Taking Stock Of Agentic Commerce In Grocery, Plus Walmart’s Slam Dunk And Sprouts New CEO | GrocerTalk

It's September, the weather is turning, the kids are back to school, and conference season is really about to kick off.

Over the next month, the biggest retail technology event organizers are all running shows and I think it's a pretty safe bet you won't be able to go more than five minutes without hearing about agentic AI.

And the agentic hype train really got away and running this week with news that Anthropic has finally reached shared its blueprint for building AI agents on Claude.

But as far from all, whilst many in our industry are still thinking about the future potential of agentic AI, Amazon is quietly implementing it.

The latest release of Alexa for shopping continues Amazon along the path of making agentic commerce the default way for American shoppers to engage with the world's biggest online retailer.

So before you pack your bags and head off to your retail tech event of choice, let's take stock of agentic commerce for the grocery industry and the rest of the news in a busy week in global grocery retailing.

So welcome to grocertalk.

Your IT or your systems team owns the rails and your marketing team owns the trains.

It sort of feels like agentic commerce is both everywhere and nowhere right now.

Almost all of the major grocers in the US have had CEO changes.

They just listen in.

They can actually go to every conference this fall without traveling.

Sarah, let me just check.

Do you like a good pumpkin spice latte?

I promised the young people at my office that I would say this.

If you're not taking the whole basket approach, then you're not driving the margin.

That written content is going to get crawled in a way that video is not.

I think it's a slam dunk.

Hello everyone.

I'm your host, Ben Miller and I've got an absolute treat of a guest host for you this week.

Look.

Reflecting the dive into agentic commerce, I was keen to invite a digital marketing expert onto the show.

Someone who can talk about AI commerce strategy and the customer insights behind it.

So I am thrilled to introduce Sarah Engel.

Sarah is president of digital marketing agency and consultancy January Digital, a recent member of the annual AdWeek 50 list of the most influential marketing executives and all round wonderful human.

Welcome to Grossertalk, Sarah Engel.

Thank you.

I'm so thrilled to be here.

Ben and I have loved every episode you've made so far.

It's just, it's really filling a space in the market that doesn't exist.

So I'm thrilled to be here and I'm thrilled to see you.

Thank you.

And wonderful to see you too.

Look, couldn't be happier to have you on the show.

So Sarah, can you tell us what you do, what January Digital does and tell us about your, you know, your marketing and retail journey.

So, yes.

So January Digital, like we would say, we're a marketing leadership company.

So yes, we're the agency of record for brands like Carhartt and Steve Madden and Amica and Interstate Batteries and a lot of incredible brands.

And what makes us a little bit different as well is that a lot of us came from the inside.

So we're former brand operators who now sometimes lead strategic consulting work.

So we've sat in the chair that our clients have sat in and then run all digital marketing for the majority of our clients.

So I guess I would just say I'm a marketer and a retailer.

You know, first and foremost.

I've been doing this a little over two decades.

I was head of marketing for Lily Pulitzer, a beautiful women's fashion brand.

Before that I worked at Match and Travelocity and Chevrolet and so, you know, really brand building and, and then shifted a lot more into retail.

I was also the CMO of Dynamic Action, which is now edited.

And the reason I say that it is a retail data company.

So I spent a lot of time on the inside of the numbers that retailers really rely on.

I've also been a chief HR officer and I say that because I think a lot of what we're going to talk about today really relies on the leadership, the change management, the organizational readiness.

And I'm having more conversations about that right now than ever.

So these days I, yes, I serve as the president here and then I advise Shop Talk and Grocery Shop and I sit on the advisory board of Thredup and just kind of live and live and breathe the customer reality every day.

Amazing.

And Sarah, before we dive into the news, I did so mention the setup that it's look, it's conference season coming up.

So what's, what's your on your agenda?

What's on your travel plans next few weeks?

Yes, I mean September is going to be wild and beyond.

So I will be at Retail Club, the AI Festival, which is incredible.

I was there last year for the inaugural year.

I'll be speaking a couple of times there again, really on marketing organization in the future and just the organizational change elements.

I'll then be headed to Shop Talk fall in Nashville this year, which is very exciting, doing some speaking there and that will be really a fun one.

We're actually leading a new format.

It's like a 200 person back and forth conversation, roundtables in a 200 person setting.

It'll be great.

So I think that'll be really fun with Mike from Consortium Brands.

I think that'll be a really great one.

And then after that, let me think.

I'm doing the glossy forum.

Really beauty focused.

But yeah, I'll be like you.

I'll be all over the place in the next few months.

It's time to get on the road.

Look, just really, really, really quick programing note for me.

Chris and I are actually starting next week.

We're heading to Paris for NRF's big show.

Europe starts on Tuesday.

Actually, we're going to be recording interviews with retail leaders from the Vujan booth on the show floor.

All three days of the show go some really interesting, really, really interesting interviews lined up, some grosses.

So we're going to publish everything on the Omnitalk LinkedIn page.

It's going to be on the podcast feed, it's going to be on the YouTube channel.

So I was just thinking between you guys, like, nobody's going to miss anything if they just listen in.

They can actually go to every conference this fall without traveling.

It's perfect.

Let's see if we can do this.

Let's see if we can do it.

Okay.

Come on.

Let's get to this week's Grocery Talk, which is brought to you with the help and support of Instacart Enterprise, Portager Vusion and Sifter.

Yep, that's right.

We're welcoming Sifter Solutions onto the pod as a title sponsor this week and I'll tell you a little bit more about them shortly.

But first, let's get to this week's Grocer Talk.

We've got news on sprouts, farmers markets, CEO succession plan, Kroger and Maya both launching wellbeing events.

Walmart expanding restaurant delivery with Dunkin and Aldi letting social media users pick new products for development.

