly regarded 2022 American Cheese Society Competition. We were also recognized by Store Brands Magazine with 12 Editors Picks award for best new products, the most of any retailer. This recognition focused specifically on food that met customer needs for healthier products.
As we continue to look for ways to help our customers stretch their budgets, this quarter, we launched a new portfolio strategy for our opening price point brands. We consolidated 17 legacy brands into two, Heritage Farm for our fresh and dairy product lines and our newest brand, Smart Way, for our non-perishable items. These brands are competitively priced and meet the needs of customers on a budget. We launched with 150 SKUs and expect to roll out additional products by the end of the year.
Now moving to digital. We achieved positive sales growth, as I mentioned before, led by our strong delivery results. Early in the second quarter, we introduced our Boost membership nationwide, and it's already showing promising results, including an increase in overall household spend among members. We remain focused on adding new members and are encouraged that enrollment is in line with our internal expectations and projections.
During the quarter, we opened a new customer fulfillment center powered by Ocado's automated smart platform in Romulus, Michigan. Additionally, we are excited to expand the Kroger Delivery network to more customers in four new geographies during the quarter through spoke facilities in Austin, Birmingham, Oklahoma City and San Antonio. This brings our total CFC and spoke count to 18. We also continue to invest in our pickup business, where demand remained strong. During the quarter, we increased capacity and shortened wait times to improve our customer experience.
We also invested in technology and implemented process efficiencies, which helped lower our cost to serve. Our customers are telling us they love our seamless experience. We continue to see customers effortlessly shift between store, pickup and delivery, which is building loyalty. We continue to improve the experience and we'll always encouraged our customers to shop with us how they want to and with zero compromises.
Our associate dedication and passion continue to fuel Kroger's consistently strong results, and we are proud to invest in our teams and improve the associate experience. We saw more people apply to work at Kroger this quarter as we continued to attract talented associates. Our current associates, we are making progress on retention. We've rolled out improved onboarding guidelines and implemented career planning tools. In addition, as part of our commitment to associate wellness, we recently introduced a new financial coaching service tool for hourly associates. This unique benefit offer free financial planning assistance to our associates. We are launching the tool in three pilot divisions and look forward to expanding the service across the company by January of 2023.
It is always exciting to see our associates' commitment to creating an outstanding work environment recognized. For the third consecutive year, Kroger was named a Best Place to Work for Disability Inclusion, earning a perfect score on the 2022 Disability Equity Index. Additionally, the Brandon Hall Group, a leading human capital management firm, honored Kroger for our training programs and the ways in which our teams promote diversity, equity and inclusion. Each team member is involved in creating our culture where associates come for a job and discover a career. Our purpose to see the human spirit inspires our team every day.
One important way we bring our purpose to life is through Kroger's comprehensive ESG strategy. Our aim is to achieve lasting positive change for people and our planet. Our newly published 2022 ESG report called Nurturing Shared Values, outlines the entire Kroger family's strong progress against dozens of environmental sustainability, social impact and governance goals and commitments.
We continued working to operationalize and integrate ESG within our business. Nowhere is this more evident than through our Zero Hunger Zero Waste social impact plan. This month marks the fifth anniversary of the launch of Zero Hunger Zero Waste. And while we still have so much more work to do to achieve our moonshot goal of achieving a world free from hunger and food waste, we also have so much to celebrate. Over the past five years, our team donated 2.3 billion meals to our neighbors in need, which included $1 billion in giving to fight food and security, 500 million pounds of surplus food donated to our food bank partners and nearly $45 million in grants to support food recovery and system change from our Zero Hunger Zero Waste Foundation.
And I'm very proud to share, for the first time ever, our store teams achieved 100% execution of Zero Hunger Zero Waste food rescue, which is the strongest proof point yet of the value of operationalizing ESG. It took all of our teams working cross-functionally to achieve this important milestone. A huge congratulations and thank you to all involved.
In summary, Kroger delivered another strong second quarter. We continue to delight our customers, strengthen our business model and execute on our strategy of Leading with Fresh and Accelerating with Digital. We remain focused on delivering for our associates, customers and communities. And when we do that well, deliver value for our shareholders.
With that, I'll turn it over to Gary to take you through our second quarter financials. Gary?
