The Five Trends From FMI 2026 That Actually Matter (And What The Merchants Were Really Saying)

Hello Omni Talk Fans! Fresh off three days of interviews at FMI Midwinter in San Diego, this week I am sorting through what matters versus what was, more than likely, just conference-floor noise. Overall my big summary is that the gap between the hype and the reality was wider than I expected on some topics, but also tighter than I thought on others.

Here’s what the merchants, tech leaders, and strategists actually told us when we pushed past the talking points.

Buckle Up For GLP-1

GLP-1 may be the sleeper story of 2026. Not because it’s getting ignored, but because the impact is outpacing even the most optimistic projections.

Karen Fang Grant, the Managing Director and Global Research Lead at Accenture (watch full interview here), dropped a stat that echoes this sentiment. “In the US, we’ve seen obesity rates drop from about 40% to 37%,” Fang Grant said. To which, I quickly ejaculated, “That’s a nearly 10% decline!” 

My way too exclamatory point at the time being, within a very short window of time,  a drug that’s expensive, that requires injection, and that still has limited access, has already had an outsized impact on American obesity. As Fang Grant put it, that’s “a huge change in a very short period of time.”

However, Karen Fang Grant also thinks things are just getting started. “I think it will only accelerate,” she told us, pointing to the pill form currently in regulatory review that “makes it even easier for consumers to be able to take this.”

And the result?

Merchants, as they do, are rushing to capitalize on the trend. Tim Horton, Vice President of Center Store at Schnuck Markets (watch full interview here), put it bluntly: “GLP-1 medication and I think health and wellness starts to have a different definition for many consumers . . . it’s a race to figure out how we get as much space as quickly as we can” in categories like performance nutrition. 

All of which means to me that we should expect to see big changes to center store merchandise and space allocation.

Justin Weinstein, Chief Merchandising & Marketing Officer at Giant Eagle, Inc. (watch full interview here) also corroborated this sense of urgency. The conversation around GLP-1s is “just as pervasive,” he said, as it was when we interviewed him back at Groceryshop in October, but that it also has “probably intensified.” His take? “Our goal as a retailer and our goal in partnership with our supplier partners is we have to be one step ahead of the consumer.” 

The ever-pervasive protein trend is the obvious manifestation (for example, Fang Grant joked about the “protein cookie dough ice cream” samples that were the talk of the conference), but fiber also appears to be emerging as the next wave.

Cue the commercial now: It would take 30,000 bowls of your leading oat bran cereal to equal the fiber content in just one bowl of Colon Blow!

God, let’s hope not. Though oral delivery plus cost reductions will likely lead to a step-change across many fronts. I just hope our collective GI tracts can handle it.

In-Store Is The Retail Media Ball Game (And It’s Early Innings)

If you thought retail media was just about sponsored product ads and banner placements, the grocers to whom we spoke are keen to blow up that narrow definition.

When asked what the defining moment of retail media will be when we look back on 2025 and 2026, Brian Monahan, SVP of Albertsons Media Collective (watch full interview here), was categorical in his assessment: “It’s the emergence of in-store media.” He called it, “The third leg of the stool. Off-site, on-site, and in-store.”

How in-store media will play out though is still left to interpretation.

Getting it right will require two fundamental execution steps working in tandem.

The first is unlocking the right in-store digital infrastructure. “It’s another thing to spend hundreds of millions of dollars putting advanced hardware and software in thousands of stores across America, right? That’s not for the faint of heart,” Monahan told us. He even joked about contractors breaking sprinkler systems and flooding stores during installations. The reality is that getting in-store media right could take real, messy, and expensive infrastructural work, something I know all too well from my early in-store digital signage explorations while leading Digital Denver for Target back in 2015.

But none of these concerns is stopping Albertsons. Albertsons rolled out next-gen signage in 80 stores last year. “We’re going to expand it this year. You know our intention is to get to about a thousand by the end of the year,” Monahan said.

The second required execution step is measuring the impact of said infrastructure. 

Julian Mintz, VP of Sales at Albertsons Media Collective (watch full interview here), emphasized that they’re “approaching it . . . with measurement at the forefront,” adding “We’re going to be able to close the loop eventually on attribution to sales in the same way we do our other digital media.”

Moreover, it isn’t just about attributing lower funnel activity either, which was a big “ah-ha” moment for me at the conference. This year’s quote of the conference came from Monahan when he pushed back on how people are thinking about in-store media. “They think of it as pure lower funnel . . . not the connected journey,” Monahan began. “That discovery moment, that upper funnel awareness and preference… that happens in the store, right?”

And, he’s dead right.