But we start with the latest on agentic commerce with news from both Anthropic and Amazon.

So headline number one, which is brought to you by Instacart Enterprise, which gives grocery businesses the technology to grow online and in store with one modular platform built for how grocery actually works and built to scale with you.

Learn more at company.instacart.com forward/grocertalk.

Okay, we start with a report in Reuters that Anthropic is giving retailers two blueprints to build agents in Claude.

The first is a blueprint complete with working reference implementations for a shopping agent that can be deployed inside existing existing apps or websites to provide contextual search and checkout building linked to your product catalog.

And the second is a merchant agent designed to provide analytics and insights for running retail from tracking inventory to making pricing and promotion recommendations.

Meanwhile, the latest release of Amazon's agentic AI assistant Alexa for shopping has added a new Update me when feature where you can request personalized notifications ranging from when a new bookies being released to when a particular artist is announcing a new tour.

And it searches from across the web, not just Amazon's properties.

And all this comes at a time when Adobe analytics is reporting that AI driven retail sites converted a 60% higher rate than traffic from other sources.

Right.

Sarah, I've just been talking, talk, talking for far too long and I can't even pronounce the things anymore.

So over to you, how important are these latest agent e commerce announcements for grocery retailers and brands and what actions should they be taking now?

Okay, yeah, I mean the significance here to me is less about any one new feature.

It's more about this direction of travel.

But both of these announcements together.

A couple of other announcements have happened in the last few months.

We're moving from helping people research products to using what you know about the customer, making decisions and completing purchases for them.

Right.

So grocery is a natural use case for this.

So many purchases are routine and repeatable.

You know, if I need diapers on a specific day, if there's certain, you know, my milk, my specific milk order, There are things like that that make a ton of sense once a product becomes part of that automated order.

That can be a really powerful position for a brand, I was going to say too.

Amazon's not alone here.

Albertsons launched its AI shopping assistant late last summer.

Kroger rolled out its version in the summer.

They're fairly recent.

Albertson says that it's seeing basket sizes increase by 10% for standalone searches.

So, okay, we are seeing some traction already, or at least that's what the releases are saying.

But I think that what's happening is more important than the feature list.

It's what's actually happening is like from a consumer perspective, the decision is moving for 100 years.

Right.

Grocery brand preferences were built at the shelf, at the shelf every single trip.

Everything about how a brand spent money assumes that that redecision happens in the aisle.

Automated replenishment collapses that.

Right.

So I, I do think it's really important for your listeners to think in the past, you know, you win once, you win for A long time, I, I or you know, I think that you now have a situation where if you lose, you lose that at bat because you're not that don't have that sense of discovery in the aisle.

So you asked what should they do about it?

The work is a lot less glamorous than people might expect.

They hear AI and it sounds really high tech and really exciting.

But if you are the brand, the thing that determines whether an agent picks you is not your creative, it's your content, it's your product data.

So your attributes, your availability, your pricing, your reviews, like a lot of that right now sits in operations and that now has to be part of your marketing infrastructure.

So that is actually the work that really needs to be done.

And I guess I would also flag, I think for, you know, attention that maybe nobody's naming.

Retail media is the most profitable business that grocers have built in a decade.

And it works because a search, search results can be sold.

An agent building a cart does not browse those results in the same way.

So the tool that they're racing to adopt is kind of in quiet conflict with their best margin line.

And I don't see that anybody quite has an answer to that yet.

That is not to say don't go down this path.

You absolutely need to continue to test and go down these paths.

But I think there will be an interesting tension between the built retail media systems from the grocers and what's happening with shopping agents.

And I think it's fascinating, this lack of clarity about how you influence in this AI driven area.

Least, at least with retail media.

Yeah, it costs, but you know how to be able to influence.

And, and I think that's one of the big differences between the anthropic announcement and what Amazon is doing, whereby anthropic is inserting itself potentially as the intermediary between search and commerce and it.

And we've got to discover how you influence that.

When Amazon inserts itself, there is, there is.

It's a retailer itself is inserting one of its tools between the two and at what point will it favor its products?

How do you get your product to be favored?

But I think I'm really interested your thoughts on this.

Sarah.

You talked about repeat and how that lends itself to grocery.

You could have almost said the same argument ten years ago with the old dash button and we know that didn't work out.

So what feels different now that makes you think that it will lead itself to automated replenishment?

I think the consumers, you know, realistic viewpoint of what they're willing to trade off.

Right.

The time, trade off, the replenishment element.

Do I want to go.

Do I want to have to run to the store because we're out of milk?

Like, you know, those types of things.

I think that the consumer is much more comfortable right now because so many things that they're doing are happening in a much more automated, much easier, much more frictionless way.

I mean, even, you know, curbside pickup at the store or they're, you know, using Instacart to get their deliveries.

Like, they're much more comfortable to remove that friction now than they think they were 10 years ago.

I think, too, that it will be interesting that where I think it works the best is like, center of the center of the store, right?

Your paper towels and your cereal and the stuff that one box is next to the next box.

Like, the things, the things that you are going to replenish, I think are the center of the center of the store.

Items, fresh items, are going to be very difficult in this regard.

And that is where a lot of margin lives.

And so I think that's where there's going to be.

I think that's going to be tricky, you know, like, you know, am I okay for, you know, for any apples, or do I.

Do I want to sit and, you know, this.

I guess the same argument can be true for instacart and home delivery, but I think there is an element of this that is not quite being considered yet is what are people willing to replenish?

I mean, Amazon, of course, you know, has.

Has that model down in terms of subscribe and save.

What.

What are those things that we're willing to replenish on a regular basis, you know, exactly.

When you need diapers or whenever you need cereal or whatever those things are that you're willing to replenish on a regular basis.

And when do you need something for a specific recipe or something, you know, specifically fresh?

