Introduction

Coresight Research is a research partner of Groceryshop 2026, which is taking place during September 22–24 at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas, Nevada. Groceryshop is an annual conference that brings together global retailers, brands and technology leaders to discuss trends, innovations and strategies shaping the future of grocery and consumer packaged goods (CPG).

The sessions at Groceryshop 2026 are categorized into six major themes, which we presented in our guide to the event:

• AI-Powered Shopping Experiences
• Transforming and Optimizing Business Operations
• Meeting Consumer Expectations
• Retail Media Opportunities and Challenges
• Unified Commerce and Omnichannel Marketing Strategies
• Winning and Engaging Customers

In this report, we present key insights from the second day of Groceryshop 2026, which mainly covered the topics of AI-driven retail transformation, evolving consumer value propositions, connected commerce and supply chain transparency. We also highlight details of the Startup Pitch competition on day two of the event.

Groceryshop 2026 Day Two: Coresight Research Insights

Startup Pitch Competition

The startup pitch competition saw 12 early-stage retail-technology innovators compete across two themed sessions: “Technologies Boosting Revenue and Conversion” and “Technologies Driving Cost Savings and Efficiencies.” Within each session, the judging panel narrowed the field to two finalists, and the audience then cast the deciding vote to crown that session’s winner. Deborah Weinswig, CEO and Founder of Coresight Research, emceed the pitch competition and served as lead judge.

For more information on the companies, see our preview report.

The winners were:

• Technologies Boosting Revenue and Conversion Winner: Shelflife
• Technologies Driving Cost Savings and Efficiencies Winner: Perfect Store Group

Deborah Weinswig, CEO and Founder, Coresight Research
Source: Groceryshop

 

We present key highlights from sessions on day two of Groceryshop 2026.

1. AI Moves from Pilots to Operational Transformation

Retailers Focus on Speed, Trust and Business Process Redesign

At Amazon Web Services’ (AWS’s) breakfast session, Aparna Galiasso, Lead for Retail, Restaurants and CPG Business Development, AWS; Jack Gibbs, Lead Consumer Industries, OpenAI; and Mustafa Bartin, General Manager of Migros Grocery, discussed how retailers are moving AI into production while managing trust, cost and organizational change.

Bartin explained that Migros has historically experimented with new technologies because of the operational pressures of the Turkish grocery market. The retailer operates in a highly competitive quick-commerce environment, where speed has become a core customer expectation.

Migros currently:

• Operates more than 300,000 online grocery orders per day.
• Completes almost 60% of online grocery orders in under 30 minutes.
• Operates in a market where 75–80% of online grocery orders are delivered within one hour.

Bartin explained that AI is helping compress marketing execution cycles. Previously, identifying a neighborhood demand issue and creating a targeted campaign could take days. With AI-enabled workflows, Migros can detect low demand in a geography and launch a campaign within minutes.

However, Bartin stressed that successful technology adoption depends on more than technical capability. Migros evaluates the following before scaling solutions:

• Customer adoption
• Associate adoption
• Technology maturity
• Government and regulatory considerations

He cited electronic shelf labels (ESLs) as an example. Migros first experimented with ESLs in the 1990s, but the technology was not sufficiently mature. When the retailer later reintroduced ESLs, it approached dynamic pricing cautiously, deliberately avoiding autonomous pricing decisions. Instead, it positioned the system as algorithmic support with manual checks.

A recurring theme in the discussion was reducing operational latency. Speakers identified three forms:

• Signal latency: how quickly information becomes available
• Decision latency: how quickly teams determine what to do
• Execution latency: how quickly actions are implemented

Bartin argued that speeding up marketing alone is insufficient. Inventory, pricing and supply chain processes must also become faster if retailers want to fully capture AI’s potential.

Jack Gibbs highlighted that organizations are seeing uneven AI adoption, with some departments pushing transformation faster than others. He also stressed the importance of trust and security as AI capabilities expand, noting that open-weight AI models will give malicious actors access to increasingly powerful tools.

Aaron Cheris described the current AI transition as similar to the reengineering movement of the 1990s, calling it “reengineering 2.0.” His advice was “don’t digitize the cow path.” In other words, companies should not simply apply AI to existing processes but should rethink processes end-to-end.

