Groceryshop 2026: Value, GLP-1s and the New Grocery Shopper

Alongside the AI agents that dominated the headlines, Groceryshop 2026 carried a second, quieter message: the person filling the basket has changed. Stretched budgets, club retail and GLP-1 medications are redefining what value means, and grocers are having to recalculate every trip.

The first article in this series covered how AI agents from Instacart, DoorDash and Kroger are beginning to build the grocery basket. But the basket itself is changing too, and not because of technology.

Across more than 150 speakers at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas, one theme ran parallel to the AI conversation: value is being redefined by stretched budgets and GLP-1 medications, and the average shopper no longer exists.

The End of the Average Shopper

Nicole Kalita, SVP and Managing Director of US Retail at NielsenIQ, told the event that the industry can no longer plan around a typical customer.

Financially stretched households now make up 33% of the US population, up 17% since 2022, according to NielsenIQ. Over three years, grocery has lost $5 billion in trips as shoppers moved towards club and mass retail.

The behaviour behind those numbers matters more than the numbers themselves. Shoppers are no longer simply looking for the lowest shelf price. They are combining promotions, loyalty pricing, own label and channel choice into a value equation of their own.

"Consumers are no longer hunting for a deal, they're assembling one," Kalita said.

That distinction has consequences for how retailers design promotions and how brands fund them. A shopper assembling value across channels is harder to win with a single price cut, and harder to measure.

Value Beyond Price

Sam's Club is one of the retailers winning those recalculated trips, and its approach suggests value now extends well beyond the price tag.

EVP and Chief Merchant Myron Frazier said the club charges the same price online as it does in its clubs, with no upcharge for delivery. The same thinking applied to products on the shelf is now applied to checkout, delivery and meal solutions.

"Everything that we do, we treat it as an item and we look to add more member value," Frazier said.

Treating the shopping experience itself as a product is a notable shift. It reframes convenience, delivery and checkout not as costs to be recovered but as part of the value proposition that justifies the membership.

The GLP-1 Effect

The second force reshaping the basket is pharmaceutical rather than economic.

GLP-1 medications are speeding up the shift towards protein, nutrition and cleaner labels, according to speakers at the event. The spending pattern is striking: shoppers are paying more for less.

"People are spending more money on food than ever before on less calories and less ultra-processed food," said Talia Monroe, SVP of Commercial Growth at Chobani.

Unilever Wellbeing CEO Jostein Solheim described GLP-1s as the ultimate act of taking charge of your own health, with major implications for what consumers need from food.

For grocers and brands, the implication is that assortment decisions made for a pre-GLP-1 shopper may already be out of date. Portion sizes, protein content and ingredient lists are becoming competitive battlegrounds, and the shift shows little sign of slowing.

The Measurement Problem

The value conversation also exposed a weakness on the brand side of the industry.

Just 22% of brands are confident they can measure return on investment in retail media, according to Kantar research cited at the event. Most spread their budgets across only three to 10 of the roughly 100 US retail media networks.

That caution sits awkwardly alongside the ambition on show elsewhere at Groceryshop, where retailers presented stores as media channels and AI as the next monetisation layer. P&G's Jacques Hagopian called for 12- to 18-month joint plans lining up supply, in-store display and media, a theme covered in more detail in the first article in this series.

The gap between what retail media promises and what brands can measure remains one of the industry's unresolved tensions, and it will shape how quickly the new value landscape attracts advertising money.

A Shopper Being Rebuilt

Taken together, the value and wellness sessions at Groceryshop 2026 described a shopper being rebuilt from several directions at once.

Budgets are stretched, and value is assembled rather than found. GLP-1 medications are changing what shoppers want from food, and how much of it they buy. Retailers that treat convenience as part of the product are winning trips from those that treat it as a surcharge.

The AI agents may decide what goes into the basket in the years ahead. But the reasons behind the basket are changing just as fast.

Sources

This article draws on Groceryshop's media release of 24 September 2026, covering Groceryshop 2026 at Mandalay Bay, Las Vegas. Statistics are attributed to the companies and research firms that produced them, including NielsenIQ and Kantar, and performance figures are company-reported unless otherwise stated.