The things that often our grocers are making margin on.

Yeah.

So when you're talking to your clients at the moment, Sarah, and they're saying, look, yeah, AI search strategy, AI commerce strategy.

Where do we start?

What are you advising them?

Where should people be getting going at the moment?

Yes.

I mean, like I said, it's not the sexy answer, but you've got to start in your inner data.

You've got to start in your product attributes.

And I think about it a lot, as in the past, we were building brands, and now we have to really be the experts at our Own brands, the expert at our own products, AI will rank you on that expertise.

And so by that I mean written content.

Even if I think about the YouTube, even if there is a transcript, that written content is going to get crawled in a way that video is not.

So it's not to say the brand building is not important.

It's not to say you don't need beautiful visuals.

What I'm saying is it's not going to, it's not going to help your, your rankings.

And so the product attributes, reviews on your products, anything that allows you to be the expert at your own products, the expert at your own brands, that is what's going to matter.

And so I say that because, you know, it seems, it seems basic.

It seems like, sure, we have all those things on the site.

Every single brand I've worked with, the moment they go in and start looking, they have a lot of work to do just because it's completely new information that just wasn't needed or didn't need to be customer facing in the past.

And so that's where it really starts I think too, the data connections, the measurement, making sure that you have a really tight connection between your marketing team, who's really working on this, and your IT team.

Dr. Janet Sherlock said this recently and I love this, she says your IT or your systems team owns the Rails and your marketing team owns the trains.

So it's like that system's got to be in place.

Your AI systems really got to be in place.

You got to know as an organization how you're dealing with it, what that means from an org change perspective.

And then marketing can run the trains along that track.

So I think that's a really good way to look at it.

Right.

And so much of that is going to be the heavy lifting of ensuring that all your product data is right, that it's being attributed in the right ways, that you really do the heavy lifting up front to make sure your data's clean and ready to go and that you can actually even be considered to show up in those rankings.

I really like that.

That's a great analogy.

I like that a lot.

You know, I think, I think for me it sort of feels like agentic commerce is both everywhere and nowhere right now.

So kind of, what do I mean by that?

So everywhere as in the expectation for people to be able to use conversational contextual search, I think is rapidly becoming the default, which is how we've always asked questions of each other.

It's just Google taught us to summarize it down to three words.

Well, we've now been told we don't need to do that anymore.

So I think if you're still running a website which is based on keywords rather than conversational, that's a significant problem because that customer behavior is moving really quickly.

So sort of that's the everywhere bit.

The nowhere bit is if you go to the other end of the spectrum and see agentic commas only is the point at which machines are buying from machines.

We're not at that yet.

There is so many trust hurdles, never mind structural barriers to go through that.

So I think if you're thinking agent E commerce only exists in that world, not yet, but all the plumbing is being made to get to it.

I think you're absolutely right.

I completely agree with you.

And where I see there is an in between though, where I am seeing agents really work and interact with the other machines in a way that is really meaningful to customers, I'll put it that way, where they're comfortable.

It's things like, I think about our beauty brands and color matching and some of those, you know, some things that are happening from an agentic perspective, they are size and fit.

From a, from a fashion perspective, a lot of the agents are now being plugged in there and there's some size and fit elements that are.

So people are getting much more comfortable with the agent doing things on their behalf before the point of purchase.

The question is when we really shift over, when we really, you know, kind of cross that chasm into the purchases actually happening on my behalf.

It certainly is possible and it's not widespread yet.

And some of the things from Amazon, they still feel like they've come from an item merchants perspective rather than a grocery basket perspective.

Update me when.

Fantastic.

Let me know when these flights are going on sale, for example, at the best price, but actually build a regular basket week in, week out, it feels less transferable to that bit of the grocery world.

And as you said, Sarah, it was really interesting.

If you're not taking the whole basket approach, then you're not driving the margin.

In which case let's move on to headline number two, which is supported by Portager.

Portager is a groundbreaking purpose built AI platform for retail negotiations and joint business planning, helping merchants prepare smarter, negotiate stronger and maximize value.

Visit Portager AI to learn more.

And a quick additional programming note here too.

You can learn a lot more about Portager and its parent company Conligo in our fall conference.

Must See Tech Preview Webinar, which is a LinkedIn Live next Thursday, that's the 17th of September.

Conligo's founder, Daniel Duty will be just one of our expert guests.

So within the prep for this, this week has been super interesting.

So all the details, it's LinkedIn Live, they're in the programming notes and they're on my LinkedIn feed.

So headline number two.

Headline number two comes from Grocery Dive, which reports at.

Jack Sinclair, CEO Sprouts Formers Markets since 2019, will step down at the end of this financial year.

Arizona based sprouts is a $9 billion grocer with over 480 stores in 25 states.

Sinclair will be succeeded by Nick Conat, currently chief operating officer at Sprouts.

Nick joined in 2022 after stints at Target and Pepco.

Sprouse went to Lentz to outline that this is an orderly transition with Sinclair still significantly involved in the process.

And he praised Conad's talent, drive and dedication to their people.

After leading the retailer through a period of substantial growth, Jack Sinclair will become the grocer's executive chairman at start of the next financial year.

So that's January 4th.

Although it's important to note that this change is all coming at a time when Sprouts comps have dipped negative, so down 1% in Q2.

Sarah, what do you think is Jack Sinclair's legacy at Sprouts and what should be Nick Conant's main priorities?

It's big news, I think.

Absolutely.

I'm glad you asked the question that way because we do have to acknowledge such an impressive legacy that Jack Sinclair's leaving.

He made Sprouts a destination for health and innovation and discovery rather than trying to just be another traditional grocer.

And I think that that legacy, you know, I thought about this a lot and I would say it's about focus, but it was actually about subtraction.

Like he killed their promotional model.

