June 22, 2026
Image Courtesy of Kroger
Is Kroger’s CEO Right About the Grocer’s Problems, and What Are the Best Solutions?
Kroger delivered a first-quarter report card described as “very modest” by Global Data managing director and RetailWire BrainTrust panelist Neil Saunders, with total sales excluding fuel up 0.5%, comp sales excluding fuel up 1%, and net income up 4.3%.
“Kroger has enormous reach and powerful economies of scale. The problem is that, for many years, it has failed to capitalize on these things. The company hasn’t been aggressive enough, nor has it been sufficiently progressive,” Saunders said.
“The result is that it’s become a bland, middle-market grocer that isn’t sufficiently differentiated. It doesn’t win on price. It doesn’t win on experience. It doesn’t win on private label. It doesn’t win on ecommerce in the way Walmart does. And that means it struggles to hold on to sales as customers increasingly shop around for alternatives,” Saunders added, noting that new CEO Greg Foran was an “assertive” leadership figure who has a good chance of righting the ship.
And in a recounting of recent remarks by Foran produced by Retail TouchPoints editor-in-chief Kate Robertson, it was made clear that the Kroger CEO remains steadfastly optimistic about the supermarket format’s future, as well as his company’s more specifically.
Kroger stores are celebrating America’s 250th birthday in the most American way possible: with a cookout. https://t.co/IskdBmzQM7 pic.twitter.com/V6HC8DCJoZ
— NBC4 Columbus (@nbc4i) June 19, 2026
Kroger CEO Points to Three Major Problems Facing the Grocer
But it wasn’t all rosy news for Foran, as he delineated three categories presenting very real and present problems for Kroger.
- Operating costs are growing out of control: “First, our operating costs have been growing faster than our sales. That’s not sustainable, and frankly, it’s not acceptable,” Foran said during the recent earnings call, noting that by slashing a bit of fat from the costs side, savvy investments could be made moving forward.
- Corporate agility needs to improve: Foran unequivocally called for an improvement to the speed of corporate decision-making, wringing the most value out of Kroger’s existing workforce and established assets.
- Execution is lacking: In terms of execution consistency, work needs to be done. While top-performing locations are properly showing up on the store standards front, many are not. “Over the last 15, 16 weeks, I’ve probably now gotten to well over 100 of our stores, and many of our competitors. As a rough rule of thumb, I would say that two out of five [re: Kroger locations] I would find in very good condition. Another two out of five are in moderate condition, and there’s generally one out of five where we could improve the performance,” Foran said.
On the positive strategy side, Foran signaled that it was time for Kroger to stop playing defense and start expanding into suitable markets; that ecommerce sales and expansion thereof would dovetail nicely with the grocer’s Kroger Precision Marketing RMN; and that conscious or targeted price reductions and promos could draw customer attention in an era of ongoing economic pressure.
Foran Talks About the Five Fs and Their Importance for Kroger
And on a broader level, Kroger underscored the importance of returning to the fundamental “Five Fs” of its core business:
- Fast: Convenience is non-negotiable, especially considering today’s choosy and time-crunched customer. Stock needs to be on hand, checkouts need to be speedy, and online order speed and accuracy is paramount.
- Fresh: Kroger plans to raise standards, particularly around protein and produce options, to satisfy today’s grocery shopper.
- Friendly: Better training, streamlined tools, and new uniforms could make Kroger’s frontline workforce a differentiator versus competitors in the grocery space.
- For you: The grocer holds comprehensive loyalty data, spanning nearly all (95%) transactions. Kroger intends to leverage this data to produce customized shopper offers that are likelier to spur customers to action.
- Affordable: As Foran admitted that this last entry didn’t exactly begin with an F, keeping prices low was a cornerstone of the company’s plans — particularly in the pursuit of “consistent, easy-to-understand value,” per Robertson.
BrainTrust
Gene Detroyer
Professor, International Business, Guizhou University of Finance & Economics and University of Sanya, China.
Mohamed Amer, PhD
Strategy Advisor, CEO & Co-Founder, BridgeCommAI
Tanya Thorson
Revenue & Customer Growth Leader, StrategiX Marketing
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Discussion Questions
In your opinion, has Greg Foran correctly identified the major problems facing Kroger? Do you agree with his assessment for growth moving forward? What other suggestions would you make?
How important are store standards when it comes to the grocery business? Do you believe store standards are slipping in recent years, and if so, why? Is there a (relatively) simple fix?
What’s your take on the ‘Five Fs’?
Poll
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The essence of my comment is already quoted in the article – in that Kroger is too stuck in the middle and not nearly differentiated enough. That doesn’t work in today’s cutthroat grocery market. However, what I will add here is that a lot of this is cultural. Prior to Greg Foran, Kroger was far too passive; rather than doing the hard work of reinvention it pinned all of its hopes on the failed merger with Albertsons. Greg Foran comes from the Walmart culture and brings the kind of energy that Kroger now needs to get back on the front foot. This will, however, take a lot of time.
I’m going to drop in the Suggestion Box that you be listed as co-author (it looks like you pretty much wrote the first three paragraphs!) 🙂
“Stuck in the middle” is a differentiating factor. The middle is huge and a worthy target for excellence.
