#kroger

#kroger

H-E-B is America's best grocery chain, with a loyal following and a super-long list of must-buy products, including freshly baked tortillas and store-brand ice cream.

Google Maps reviews of the Walmart Supercenter at 3400 Steelyard Drive swap customer testimonials so egregiously bad as to border comedy. Common features include exceptionally rude, hostile, and inebriated staff, as well as extreme product disorganization, opened packages, general disarray, incorrect pricing, and more.

The Cincinnati-based supermarket company has been shuttering locations since June of last year, when it announced a footprint optimization plan that would result in the closure of about 60 stores. According to a Fast Company review of local media reports and online review platforms like Yelp, Kroger could be more than halfway through that process.

Kroger paid $883 million in dividends against $1.78 billion in free cash flow in FY2025, a coverage ratio of roughly 2x. On an adjusted basis, full-year adjusted EPS was $4.85, putting the payout ratio at approximately 29%. The GAAP alarm is real but misleading.

He says he paid roughly $5 to his distributor to get the pack of Honey Bunches of Oats onto the shelf. But his much larger rivals, the big US supermarket chains, can sell that same box for around $5 - essentially, the price he has to pay wholesale. That dynamic makes it "impossible for us to compete."

The economy is tough, so many of us are looking to save money on grocery bills wherever possible - especially since we're paying significantly more on select grocery staples than a few years ago. Our shopping habits are changing, adapting to the greater need for budgeting, and grocery stores are recognizing the requirement for affordable products. Kroger, the oldest grocery chain in the U.S., is meeting this need by offering marked down perishable products that are nearing their best-by or sell-by date.

Perusing the grocery aisle in the Westside Market on 23rd Street in Manhattan, you might not even notice the screens. They look just like paper price labels and, alongside a bar code, use a handwriting-style font we've come to associate with a certain merchant folksiness. They're not particularly bright or showy. The only clues that they're not ordinary sticky shelf labels are a barely distinguishable light bulb and, on some, a small QR code.

Retail media is evolving from clicks and carts to conversations and context. As generative and conversational AI reshape how people discover products across the answer ecosystem, retail media leaders are facing new challenges - and new opportunities. They sit at a rare intersection. They have first-party data, frequent customer relationships, and real-world transactions. The question isn't whether retail media will keep growing. It's how it evolves without losing performance, trust, or relevance.

Kroger named former Walmart executive Greg Foran as its chief executive officer on Monday, 11 months after the abrupt resignation of its previous CEO. Foran has a reputation as a tech-savvy and detail-oriented leader. He led Walmart's U.S. division from 2014 to 2019, where he focused on cleaning up stores, ensuring items were in stock, and improving the fresh produce selection. He also introduced online ordering and pickup, and accelerated Walmart's digital capabilities.

The deal ties Roku's proprietary viewership data to Instacart's sales data (across over 1,100 retail banners and 80,000+ stores in North America) in a privacy-safe way to provide advertisers with new insights about whether viewers purchase products on Instacart after seeing an ad for a CPG brand on the Roku platform. In essence, the partnership aims to enable advertisers to more easily quantify the impact of their streaming buys on product sales.

One of those enduring rumors is that Arby's roast beef comes to the store in liquid form, but that is a totally false allegation that was debunked years ago. The reality is that Arby's roast beef simply comes prepacked in a bag of liquid brine.

The shelves were lined with different products than what you'll now find at your local market, and $10 worth of groceries had a very different look - and bulk - to it. Beyond changes in products and costs, the feel of the store also wouldn't have been the same. Not, at least, until one Florida grocery store completely redefined the shopping experience with a simple addition that made everything a whole lot more pleasant: air conditioning.

That's a problem. Without a doubt, a great website and top-level marketing will help generate new sales, but it's the delivery experience that warrants future ones. This is because today's consumer not only has options for where they'll buy but also a high set of expectations. What's more, they remember the way a product arrives at their doorstep more than how it was sold.

The outlook for 2026 I'm watching 2026 with equal parts optimism and urgency. Optimism because consumer demand is still there. Retail sales have remained resilient in recent data. Urgency because the operating environment is only getting tighter. Coming out of FY2025, large retailers demonstrated resilience amid inflation pressure, shifting consumer behavior, and global supply-chain complexity. Walmart raised its outlook and leaned further into a model that blends physical stores, e-commerce scale, and execution discipline.