He narrowed who Sprouts is for.

Really, like, he, he really said, okay, we're gonna, we're gonna get super focused.

And he did that by subtraction, where he added was stores and, and revenue, which is incredible.

So, like, that is a, that is a really amazing legacy.

I do think he's handing it over at a slightly harder moment.

You know, nothing, nothing terrible happening there, but it is, it is a little bit of a tougher moment that I think is important to recognize they're looking healthy on the top line.

It's quietly gotten harder underneath.

So, you know, to your point of comps being down, I think that Nick's coming in at a point where the business, where the expansion engine really still works and same store engine has stalled.

And that's going to, that's going to require a completely different type of leadership.

So, you know, he's not inheriting a rocket ship, he's inheriting a strategy.

That's right.

But the math has tightened.

So I actually think the priority here, you know, is, is nerve.

It's when comps soften and I have seen this my entire career.

When comps soften, the instinct is promote, pull the promotional lever every, you know, every single time.

And that's the exact shopper the Jack Sinclair and others you know, I'm sure including Nick as well, spent years walking away from.

So don't pull that promotional shopper back in the moment.

Comps look soft.

It's like I think prioritizing the pipeline rather than the assortment will be also be important.

I mean, everything that Sprouts proves out, you then see Costco and Walmart and others do in a couple of years.

At least that's how I see it, right?

Protein, functional beverages, like everything that Sprouts was really known for, that they tested, they innovative.

Everybody said, oh, it worked for them.

Now we'll take it and run with it.

So I don't think the moat is what's on the shelf right now.

It's being in a place where emerging brands can launch first and how you hold on to that window of being first to market.

That's what I think Sprouts has been known for over the last few years.

So again, having the nerve to hold the line on promotions, having the nerve to continue to try new things and bring, you know, new innovative brands to the market.

That's what they're known for.

And so I think that that's going to be really key for, for him as he takes over leadership right now.

And Sarah, you talk about holding the line on promotions, but I think affordability, as we talked about it an extent last week, consumer sentiment is, is tough.

People are focusing on value.

We are seeing trading down behaviors.

How do you keep holding the line on promotions and how do you manage that?

Affordability, price perceptions issue with your sprouts?

Such a good question, Ben.

I think it's.

You're absolutely right, you know, consumer sentiment and you guys talked about it last week that people are trading down groceries.

You know, it's hard to buy right now.

It is.

And I think that, you know, especially I'm sitting here in America, I think it's definitely, you know, tough right now for folks.

I think that there is Sprouts has done such a good job of being able to communicate value over just pure cost cutting as, you know, it's not, you know, come in and there's going to be this, you know, wild promotion going on as opposed to we're going to communicate value.

So it's not to say that they do not need to offer their customers value, because they do.

And they certainly right now more than ever have to be able to offer that value.

But where does value really come in?

Is, is value in the fact that you know you're going to reduce prices by 20% and kill your margin?

Or is value in the sense that you're going to be able to get something that's new to market or maybe, you know, purchase something that, you know, with a purchase alongside of it and have some discounts that come in that way.

Is there a way to build the basket and discount in that way as opposed to, you know, one off margin hits?

I think that all brands, you know, whether grocery or otherwise, are facing that communication of value over just pure cost cutting Promotions.

Every promotion does not have to have a slash, red line, slash.

You know, the price is down right now.

You know, promotion and value can kind of come out in a lot more creative ways.

And I think that's going to be one of the really interesting first challenges for the incoming CEO for Nick, because you know, when Jack's spoken before, he's, he's been very comfortable with Sprouts not being that full basket shop being that place where you go for that special item.

So you, when the price of gases as it is, you've got to work even harder to encourage people to make those one extra trips.

So the merchants have got to work even harder to get those products in.

They're going to make people want to do that to justify it.

And I think that's, you know, Nick has got obviously a very rounded career, but extensive merchandising.

You know, he was in the merchandising team at Target for a long period.

So I think this could be something that really does play to his strengths.

But then Jack was a trader as well.

Yeah, no, it's such a good point.

And I think that, you know, there's another element.

It's funny, there's something we're going to talk about in a few minutes, I believe around community and I think Sprouts has done a really good job of, you know, it is a place where people are happy to shop.

People are there, if they're physically there, they're happy to shop, they Created an environment that has a community element to it.

And yes, that community is around discovery.

It's also around health and wellness.

And know that special new product like the more they can lean into that right now, the better, the more it is a destination.

Because the thought of going to Sprouts as a second stop when I'm already where I need to go get my, you know, basics in a different place and I need to stop at Sprouts as a separate stop because there's something so special there.

It's got to be the environment, not just that product.

The product just is not.

Especially right now with people's wallets as tight as they are.

The community element, the environment element, the service elements got to be stronger than ever.

I will say I think they've done a really phenomenal job in that way.

But that to me is another place where you really got to hold the line.

The other thing I was thinking about is we just had this conversation around agentic commerce and automation is efficient, but efficiency can also be the enemy of discovery.

Right.

And so if you're, if I'm just replenishing, if I'm just, you know, known reorders on your list, Sprout's whole model is the thing you didn't know existed.

It's the, their whole model.

Right.

And so I, it's just interesting that we were segueing from that conversation because figuring out how a discovery retailer, a discovery grocer can win in this like new agent led world is genuinely a strategic question that during his tenure I think he's going to have to answer.

Right.

You know, I think it's coming for them and I think that's, you know, it's probably not the immediate thing that he needs to focus on, but it is coming for them.

Because I think that how to make sure that you continue to be this, this destination for discovery, the community element, the, the specialty nature of Sprouts is going to be harder and harder to hold on to as wallets are tighter and as agents start shopping on our behalf.

You know what another reflection I had, Sarah, you mentioned in your introduction at the time you'd had working as a chief people officer and with people.