The real value proposition is full-funnel activation from couch to checkout. “Reaching a shopper from couch to checkout . . . 1 plus 1 plus 1 equals four,” Monahan argued. Not additive, multiplicative.

Seeing the fruits of this philosophy will likely take time, however, because it is still early. When asked where the industry is on the journey, Monahan admitted, “I would say early,” primarily because getting the hardware in place is capital-intensive and operationally complex, elucidating that the craft of how you actually connect with consumers at scale is still being figured out.

The Agentic Commerce Hype Cycle Gets A Big Reality Check

Agentic Commerce was the talk of NRF last week, but at FMI, which skews toward operators versus techies, the temperature was far more measured.

Justin Weinstein from Giant Eagle gave the most honest assessment: “I think it’s properly hyped. I think there should be real hype around it.” But then he added the crucial qualifier: “We have not seen massive changes in how customers are shopping today.”

The gap right now? 

“The commerce element has to catch up to the AI element,” Weinstein said. Especially in grocery, where basket complexity and meal planning create friction that simple one-item purchases don’t have.

Russell Zwanka, Director of the Food Marketing Program at Western Michigan University, and who, coincidentally, also happens to train the next generation of grocery leaders (watch full interview here), nonetheless, cautioned retailers not to take their eyes off the ball. “Agentic AI is now in control of a lot of decisions of what people see . . . bots talking to bots is something that is true,” Zwanka told us. Therefore, future marketers will need to learn not only how to market to their end-consumers but also how to market to bots that talk to bots through algorithms to the end consumer.

Make sure you read that last sentence again before moving on. It’s a needle Ned doozy.

Accenture’s Fang Grant gave the most bullish take on consumer adoption that we heard at the conference. “36% of AI users consider AI to be a good friend,” she said, and that number is growing even though actual solutions have not materially improved. Consumer readiness for full agent purchasing went from 12% to 15% between spring and fall, and “it’s going to happen faster than I think” once the solutions catch up, Fang Grant informed us.

The bottom line here is that consumers want the benefits of agentic AI, the hype indeed may be justified, but none of us quite knows what the end goal looks like just yet. Will 2026 be the year retailers’ commerce capabilities catch up with the AI hype cycle?

Personally, I’m taking the over.

The Private Brand Opportunity Gap Is Widening

What’s that old line from the Godfather: Part III, “Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in?” That line sums up how I feel every time the phrase “private brands” comes up.

Having worked at Target for over a decade, I am sick of talking about private brands. But here I am, the Al Pacino of grocery pundits, finding myself compelled to address them yet again. Fortunately, Sofia Coppola is nowhere to be found in this article, as I am still bitter about that casting, but I digress.

Fang Grant, in an interview that, given how often I have referenced it, was a veritable barn burner, delivered the most important insight here: “Consumer receptivity of private brands went up and continues to go up . . . probably at the highest it’s ever been,” meaning there is a fundamental shift in how consumers perceive retailer brands versus national brands, and the story goes far beyond just recession-induced trading down.

Fang Grant didn’t sugarcoat her assessment of the industry one bit either. “Grocery retailers have not necessarily kept up with that pent-up demand,” Fang Grant admitted, pointing to the specific problem of too many grocers still being in reactive copycat mode. “Let’s wait for those trends to exist and then jump on them with something that’s a copycat product,” was in Fang Grant’s words the wrong way to approach one’s private brand strategy.

Meanwhile, Fang Grant believes “CPG companies (still) definitely have an advantage because that is what they do all the time” when it comes to scanning, sensing trends, and creating new demand spaces. The irony though is that retailers have better customer data, better visibility into shopping behavior, and better ability to test and learn at shelf. But CPGs are still out-innovating them on private brand-worthy trends.

Alyssa Vescio, Chief Merchandising Officer at The Fresh Market (watch full interview here) hinted at a different approach when she talked about The Fresh Market’s focus on “discovery and helping our guests discover whether it’s the best quality or the own brands we’re so excited about.” Discovery-led rather than price-led private brand strategy requires merchandising muscle that most chains may not have.

Which brings me to the scale paradox of private brands.

There’s a structural challenge to getting private brands right. “If you think about grocery in the US, it’s not a very distinguished offering, necessarily, one from another,” Fang Grant told us before twisting the knife a little bit more: “Could you really tell without actually reading the sign which grocery store you were in? There are some great standout examples in our market and then there are many that are not.”

“We should do private brand like Europe!” Karen joked, before adding, “But they have a far more concentrated market in their different countries than we have in the United States.” 

Translation: Aldi and Lidl can innovate in Europe on private brands at scale because they have actual scale in their markets. Mid-tier or smaller grocery banners don’t have that luxury. They’re stuck in the middle.

