Justin Weinstein On The Rationale Behind Giant Eagle's $100M "Because It Matters" Investment

Hello everyone.

This is Omnitak Retail.

I'm Anne Mazinga.

And I'm Chris Walton.

And we are coming to you live from the Fusion Group booth here at Grocery Shop 2025.

I want to give a big thank you to the Vuzion Group for making all of our coverage of the conference here possible today and tomorrow, including our next interview.

Chris and I are excited to have the EVP and Chief Merchandising and Marketing Officer from Giant Eagle, Justin Weinstein.

Thank you so much for joining us, Justin.

We're really excited to have you here.

Of course.

Thanks for having me.

I'm excited to be here.

Yes.

Well, let's start by giving our audience a little bit of your background and also telling them a little bit about Giant Eagle the grocer where you are just kind of a quick background for those who might not be familiar.

Yeah, absolutely.

Why don't I start with the last part of your question, which is Giant Eagle, we're a food and drug retailer.

We're a regional, so we're based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania with stores in pa, Ohio, Indiana, West Virginia and Maryland.

And we're a business that is 95 years old.

We're a family owned business and we're growing in the supermarket space.

We've also taken on a lot of growth inside of the pharmacy space.

Excellent.

In terms of me, I've been with Giant Eagle for a little over seven and a half years prior to was with 8451 and in Kroger.

And I've had a whole bunch of different roles during my time at Giant Eagle.

Everything from digital to loyalty to personalization to customer experience.

And today I serve, as you said, head of merchandising and marketing and really focused on how do we bring together all of our commercial businesses into one.

And so really these connection points between merchandising and buying, marketing, retail media and E commerce, how do those come together to create a connected experience for our customer?

Gotcha.

So I imagine you've been to grocery shop before, right?

This is not your first time.

You've probably been here multiple times actually.

And you're speaking on stage tomorrow, if I'm not mistaken.

So what are you planning to share with the audience here?

So a few things.

Okay.

Few things we're going to share.

You know, we over the past week or so have been excited to unveil something we've been working on for a long time, which is our new brand positioning.

But it's really more than that.

It's because it matters and because it matters is really about how do we hearken back to all of the reasons why what we do as a grocer matters inside of the communities and the markets that we serve.

And I'm going to talk tomorrow a little bit about a few of the key themes of that investment.

So it's $100 million investment that we have pledged to put back into our business, and it's really split across three areas.

One is everyday value.

We know that the consumer is in a space right now where they're thinking about price and they're thinking about how do I make sure that every time I go to the grocery store, I'm able to know what I'm going to get, both in price but also in quality as well as in service.

And so very focused on investment in value.

A lot came out last week and a lot will continue to come out this week in terms of what those investments look like, really with the focus on how do we be there for the customer through this holiday season in a way where they can rely upon us.

Two is how we invest in quality and service.

And because it matters is really about leaning into those moments.

Whether it is a graduation celebration, whether it's Thanksgiving, whether it's holiday time, whether it's a 16th birthday party.

How do we be there with products that ultimately you remember?

And that's a big lean into fresh for us in terms of where our value proposition is.

It's also a big lean into our teams.

How do we make sure that our teams have the right training, whether that's a butcher, whether that's a baker, whether that's a cake decorator, whether that's a cheesemonger.

How do our teams have the, you know, the training and be equipped to ultimately serve that customer who's looking to us for those things that matter in their lives because they matter to their family.

And, Justin, this investment's pretty sizable, too, if I'm not mistaken.

Can you tell us about that?

Yeah, for sure.

So $100 million, as I mentioned, really split across these three areas.

Pricing, which we talked about.

The second is quality and service, which we talked about.

And the third is one that's really important for us, which is how do we have modern and bright stores.

And so we're going on the path of really reinvesting in the physical plant of a lot of our buildings to make sure that, you know, those are great environments for our team members, and they're also great environments for our customers.

Well, and I imagine a key component of that, especially being a regional grocer is in the merchandising strategy, too.

I'm curious.

We've heard from some regional grocers that things like GLP1s are kind of changing.

You know, how you merchandise both your digital and physical store.

Are you seeing some of that happen at Giant Eagle as well as you're kind of trying to be that.

That spot that your customers are going time and time again?

Absolutely.

And the short answer is we talked about how price is impacting the consumer.

The other piece that's impacting the consumer is around health.

Yeah.

And, you know, GLP1s are here.

You know, significant portions of our customer base is, you know, are taking these drugs.

And it's leading, you know, both our own brand strategy as well as our national brand partners to be leaning into things like protein in a big way.

Where, you know, we're looking at how do we assort our stores, how do we space our stores to really have the products that our customers are looking for?

Sure.

There's a ton of innovation happening out there within the CPG community.

Yeah.

And, you know, our job is to bring that product into our stores that our customers are ultimately asking for.

Right, right.

It's interesting to hear that it's impacting.

You know, I think that's the thing that people are surprised to hear, maybe how much of an impact it's having.

Agreed.

Agreed.

Yeah.

It's been a topic of conversation at the show already, for sure.

All right, Justin, Retail media, another topic of conversation at this show and at past shows as well.

Where is Giant Eagle on its retail media journey?

So we're a few years into our retail media journey.

We have a room upstairs here.

Our retail media network is called leap.

Leap, which is an acronym for Loyalty, Experiences, audiences, and Partnerships.

Okay.

All right.

We see retail media really as all of those things.

It's.

How do we bring together the trust that we have with our customers that is really centered on the data that they're giving us and the value we're giving back to them.

Them.

How do we connect that to what's most relevant for them?

And then how do we partner with whether it's our CPG partners and others to be able to have this media network where it is customer back, not monetization back.

Customer back, meaning that our job is to deliver more relevant experiences and more value to the consumer.

How do we leverage media in order to ultimately do that?

It's interesting.

That's the second time we've heard experience as part of retail media today.

And I think that's gonna continue to be a trend as we, you know, now that we have the tools to measure those kinds of things alongside the digital components of that, the in store components of that.

Absolutely.

All right, well, let's close out with, you know, what you have ahead.

What are you most excited to accomplish in 2026, Justin?

Yeah, I think 2026, just like 2025 is gonna be a big year for Giant Eagle, I think this is a year for us to really bring together the best of what we have underneath this new brand positioning of because it matters and live that each and every day.

Whether a customer shopping inside of our physical store, whether a customer is coming to us for an E Commerce order, whether a team member has been with us for a year or whether they've been with us for 40 years, how do we ultimately be there for them and how do we create this listening mechanism with our customers where we're able to be right with them in terms of the things that are facing them?

We've talked about pricing today.

That's going to be a key area of focus for us.

We've talked about reinvestment into our stores.

That's going to be a key area of focus.

Health is an area where we want to be there ultimately for our customers.

And so it's going to be how do we pull those things together in a way that ultimately keeps our customers coming back to us and helps us invite new customers into our stores every day.

Fantastic.

It's going to be fun to watch this unfold, Justin.

Yeah, it sounds like there's a big reinvestment going on for sure at Giant Eagle.

And so, Justin, thanks for spending time with us today.

Thanks for having me.

Great pleasure to interview you and getting to.

Getting to spend time.

We've been asking you for a while and it's great that we were able to finally do this.

So thanks to Fusion Group as well for sponsoring our coverage here at Grocery Shop.

And as always, Ann, be careful out there.