I think you want the things that really struck me when I was thinking about this story, Jack joined in 2019.

I started thinking about how few retailer CEOs of major grocers there are who led their businesses through the Pandemic, who joined pre2020 and are still, still there now.

Because I think it's a completely different set of leadership skills that you needed to lead during that really intense time and then also to lead with the agility to take for the digital.

If I think almost all of the major grocers in the US have had CEO changes.

We've just learned about Franz Muller, AJO delegates, Tim Steiner at Ocado too long standing.

They're leaving this year.

Yeah.

There's Rick Keys at mayor, but not Maya, but not that many others.

There's none in the uk.

There's Alexander Bompard at Kefo, Lionel Sukat Raver stand out in Europe.

But yeah, we're talking digits on this on one hand of the number of major grocer CEOs in Europe or North America who have led both in the pandemic and still are leading now.

So I think that makes Jack one of a very few and I think interested to think your reflections on that.

The kind of leadership skills required to be able to do that.

Yeah, I mean, it's such a good point, Ben.

I guess I hadn't really thought about it that way.

I do, however, think that, you know, when people like Jack Sinclair, who made it through that process, led, teams led, I mean, goodness grocery and the shutdown that occurred and the, you know, everything that happened with their teams and how people needed to be retrained and how quickly things had to move, it was a leadership boot camp like no other.

Right.

Like going into a pandemic and a massive time in the US of social unrest like it was a boot camp like no other.

And I think that, you know, we the.

The brands and that the organizations who have done a phenomenal job on the other side, you know, coming out the other side and now going into economic uncertainty and, you know, customer sentiment shifts.

They are the ones who learned along that way.

They were like, oh, okay, we have to figure out curbside pickup real fast because people can't come in the store.

We need to spin that up like by next Monday.

Right.

I mean, they had to move so quickly.

And so I think the organizational agility that a CEO was, if a CEO was able to lead through that process and be successful as he was, you learned and you taught your team so much about organizational agility and change management and the ability and willingness to pivot and how to do that in a way that still had had people with smiles on their faces when customers walked in the door.

That's hard to do.

And so the folks that I've seen be the most successful are taking those lessons and not letting it be like, okay, we figured that out, push that to the side.

Now back to business as usual.

That's when you really are challenged.

It's like no, that's the new level of agility like the floor just raised and now we have to operate at that level.

And so I think that you know for him to lead this far after that time period does show that he led an organization that was able to move fast enough and innovate fast enough.

So it's like again having the nerve to kind of hold that line I think is going to be really important.

I guess to start wrapping up this section I took out a few stats.

I wanted to look at the before and after and so what's his legacy?

Jack grew to sprouts business from 320 stores in 20 states to 480 in 25 states.

160 Stores grew sales from 5.6 billion when he joined through to 8.8 billion last year.

Share price $18 up to $81 Market cap 2.3 billion to 7.6 billion EPS $25 to $5 a share all of which was fantastic were not for the fact that the share price was up at 180 last year.

So if you look there is a cycle of growth and then slow down you know comps in the last quarter of minus 1 he was comping plus 10 the prior year.

So we talked a couple of weeks ago about Target when their comp numbers look good we said the easiest thing to do is to comp a weight number.

Well comping 10 is the very antithesis of that.

So you know obviously two year comps look great.

So I think that there is definitely work to be done to stay relevant I think.

On a personal note I was speaking to Chris Walter about this.

He knows Nick well and wishes him all the best as we all do.

I had the privilege actually working for Jack many, many, many years ago in the UK so and I think what was one of the really fun things having worked with him 30 years ago as a, as a trading director.

He's a chief merchant at Safeway as incredibly well respected but also to be fair very aggressive trader.

To see him having grown into the leader he has was interesting and I think if that he, he completely stole the show with his wit and humor at grocery shop last year.

So if anybody listening wasn't a grocery shop was interested he did a 20 minute keynote.

We'll put the link for that in the, in the keynote in, in the, in the notes for the the episode as well because it's well worth a watch to really get a full flavor of sprouts.

But wishing him, wishing him all the best as he moves to executive chairman role.

Like what all the numbers you just, you just said out loud.

What an incredible legacy.

Right?

And, and to your point, you know, now Nick has a slightly lower comp and next year is going to look great.

He's going to.

It gives him a great place to go over the next year.

We have faith in you, Nick.

Perfect timing.

Okay, headline number three which is brought to you by our proud sponsor, Viewsion, the global leader in connected retail solutions helping grocers improve productivity, execution and customer experience.

From shelf to checkout, visit www.ven.com.

Okay, headline number three comes from Progressive Grocer which reports that not one but two grocers are running events this month focused on well being.

Firstly, Kroger is holding a month long wellness tour in September through in store events and for mini festivals in Nashville, Houston, Phoenix and Salt Lake City.

The mini festivals include wellness workshops, live cooking demonstrations, fitness activations and product sampling.

Whilst the in store activations will take place every Friday and Saturday and include better for you sampling and chances to connect with pharmacists, dietitians and other health experts.

At the same time, Myer is hosting wellness events at its supercenters and grocery stores and in an effort to, quote, make health and wellness more accessible to shoppers.

At these events, shoppers can connect with pharmacy team members, enjoy food samples, food demos, free blood pressure screenings and they're also making it easier to get your flu jab there this fall.

So Sarah, there is no escaping many grocers pushing their well being credentials as a marketer though do you think that in store events like this can really move the needle?

I love this question.

You know this is, this is, this is where I get excited.

I do think they can move the needle but the event itself is not enough.

Like the work that they need to do.

Like if you having people come in, try a product, understand a health benefit, talk to someone they trust.

You just said pharmacists are available.

If grocers want them to move the needle beyond just a few hundred people that are attending, they have to be activating it across the board with digital media creator content before, during and after.