Rising above the paradox requires three things most U.S. supermarket operations don’t have:

First, merchandising capability. You need buyers who can spot trends 12-18 months out, develop products against those trends, and execute at shelf before the trend peaks. That’s not a procurement function. That’s a merchant function. And many grocery chains have gutted their merchant organizations in favor of category managers who optimize existing assortments rather than create new ones.

Second, scale economics. You need enough volume to command attention from quality co-packers, fund proper product development, and spread fixed costs across meaningful distribution. A 200-store regional may be better positioned, but a 2,000-store national chain divided into 11 banners may not have as easy of time, at least not per banner, which is where the brand equity lives. And, all of them, regardless, will still have a devil of time at scale competing against Walmart, Amazon, Costco, Target, Aldi, and Dollar General.

Third, brand permission. Consumers need to believe you have the authority and expertise to create great products in a category. Trader Joe’s has this authority. Costco has it too. Does Kroger? Does Safeway? Maybe. Maybe not. It is more than likely dependent by banner, and the store experience can sometimes answer that question before the product ever does.

Therefore, grocers ask yourselves:

1. Do I have a differentiated point of view on food? If not, your private brand will be a lower-price alternative, not a destination.
2. Can I move at the speed of consumer trends? If your product development cycle is 18-24 months, you’re too slow for the current moment.
3. Is my store experience good enough to support premium private brands? If consumers don’t trust your produce, your service, or enjoy your overall store design, they won’t trust your brand.

Most major supermarkets are answering “no” to at least two of these questions, which is why private brand growth is increasingly being driven by channel switching and additional trip making shoppers to private-brand-led retailers (e.g. Aldi, Trader Joe’s, Costco) rather than by existing supermarkets capturing the opportunity.

No doubt private brand margins are structurally better, customer loyalty is higher, and the competitive moat is defensible in ways that selling other people’s brands never will be, but you also can’t hope your way into private brand growth when the paradox deck is stacked against you. You are better off investing somewhere else first.

Shelf Intelligence Is Tech That Is Actually Scaling

Bruce Burrows, former Loblaw and Sobeys CIO and now Advisor to Simbe (watch full interview here), had the most pragmatic take on where tech is heading. His thesis: “Grocery are the most latent adopters” of technology, and “the store is really to me the last frontier.”

But something’s shifted. Technology like shelf intelligence is moving from nice-to-have to table stakes. As Bruce put it: “This is going to be what everybody’s going to be doing so it’s not a competitive advantage unless you don’t do it.”  

In other words, it becomes a competitive disadvantage not to invest in better shelf intelligence as opposed to an advantage if you do.

The crawl-walk-run playbook he outlined was the most actionable thing I heard all conference long:

• Crawl: Use data you’re already sending to stores (item mix, pricing) to identify out-of-stocks and pricing issues. Quick wins.
• Walk: Then shift to better merchandising decisions, i.e. planogram optimization, space allocation.
• Run: Finally integrate the gained intelligence across supply chain, replenishment, and monetization through retail media and third-party partnerships.

Tim Horton from Schnucks gave a perfect example of this in action. Schnuck Markets uses Simbe’s Tally robots not just for shelf scanning but to verify compliance to weekly merchandising plans. The insight helps field teams “focus on coaching, training, development opportunities” rather than checking compliance manually.

His summary: “Hope is not a strategy, but knowing really helps us get better.”

Ben Bond, SVP Strategy & Client Success at Simbe (watch full interview here), reinforced the people angle: “We are really creating this superpowered associate . . . helping them be sort of omnipresent. They know what’s happening in their whole store all the time.”

The biggest surprise for me? 

The mid-market may actually be moving faster than the large chains. Burrows called this out explicitly, arguing that regional grocers are taking more risks and seeing better results. They’re nimbler, more willing to experiment, and using technology as a competitive weapon against bigger players.

The Throughline Is Data, Speed, and Decisiveness

Three days. Five themes. So what?

Well, the so what is all about data, execution, and speed. The throughline that ran across every conversation was that: 

1. First-party data is the new currency, but only if you can activate on it faster than the competition
2. In-store execution is where the grocery game will be won or lost, and technology is finally making the invisible of in-store operations visible
3. The pace of consumer change is outrunning retail’s ability to adapt, on GLP-1s, on AI, on shopping behaviors

If I were a grocery executive flying back home ahead of the impending weather, the one question I would be asking myself and my team on Monday morning is how do we get faster?

Pick your spots, invest in the right tech, and get more efficient and faster. Because just doing the same with less over the same time horizon won’t be enough anymore. Efficiency plus speed is the new name of the game. 

Be careful out there,

– Chris and the entire Omni Talk team