The “acceleration path” for online book and music sales was 15 years. That’s how long it took to move from 20 percent of consumers shopping online to what experts consider maturation, 70 percent.

After that, things sped up. The next industry to go online, banking, only took 10 years to reach that point.

Recent research prepared for FMI by Nielsen indicates it will take food retail only five to seven more years to reach 70 percent penetration. In other words, time is of the essence for food retail executives who wake up in the middle of the night to worry about how far along that acceleration path their companies are