Like the only way for this to be big enough to actually move the needle is to be able to activate against it in a much larger way.

It can't be only in Houston on one weekend.

You just can't touch enough people number one.

Number two, they better figure out the measurement because I bet you that they right now are saying we're going to measure by the number of people who come and that is going to be great.

So excited.

We had 300 people show up on a Friday morning.

That is not a scalable needle moving initiative.

The real opportunity is connecting every single person with their loyalty data.

Retail media follow up.

It's like using the entire ecosystem.

Scan every single person who comes in, make sure they have their loyalty ID capture.

That has to be the price of entry into these events.

Scan to sample, scan to consult with the, you know, scan to get your flu shot or to consult with the pharmacist.

Like making sure that they are actually using every possible opportunity to turn this into a longer term loyalty play.

Works for the people they're activating against it from a digital media perspective and making the reach much larger.

Right.

All their social should be these in person events that are happening and you know, all of this positivity with customers that should be filling their social feeds.

So as long as they do those two things, I do think it can move the needle.

So that's what I would say.

Like if they use it as soft brand marketing, it's not going to move the needle.

If you use it as this is a major flagship moment.

This is a content creator, you know, capture moment.

That's when you start to actually see we're not just going to post this on Instagram, we're also going to pay, do paid ads against this.

We're going to make this into a much bigger community activation.

Oh, this is why I love having guest hosts like you on Sarah.

Because I was a bit meh about this story and that now you're exciting me.

So.

God.

So how do you get over the hurdle which is concerns around anonymity.

So when you want to get someone talking to a healthcare professional, be it you're asking, asking them to give you that data.

How do you get over all the privacy concerns that come with that?

I mean that is a great question.

I think when you get too deep into I'm going to sit here and actually have a medical conversation.

I think that shifts over.

That said, if I'm at CVS getting my flu shot as I am, they know exactly who I am because I'm using the app like you, you have, right.

I mean they know exactly who I am, they know exactly what they're.

Then they send me a note to say you haven't done it yet.

So like all of those, all of those structures already exist within loyalty.

So it's not to say you're going to walk in and like, oh, you can't talk to the pharmacist until you give me your data.

Like that would be an awkward interaction.

It is much more like, well, you know exactly who these people are, right?

You have their loyalty.

If you don't have their loyal.

If they're not in your loyalty program or if they don't have your app downloaded, that's something you do at entry.

When I'm saying like that's the price of entry and like literally we're going to have this festival and there's going to be free samples and all these fun things are going on.

Oh, wait, are you make sure that you have it staffed to ensure that you have people signed up for loyalty or that the app is downloaded.

So I think it's much more that it's literally kind of on the, on the outside as they're coming in that that's kind of part of the, part of the engagement.

Give them something in return for that matter.

Like today on this special day.

Oh, you're not a, you know, you're a loyalty member.

Thank you so much.

Here's whatever, you know, free gift or sample.

If you're not, here's a special thing that's going to happen.

You know, put something in it for people.

People are very, very willing to give you their information if it makes life easier for them and, and if they get something in return.

I love that.

I love that.

Okay, let's go to headline number four, which is brought to you by Sifter.

Sifter Solutions Powerful API seamlessly integrates advanced medically tailored dietary and nutritional filtering into virtually any grocery or wellness platform.

Sifter makes healthy outcomes possible.

Learn more@siftersolutions.com look very timely after our last headline and all the focus across grocery retailing on helping shoppers make healthy choices.

Really pleased we've got a partner in this space.

So welcome on board Sifter and we'll be sharing some unique insights that come out of the data from their platform in coming weeks.

Okay, headline number four originates from a Walmart press release announcing that it is expanding its restaurant delivery business beyond Subway through a collaboration with Dunkin and its parent company Inspires brands.

So Dunkin.

Yes, Dunkin Swearboxera, for anybody that says anything about Donuts, has 150 tenant locations in Walmart styles and eligible customers will automatically see Dunkin as an option in the restaurants tab on the Walmart app based on their delivery address.

Walmart went further to say it plans to expand the Service to cover the majority of Dunkin's 10,000 locations outside Walmart stores across the country.

And this is where things get really interesting.

This press release was published less than a week after a blog post on Greg Caffey's personal LinkedIn where he said that Walmart's quote next step was to expand restaurant delivery beyond stores located inside Walmart stores.

Cafe, the SVP for digital fulfillment transformation at Walmart went on to say that one in five orders that currently have both a Subway and a Walmart items for one in five, it's that customer's first time using express delivery this year and nearly 30% of those customers come straight back within 30 days.

So Sarah, is this a sensible build from Walmart or is getting into the restaurant delivery game a distraction from its core business?

I, I love this topic and this question because I would define their core business not as, you know, Sam Walton's real invention or innovation in the market was not store format.

It was a hub and spoke logistics system that happened to have shelves at the end of it.

Right.

And so adding Dunkin's not a departure from that core, it might be the most Walmart thing they could possibly do in the sense that, right.

I mean it's like they, they built this distribution network in the country that moves weekly grocery from place to place.

A weekly basket doesn't fully utilize it, you know what does?

Coffee.

Because coffee is daily.

And so the thought of like, right, the thought of like doing more with the distribution system they already have in place makes a ton of, ton of sense.

I think that the.

So no, I think it is absolutely a part of their core business and it makes a ton of sense like use it in a daily capacity and not a weekly or bi weekly capacity.

I do think that there's a risk not in, not in strategic shift but in operational promise.

Hot coffee has a quality window that is measured in minutes, right.

And so yes, we've been, you know, yes, they can get you groceries and they're still cool on the, on the step after an X amount of time.

But paper towels don't have a minutes window of which they have to be delivered.

And so I think now Walmart's putting their own delivery reputation behind someone else's product quality.