2. AI Shopping Assistants Shift Grocery Discovery from Products to Missions

DoorDash Sees AI Expanding Basket Discovery

Andy Fang, Co-Founder of DoorDash, described how AI is changing grocery shopping behavior. The company recently launched its Ask DoorDash AI shopping assistant, allowing customers to interact conversationally, including uploading recipe ideas and generating shopping carts.

Fang shared several early results:

• At launch, AI shopping generated a 35% increase in cart size
• Checkout occurred three times faster
• These metrics later increased to a 50% cart-size increase and five-times faster checkout

DoorDash’s view is that consumers increasingly want help solving problems rather than searching for individual SKUs. Fang gave examples such as:

• Planning a child’s birthday party
• Finding ingredients for a specific meal
• Managing dietary restrictions
• Shopping within constraints such as Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) eligibility

DoorDash found that customers using AI order 60% more unique SKUs, suggesting that AI can broaden discovery rather than simply accelerate repeat purchases.

Fang also emphasized that AI performance depends on retailer data foundations. Product descriptions, inventory accuracy and catalog quality become increasingly important because AI recommendations are only as good as the information available.

Andy Fang, Co-Founder of DoorDash
Source: Groceryshop

 

3. Digital Shelf Management Becomes an Agentic Workflow

AI’s impact on grocery e-commerce is also extending into digital shelf operations, where brands are increasingly looking beyond dashboards and manual analysis toward automated decision support.

Germán Loewe, Founder & CEO of Shalion, discussed how AI can help brands manage increasingly complex digital commerce environments.

Loewe described the digital shelf challenge as one of scale. Brands must manage:

• Millions or billions of data points
• Multiple retailers
• Large numbers of SKUs
• Different content, visibility and performance issues across platforms

He outlined the current digital shelf workflow as five steps:

• Orient around priorities
• Detect issues
• Analyze root causes
• Decide what action to take
• Execute the change

According to Loewe, AI insight-generation agents are already helping with the first three steps—orientation, detection and analysis. The next stage will involve AI systems supporting decisions and activation.

He argued that the future will not be a single general-purpose agent but a network of specialized agents, each focused on specific tasks.

Examples could include:

• A product-description optimization agent
• A campaign recommendation agent
• A digital shelf performance agent

Loewe described a future workflow where an AI interface such as ChatGPT, Claude or Copilot could coordinate across different business systems.

For example:

• AI detects that a brand has lost market share at Walmart
• A digital shelf agent identifies the cause
• Recommendations are generated
• Actions are communicated through Slack and email to relevant teams

4. Value Is Being Redefined Through Curation and Convenience

Consumer value was another major Day 2 theme, particularly as shoppers continue to balance affordability with expectations for convenience and quality.

Myron Frazier, EVP and Chief Merchandising Officer, Sam’s Club, explained how the retailer defines value. Frazier summarized Sam’s Club’s value proposition as: “A great item, at a disruptive price, delivered as only Sam’s Club can.”

Frazier noted that value is not limited to price. Convenience is also a critical component. Sam’s Club has invested in reducing friction through:

• Scan & Go, allowing members to scan products while shopping and skip checkout
• Exit arches, creating a more frictionless store departure experience
• Delivery and curbside options

Sam’s Club highlighted its Member’s Mark private brand as an example of how customer insight can shape product development. Frazier explained that the company does not simply decide internally what products should become. Instead, members provide direct feedback through the Member’s Mark community.

The community includes:

• More than 200,000 members
• More than 4,000 items managed through highly systematized processes

The retailer uses customer feedback to determine:

• Which ingredients to remove
• What features create value
• How products should evolve

Myron Frazier, EVP and Chief Merchandising Officer, Sam’s Club (Left); and Chris Walton, President and CEO, Omni Talk (Right)
Source: Groceryshop

 

5. Retail Media Evolves Toward Identity, Incrementality and Connected Commerce

Bobby Watts, SVP of AD Retail Media, Ahold Delhaize USA, discussed how retailers can use identity data and first-party insights to improve campaign effectiveness.

Watts explained that the opportunity is in combining customer identity, first-party purchase signals and offsite and onsite media activation to find consumers with a higher likelihood of purchasing.

A key point was that the customer journey is no longer linear. Consumers may move between digital advertising, retailer websites, stores and other touchpoints before purchase.

Watts argued that retail media should not be restricted to lower-funnel conversion. Instead, retailers should think about connecting awareness, consideration and purchase.

