Retailer of the Year - Who Dominated 2025? | Fast Five Shorts

Retailer of the year.

Oh, man, you're going to be first.

Okay.

All right, all right.

The first Omni that I'm giving out for retail of the year goes to, goes to Aldi.

Oh.

Aldi.

Aldi is expanding like nobody else.

225 new stores this year.

Biggest US growth spurt for them ever.

The kind of strategic expansion that just changes the landscape of grocery.

And when you think about their value proposition, Right.

Like Aldi is delivering unmatched value at the exact moment that consumers need it most right now.

Inflation, higher grocery bills, tighter wallets, like, that's the reality for most of Americans right now and across income brackets, which is really unique.

Right.

And their entire business model, it's almost as if it was basically engineered for this moment.

Right.

So I previewed some, some data from our consumer sentiment survey on a, on a recent five insightful minutes for you guys.

Right.

43% say that they're decreasing grocery purchases because of the impact of prices and tariffs.

So prices are up, volume down.

As a result, consumers are looking for new ways to stretch their wallets.

About 60% or so are reporting having increased their trips to lower price retailers that actually over indexes on higher household income earners.

And private label has never been hotter.

Right.

It's meeting consumer expectations not just for value, but 68% say that store brands are offering quality that's as good, if not better than national brands.

Right.

So all these just delivering this business model, which continues to be simple, focused, discipline, consistent, that showed up in their decision earlier this year to divest like 40% of the Southeastern grocery stores that they had acquired.

Right.

Like they're leveraging this model that works, especially now.

And, and they're doing, you know, they're doing it to great effectiveness.

Wow.

All right, Chad.

So Aldi.

Okay, that's a good pick.

That's a really, really strong pick.

I, I did not think about them as I was doing this, and I probably should have.

So I'm curious.

And what, who is your retailer of the year?

Well, before I say that, I'm a little disappointed, Chad, that you're not wearing the Aldi clothes if you're going to give them retailer of the year.

Like I expected the velour Aldi tracksuit on top today.

But that's okay.

That's okay.

It's still a great award.

It's fair.

Today I'm wearing the teen approved quarter zip, so.

Oh, yeah, the quarter zips are big.

Says, says all good.

Yep, yep.

Okay, well, I'll go on to my retailer of the year, very obvious choice but I think it has to be Walmart this year.

Wow.

Okay.

I think I say Walmart because they were early on at NRF earlier this year or they were adding the first ones to add a GPT like search function to their site.

They were the first ones to do, they did an ESL electronic shelf label chain wide rollout with Fusion Group.

I think that was really important.

And then throughout the year it seemed like as we were going back and looking at the headlines from every week, Chris, I mean there was something that Walmart was doing almost every week that was notable, that was forward thinking from gas station expansions to auto centers to same day RX delivery.

And then finally I think the thing that I've been, I've been talking about for a long time but I was fortunate enough to go to New York to see their pop up for New York Fashion Week.

And that's another area that I don't think gets talked about a lot but is seeing tremendous growth, growth at Walmart is this, this kind of fill in trip.

And especially as they're bringing in some of these upper income consumers that are, are looking for those pick those quick grab and go fashion items and Walmart's serving that up really well with their scoop and free assembly line.

So that was, that was for me just a banner year for Walmart and, and I think tying it up really nicely at the end with, with John Furner being named next CEO.

What did you have though, Chris?

Yeah, yeah, I, I actually didn't do Walmart because it'd be too obvious for me to do Walmart.

You know, I think everyone would expect me to do Walmart because I, you know, and it's probably honestly hard not to pick Walmart but, and you know, to your point, like they've done a great job with the income demographic too, like getting people into fashion through the, the online plays that they've done and their retail media is exploding.

So there's so much to love about Walmart.

But your point about it?

Yeah, they were just in our headlines each and every week.

As I was reviewing everything, I was like oh my God.

But yeah, they'll come up a lot in my awards as we go through the show.

But, but for me I actually, I picked Costco, you know, and the reason I, and you know, the reason I did that is I've been tough on Costco in the past.

Like I've been, I think some might even call it scathing in my reviews of Costco in general.

But I think you got to give them a lot of credit.

They, for one, they held their ground on dei and for all intents, as purposes it seems like the right move for that brand because they have been gaining high income shoppers, particularly from the likes of Target as well.

And they've also been really smart about their operations.

So they've, you know, they've done the expanded hours for executive team members.

They also crush Black Friday.

You know, traffic was up like almost 8% on Black Friday to a club.

So that's, that's really telling.

The one misgiving I have, if I was to like hit myself on the head with one issue is the stock price.

The stock price is down 11% this year, but when I look back on it over two years, it's still up 46%.

And I think that's how you have to look at Costco over the long, you have to look, take a longer term view to Costco because that's still impressive performance over two years.

So for me, just because they know who they are, they stick to who they are, they get it done, they continue to increase traffic, they continue to drive sales comps quarter after quarter.

That's who gets my pick.

I like that.

I think that makes a lot of sense.

I wouldn't have thought of Costco either.

So maybe, maybe not a unanimous show as we, maybe we expected, but we'll see.