A lukewarm latte arriving is now a Walmart problem and not a Dunkin problem.

And so I do think that they've also walked into a bit of a heated battle, right?

DoorDash and UberEats own that habit.

They own the muscle memory.

They already both carry Dunkin.

I checked last night because I was curious.

They both carry Dunkin already.

So Walmart's got to actually change behavior, not just be a third option.

I completely agree.

I think it's a really interesting point.

I.

Okay, look, I was being a bit provocative when I wrote the question.

I completely agree.

This is Walmart's core business now.

Delivery and building that flywheel for rapid delivery.

So it builds the density, it builds the order frequency, so it builds the utilization.

It gets more people to try Walmart for fast delivery.

And those stats shared by Greg in his blog post were very compelling.

Obviously not independently verified but very compelling.

That is creating almost new missions for Walmart.

It's positioning Walmart as a convenience store and visiting 100,000 square foot store is never convenient.

So that's fascinating.

It's another Walmart plus benefit.

So it drives the flywheel into Walmart Plus.

And then last week it talked at length about drones.

And you attach drones to this.

Gosh, I've sat on my desk this morning feeling, you know, thinking the start of the week draw.

I would have loved a drone to have brought me a Duncan coffee in 15 minutes.

That would have been fabulous.

So I think he's, I think your point about they've got to iron out the how there is a reputational thing attached.

But the principle, if you stand, honestly, next time you're in a Walmart and you've stood face in, in the parking lot and you're stood facing the store, stop rotate 180 and look at how many restaurants are around any Walmart parking lot and think about the opportunity if you just link those up into your ecosystem.

I, I think it's, I think it's a slam dunk stand on for me.

Yeah, I would just say that I think that grocers spent the last decade or so handing over the like what app will get this to me moment, customer moment to third parties.

Walmart's refusing to do that.

Right.

And so I think doordash adding groceries, Walmart adding restaurants.

Like everyone's racing to own the next hour of your life and the winner is who is going to get the app open.

Right.

And so the more that Walmart can get that app open and the more frequently that can happen, they are going to start winning that race.

And so I, it, they, it's bullish and I like it.

I think I'm excited for them and I want, I'm in Dunkin country up here in the northeast and so you know I would never ever say a bad word about Dunkin around here.

Very good, very good.

Okay.

Finally, headline number five comes from Progressive Grocer Again, which reported that Aldi shoppers have been encouraged to vote on Facebook and Instagram to help pick the grocer's next flavors of its private label range of coffee creamers.

Leaning into Aldi Shopper's fandom of the brand, Aldi USA director of marketing Catherine Siddiqua said that the campaign was all about letting Aldi fans have a seat at the table, giving them a real say in what comes next.

Yahoo Finance later reported that 120,000 people made their pick of eight proposed flavours and the winners were caramelized banana and honey vanilla, which are expected to be added to the range in April next year.

Sarah, is this great shopper engagement or a tacky gimmick?

I like the way you ask that question.

Both.

Can it be both?

No, I think it is.

I do think it's worthwhile and here's why.

I would say that 120,000 votes, that gives Aldi a real read on demand and built anticipation before anything hits the shelf.

So that's where it makes sense to me.

The honest caveat though is I look at lays as both the prime example, but also a little bit of a cautionary tale in this regard.

So there they did their do us a flavor that's run, I don't know, since 2012, 2014.

It's run for a long time, right.

And it's produced millions of submissions.

But most of the winners, if you go look, most of the winners were either limited time and a lot of them got pulled for weak sales.

So, you know, cheesy bread, garlic was the big one that I remember hearing about like a million votes and it was gone in a year.

So I would, here's what I would remind Aldi.

Voting is free.

Buying costs money.

So you think about like, you know, 429 is how much lays cost here.

I just looked, you know, voting was free to do then.

Then people have to say, you know what they.

A lot of times in consumer research you say people will tell you what they're going to do and then they're going to do what they're going to do.

And those are often different things.

This is one of those situations.

And so I think that's, that's the only thing that I would kind of warn to.

But, you know, having your customers co create with you and having a relationship with them is never a bad idea as long as you can follow through.

You know, the worst case scenario is you ask them all and then you actually don't follow through on it.

As long as they can follow through, like, I don't, I don't see any reason not to do that.

If here's what I'm going to say again.

And I, like, feel like I'm a broken record like this maybe the third time I've said it.

But it's a matter of what they can measure.

So 120,000 people, you know, voting great.

Was this just a meta poll that you get metrics from because you don't have identities?

So are these voters now an addressable audience that in April, it's now a launch platform when they actually come out with a product, if they're just numbers like in a press release, then it was a reach moment and a step moment and, you know, a fun thing to do.

And that's it.

If they're actually capturing who these folks are and they can then use that to say, you told us this, you wanted this.

Now, now, here you go, you're going to receive, you know, what you actually asked.

That becomes a lot more valuable, I think.

I think that's super interesting.

You know, look, maybe it is just a fun gimmick, but sometimes a bit of fun and a gimmick is okay.

I think the.

Watch out.

Interesting.

When I was looking at some of the comments that people had left, it started generating comments about people asking, well, why do we have to pick?

Why can't we have all eight?

So maybe give a little bit of unwanted focus on the fact that the limited line discounter can't carry all that range.

Right.

But yeah, navigate that one.

I think it'll be okay.

Yeah, I like it, I like it.

I mean, gosh, you got to do something fun and unusual right now.

I think, I think to our points, conversations we've had around, you know, people's wallets and, and where they want to shop and how they want to interact, you know, adding that community element, adding that fun element, having something for people just to get engaged on, it's.

It's worthwhile.

Okay, Sarah, look, before we let you go, it's time for growth to talk, grab and go.