Matt Knust, VP, Practice Lead (CPG), InMarket, challenged traditional media measurement approaches. Knust said that impressions, clicks and reach are delivery metrics, while marketers ultimately care about incremental demand and sales.

He highlighted a measurement challenge: traditional campaign reporting often arrives six to 10 weeks after campaigns end, meaning marketers cannot optimize campaigns while they are running.

InMarket’s approach focuses on incremental outcomes. The company’s Guaranteed iROAS activation product:

• Establishes a minimum incremental return before a campaign begins
• Measures incremental performance during the campaign
• Allows optimization while campaigns are active

6. Connected Commerce Requires Channel Discipline

Omnichannel success does not mean pursuing every possible channel. Instead, brands need to define the role each channel plays and invest according to consumer behavior and operational capabilities.

The session “Designing a Multichannel Commerce Strategy” featured Angus McOuat, Partner at McKinsey & Company; Peter Sarkis, VP of Digital Growth at Pressed Juicery; Suman Nag, Head of Ecommerce at Freshpet; and Eric Le, VP of Growth Marketing and Insights at Siete Foods.

The panel emphasized that each channel should have a clear purpose.

Le explained that although Siete has a strong digital community, the company remains retail-led because stores continue to play an important role in discovery.

Owned digital channels serve different purposes:

• Learning about highly engaged consumers
• Testing innovation
• Building relationships with superfans

Sarkis described different channel roles across the business:

• Retail stores support discovery, service and relationships
• Wholesale expands reach
• Owned digital extends customer relationships
• Delivery provides convenience and immediacy

Nag highlighted how operating models influence channel decisions.

Freshpet’s refrigerated product model makes grocery particularly important because the category requires strong physical retail execution. Expansion into additional channels, such as Amazon, requires consideration of infrastructure, economics and customer expectations.

The panel also emphasized that channel expansion requires product adaptation. A product architecture designed for one channel cannot simply be copied into another. Assortment, packaging and formats need to reflect the purchase mission and economics of each environment.

Wellness Becomes a Core Driver of Consumer Behavior

Jostein Solheim, CEO, Unilever Wellbeing, discussed how consumer definitions of health and beauty are changing.

Solheim identified three major shifts:

• Health is moving from absence of disease to lifestyle: Consumers increasingly view health as an ongoing lifestyle choice rather than simply a medical concern.
• Beauty and wellbeing are converging:
• Nine in 10 consumers see beauty and wellbeing as one connected concept
  • 86% say they cannot feel beautiful if they do not feel well
• Digitalization is changing access to information
  • Consumers can now access science, data and health information at a much greater level than before.

Solheim explained that Unilever has expanded its wellbeing portfolio through acquisitions and brand development. The company acquired Olly in 2019, described as an original disruptor of the vitamin shelf, and now has eight wellbeing companies, including brands such as Liquid I.V. and Nutrafol.

He also highlighted changing consumer attitudes around healthy aging, noting that younger consumers are increasingly thinking about long-term health earlier in life.

Jostein Solheim, CEO, Unilever Wellbeing
Source: Groceryshop

 

Supply Chain Transparency Moves Toward Traceability and Smart Packaging

The AWS luncheon session “The Transparent, Resilient Supply Chain: From Traceability to Autonomous Operations” examined how retailers and CPG companies are preparing for increased traceability requirements. Speakers included John Phillips, PepsiCo; John Maxwell, Mondelez; and Anand, Infosys.

A major topic was FSMA 204, the FDA Food Traceability Rule that mandates enhanced digital recordkeeping for high-risk foods to help trace contamination within 24 hours. The regulation requires significant data sharing, process changes, supply chain coordination across retailers and CPG companies.

The discussion highlighted challenges in food traceability, particularly for complex categories.

For example:

• Produce may need tracking back to an individual field
• Some products contain multiple inputs
• High-risk categories include items such as cheese, greens and nut butters

Speakers emphasized that evolving and integrating GS1 standards into supply chain systems will be critical to enabling the identification, capture and sharing of the required data.

The session also explored how packaging is becoming more digitally connected.

The GS1 Digital Link standard uses 2D QR codes to carry more product information and enable greater consumer engagement.

Examples discussed included PepsiCo’s SmartLabel approach, where digital product information can provide:

• Ingredient details
• Allergen information
• Additional consumer content

Speakers noted that smart packaging applications could eventually support:

• Digital recalls
• Product information updates
• Recipes
• Promotions
• Additional brand engagement opportunities