Hello GrocerTalk listeners,
September is here, the kids are back in school, conference season is officially underway, and if you’ve spent any time looking at the grocery headlines lately, there’s one topic that seems to be everywhere: agentic AI.
Anthropic has released new blueprints for building shopping and merchant agents in Claude. Amazon is continuing to push Alexa toward a more agentic shopping experience. And Adobe is reporting that AI driven retail traffic is already converting at a significantly higher rate than traffic from other sources. So the question we’re starting to ask isn’t really whether AI is going to change grocery. It’s how quickly it will, and what happens to the way we discover, choose and buy products when an agent starts making more of those decisions for us.
That was where we started this week’s GrocerTalk.
To help me unpack that question, along with everything else happening across global grocery retail, I was joined by Sarah Engel, President of January Digital and a veteran retail and marketing executive with more than 20 years of experience across brands, retailers and technology. Sarah brought a fascinating perspective to the conversation, particularly because so many of this week’s stories were really about the same underlying question: how do you build a stronger relationship with the customer when the way that customer shops is changing?
From agentic commerce and Sprouts’ CEO transition to wellness events, Walmart’s push into restaurant delivery and Aldi letting shoppers vote on its next coffee creamer flavors, there was a lot to unpack.
Here’s what caught our attention.
Is Agentic Commerce Finally Becoming Real for Grocery?
We started with Anthropic giving retailers blueprints to build shopping and merchant agents in Claude, alongside Amazon adding new capabilities to Alexa for shopping. But as Sarah pointed out, the bigger story isn’t any one feature. It’s the direction of travel, from AI helping shoppers research products toward AI eventually making decisions and completing purchases for them.
Grocery is an especially natural use case because so many purchases are routine and repeatable. Diapers, milk, cereal and other center store staples could eventually be reordered without the shopper ever needing to search for them again. And that could fundamentally change how brands win customers, especially if automated replenishment starts eliminating the traditional moment of discovery at the shelf.
For brands, Sarah’s advice was to get the fundamentals right now. Product attributes, availability, pricing, reviews and written content all become incredibly important when AI is deciding which products to recommend. There is also a fascinating tension with retail media, because an agent isn’t necessarily going to browse sponsored search results the same way a human shopper does.
Ben’s take was that agentic commerce feels “everywhere and nowhere” right now. We aren’t yet at a world where machines are routinely buying from machines without human involvement, but the infrastructure is clearly being built.
What Jack Sinclair’s Departure Means for Sprouts
From AI to CEO succession, we turned to Sprouts Farmers Market, where Jack Sinclair is stepping down as CEO at the end of the financial year and will become executive chairman. He will be succeeded by current COO Nick Konant.
Sarah was quick to point out how impressive Sinclair’s legacy is. Under his leadership, Sprouts grew from 320 stores in 20 states to more than 480 stores in 25 states, while sales increased from $5.6 billion to $8.8 billion. But his biggest accomplishment may have been focus. Sinclair moved Sprouts away from a traditional promotional model and built the retailer around health, innovation and discovery.
The challenge for Konant is that the expansion engine is still working, while the same store engine has started to stall. Sarah’s advice was to resist the temptation to simply turn up promotions. Sprouts’ advantage is its ability to introduce shoppers to emerging brands and products they can’t find everywhere else.
That also creates an interesting tension with our first story. Sprouts is fundamentally a discovery retailer, while agentic commerce is fundamentally about efficiency. As more routine purchases become automated, preserving discovery could become even more important for a retailer like Sprouts.
Can Grocery Wellness Events Actually Move the Needle?
Next, we looked at Kroger and Walmart’s growing focus on wellness events. Kroger is running a month long wellness tour with in store activations, workshops, cooking demonstrations, fitness activities and product sampling, while Walmart is hosting its own wellness events with pharmacy teams, food samples, demonstrations and health screenings.
Ben was initially a little skeptical, but Sarah made a compelling case for why these events can matter. The event itself isn’t necessarily the value. The opportunity is everything the retailer can build around it, from creator content and paid media to loyalty data and retail media.
If retailers can connect attendance to loyalty programs, turn samples and consultations into measurable interactions, and continue the conversation before and after the event, a one day activation can become a much larger customer relationship. That’s where Sarah believes the real opportunity lies.
Why Walmart Is Expanding Into Restaurant Delivery
Then we moved to Walmart’s expanding restaurant delivery business, beginning with Dunkin. Walmart already has 150 Dunkin locations inside its stores and plans to expand restaurant delivery to the majority of Dunkin’s roughly 10,000 locations outside Walmart stores as well.
Sarah argued that this actually makes a lot of sense for Walmart because the retailer’s core strength is its logistics infrastructure. Grocery might be a weekly mission, but coffee can be daily. Adding restaurant delivery gives Walmart another reason to utilize that infrastructure more frequently and another reason for customers to open the Walmart app.
There is a catch, of course. Hot coffee has a very short quality window, and Walmart is putting its delivery reputation behind someone else’s product. It also has to compete with DoorDash and Uber Eats, which already own the restaurant delivery habit.
But that’s exactly why the strategy is interesting. Grocers have largely handed over the “what app will get this to me?” moment to third parties. Walmart is trying to take that moment back. As Sarah put it, everyone is racing to own the next hour of the customer’s life.
Is Aldi’s Shopper Voting Campaign Smart Engagement or a Gimmick?
Finally, we looked at Aldi’s decision to let shoppers vote on new private label coffee creamer flavors. Eight flavors went up for a vote, generating roughly 120,000 responses, with caramelized banana and honey vanilla expected to launch next April.
Sarah’s verdict was essentially both smart engagement and a potential gimmick. The campaign gives Aldi a real demand signal and builds anticipation, but voting is free while buying is not. A popular flavor still has to translate into actual sales.
The bigger opportunity is what Aldi does with those 120,000 voters. If they’re simply an aggregate number, the campaign generated engagement. If Aldi can identify those shoppers, reach them again at launch and remind them that they helped choose the product, it becomes a much more valuable customer relationship.
Then We Got to Grab & Go
For this week’s Grab & Go, Sarah picked Walmart finally rolling out tap to pay, including Apple Pay and Google Pay, by the end of the year. Walmart has historically pushed its own Walmart Pay experience, but Sarah noted that there is a point where reducing friction for the customer has to win out.
Ben followed with Aldi’s collaboration with Mattel on an Aldi Mania Barbie doll in the UK, while Sarah highlighted Goodles being acquired by Barilla. Goodles was particularly interesting because the brand says 80 percent of its customers are either new to the category or buying more mac and cheese, suggesting it may be expanding the category rather than simply stealing share.
And finally, Ben took aim at Starbucks’ increasingly complicated UK autumn menu, including the return of the Pumpkin Spice Latte and a new iced apple crumble matcha latte. His question was simple: after talking so much about getting “Back to Starbucks,” is adding more and more complicated drinks really the answer?
A Few Things Worth Noting From This Week’s Episode
• Register for our Fall Conference “Must See” Tech Preview on September 17: Register Here
• Watch Jack Sinclair’s Groceryshop keynote from last year: Watch Here
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Be careful out there,
Ben and the entire Omni Talk Team
Music by hooksounds.com
Omni Talk® is the retail blog for retailers, written by retailers. Chris Walton founded Omni Talk® in 2017 and have quickly turned it into one of the fastest growing blogs in retail.