So this is excited where we both get to share a couple of stories that have come caught our eye from the week of the world of grocery retailing.

Things beyond the main headlines that we think you should be keeping an eye on.

And I have won't have a clue what you've chosen.

So go on, Sarah.

What's your first story?

I get to go first.

Oh, I'm Excited.

Okay, okay.

Mine is, is slightly personal.

And that is that Walmart is finally accepting tap to pay, Apple Pay, Google Pay rolling out by the end of the year.

I will admit I have stood many a time at a Walmart register just repeatedly tapping my phone like an idiot, thinking it's just not working because they don't take Apple Pay.

And I'm so used to doing that now.

Like, my habit is to do that.

And clearly it did not work.

It was not broken.

That was a choice that they made to not accept my Apple Pay.

So I think that one, I think is really interesting.

Like, it was never a technology gap.

They were, you know, they were an early champion of that chip cards.

They're a leader in robotics and AI.

Clearly they had the technology to do this.

This was because Walmart Pay runs on QR codes and QR codes keep Walmart in the middle of the transaction instead of handing it over to Apple.

Right.

Totally understand that.

Completely understand it from a Walmart perspective.

But I guess my takeaway there is that if you impose friction in your process, that has an expiration date to it.

And for me personally as a shopper, that expiration date ran out a long time ago.

So I'm glad to know that I can literally just tap to pay and don't just sit there aimlessly tapping thinking it's going to work.

And it's a story that if you, if you're not American, it's scarcely believable that Walmart didn't accept, I'm sure.

I wanted to follow up our last main story with another Aldi merchandise story, but this one is from the uk.

Aldi has linked up with Mattel to launch the Barbie Aldi Mania Dreamland doll as part of Aldi September toy event.

The door has a bright pink dress which is covered in the white Aldi logo.

Look, I think it's great, it's exclusive, it's fun, it's collectible.

It's got the toy event that, you know, they've created an event and they've got it in the calendar.

They've also made a bit of a splash there.

They've turned all the signs in one of their Greater London stores kind of a Barbie pink as well, to mark the launch.

Driven some great.

Driven some great traction.

And I had no idea, I had no idea what.

I thought I'd include this, that you'd come dressed in pink as well.

But what a great.

What.

I think that's a.

What a great story.

It's just again, like, good on Aldi.

They're, they're having a lot of fun right now and I appreciate that.

What's your next story?

Okay, my next one.

I promised the young people at my office that I would say this because they're obsessed with a brand called Goodles, which is a fast growing nutrient forward Mac and cheese and pasta, like that's basically what it is.

It's been acquired by Barilla.

So I think that's an interesting one.

Like they was digging into this one.

I mean, the fandom at our office is huge.

I'm like, you know, it's Mac and cheese, like, how exciting can it be?

But it's like this nutrient forward, you know, healthy version.

I think that it's a really good sign of kind of them looking a legacy CPG company, really looking at what's resonate with a younger shopper.

They say that 80% of Goodle's customers are either new to the category or are buying more Mac and cheese, suggesting that the brand's like actually expanding the market instead of simply taking share of the market.

So it makes a lot of sense, you know, from the press releases, they're going to retain their leadership and their employees and they're based in Santa Cruz here in California.

So I think that that's a really interesting one.

And I promised our team members that I would share the love of Googles with the world.

And it's another legacy CPG that's having to acquire to get the brands that are cutting through with the younger demographic.

That's amazing.

My final story, and this is from an email I received this week that told me that Starbucks autumn menu is now live in the uk.

I'm going to stick with autumn rather than fall because it was a UK email headlined of course by the return of pumpkin spice latte.

Sarah, let me just check, do you like a good pumpkin spice latte?

I do not.

I do not.

And I, I know I'm an outlier.

People love them here and they're here and it is back.

And they're also like banana caramel.

There's all sorts of autumnal flavors.

People are really into them.

Like I, I'm a, I'm a purist, you know, I'm an oat milk latte kind of gal.

I just keep it simple.

But I, people I know are thrilled, so excited.

Like putting, whether it's cold or not outside, they're like, you know, put on their sweater and go get their, you know, psl.

So it was the wider menu that really caught my attention and it included a new product And I'm, I'm going to read here.

It was the iced apple crumble Matcha Latte, a new drink that quote combines matcha with milk, ice and apple flavor sauce, then adds apple flavor, crack cream, cold foam and a buttery biscuit crumble topping.

Which all sounds at odds with our earlier conversation around healthy lifestyle.

But look this, this product, it really gets to the heart for me of why some people are kind of getting frustrated by the Starbucks turnaround plan under Brian Nichols.

You know, he's talked about reducing complexity in Back to Starbucks.

He's talked about highlighting coffee leadership.

And this is the antithesis.

No self respecting coffee shop should be offering an iced apple crumble Matcha Latte.

So look, it's that this, the confusion of what Starbucks actually wants to be.

It's still confusing me, Sarah.

I'm still not sure.

I also a little, little tactical issue here is do it.

Do you want that?

We have paper straws, you know, good on Starbucks, our paper straws.

Do you really want crumble stuff in your paper straw and an ice drink?

Like I just, there's something about that whole flavor texture combo that does not feel right to me.

It's a no on every level.

Right.

It's time to wrap.

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And you can follow us today by Simply going to YouTube.com omnitor Sarah, if people want to get in touch with you after today, what's the best way for them to go about doing that?

Of course.

And thank you for having me.

Ben.

This has been so much fun and it went so fast.

We have so much more to talk about.

Yes, please find me on LinkedIn for sure.

Sarah Engel E N G E L even shoot me an email.

It's just Sarah S A R A H annuary digital.com amazing.

So thank you for joining us.

It's been a blast.

Until next week, on behalf of all of us at grocertalk and Omni Talk Retail, thanks for tuning in.