It’s stuck in the middle in terms of attributes. That is not differentiation; it’s a recipe for being forgettable and it’s why Kroger suffers customer erosion from all sides. If it wants to serve a mass of customers – the so called middle ground – that’s fine, but it still needs points of differentiation. Look at Tesco in the UK. It has the highest grocery market share because it wins – or comes close to winning – across multiple dimensions. Its value tier is as competitive as Aldi, its premium tier (Finest brand) is as good as many higher quality players, its ecommerce in grocery is as good as Amazon, its stores are just as good (if not a little better) than most other grocers. And so forth. That’s what Kroger should aspire to.
They serve a large portion of customers in a given market, which, in itself is worthy. In that space, they’ve been able to be average to just good enough with most major levers – quality, price, variety/selection, convenience, customer service. The big question is how long can they continue this while many of their trade areas also see more low price formats with good experiences and higher end stores with better quality, variety and service.
Indeed – they are losing market share across most of their trade areas. They need to stop that bleeding. Fortunately, there is time to do it and the slippage is certainly not terminal.
I agree with Greg Foran’s assessment and applaud the sense of focus and urgency.
Kroger’s issues didn’t appear overnight, and they won’t be fixed overnight either.
For a company of Kroger’s scale, sustained improvement comes from getting hundreds of small things right every day across thousands of stores. Customers rarely think about organizational structure, executive changes, or strategic plans. They notice whether shelves are stocked, associates are available, checkout is efficient, and the overall experience feels worth their time and money.
The encouraging part is that these are solvable problems. The challenge is maintaining disciplined execution across the entire chain, not just in the best-performing locations.
Consistency remains one of the most powerful competitive advantages in retail.
Greg Foran is correct to target executional opportunities and store conditions to improve a 1% comp sales performance. But accounting for inflation and product/supply chain increases, that means sales and/or customer or basket performance are actually in negative territory. Good store execution and better standards alone could yield a 1%-3% performance improvement to satisfy Wall St. For the longer term, Kroger needs to truly differentiate itself beyond noted ideas like new aprons, cleaner stores, or speedier checkout. Although those are good, Foran eventually must push the boundaries of quality, or lower prices, or a better experience, or innovative personalized loyalty well beyond current levels. Operating in the middle, yet just a little better has a limited shelf life against low price leaders and higher quality formats.
and net income up 4.3%.
First, our operating costs have been growing faster than our sales
I’d gladly skip any number of “f”‘s for an explanation of how they accomplished the former, given the latter. And yes, Mr. Foran – hey…there’s our F ! – is quite correct that “That’s not sustainable”: long-term, the superposition of exponential costs on arithematic revenue is doom.
Greg Foran is pointing to the right problems. Kroger needs a clearer reason to be chosen.
That is the risk of living in the middle. When a grocer blends into the market, shoppers split the basket across stronger options.
Store standards matter because grocery is built on trust. The produce wall, meat case, checkout lane, pickup order, and associate experience all tell the customer whether the brand is sharp, ready, and worth the trip.
The Five Fs are a strong reset: fast, fresh, friendly, for you, and affordable. Simple words. Hard execution.
I would add one more F: Focus.
Kroger has scale, loyalty data, private label, store reach, and a retail media engine. Those strengths need to show up where the customer feels them most: in the store, in the basket, in the price, and in the experience.
Foran brings needed urgency. Now Kroger needs operating rhythm, store discipline, and a sharper customer promise.
Grocery habits are built one trip at a time. Kroger has the assets. Now it needs the focus to make every trip worth choosing.
Foran correctly names the symptoms. But symptoms aren’t the disease. Kroger’s deeper problem is that it has never resolved a more fundamental question: what kind of grocer are we, and for whom? Without a clear answer, every operational fix improves execution inside a strategy that doesn’t work.
The RMN piece is telling. Kroger Precision Marketing is slotting allowances with a digital interface: extracting value from brands for visibility, not creating value for shoppers. That distinction matters. A retailer that monetizes brand access rather than shopper relevance is solving the wrong problem. The Five Fs are a sound operational reset. They are not a strategic identity. Kroger needs both, and only one is on the table.
Every person who has replied to today’s question agrees that Greg Foran has done a great job of identifying the problems facing Kroger, but they also agree that there is something missing. I would boil this down to a clear focus, “Unique Selling Proposition
Why should a customer with so many options shop at Kroger, and how do we keep all of our employees focused on making sure we live up to our USP.
Kroger isn’t Whole Foods. Kriger isn’t Aldi. Kroger isn’t TJ’s. Nor should it be. It is smack in the middle, probably the biggest share of the grocery market.
The fundamentals of business are what Kroger is missing, and they are well identified in today’s discussion. How can a grocer operate in any part of the market without the Five F’s? It doesn’t matter if you choose to operate at the top of the market or at the bottom.
Over the past decade, Kroger has lost its way as a business and has looked for silver bullets to correct its problems.
Bland. Isn’t that the malady that has been, and continues to, eat away at the whole middle market of retail? Wasn’t ‘bland’ the death sentence of a couple of middle-market department stores? Isn’t differentiation one of the primary paths to success in retail? And yet here we sit having the same conversation about one of the biggest grocers in the country. It’s not like both the problem and the solution are hard to spot these days.
I like the ‘Five Fs’, but they sound more like table stakes than the recipe for distinction and differentiation. I think a lot of grocery shopping is done based on habit and momentum. Customers get locked into one store and reward program and then go on auto pilot. When I get in my car I have a choice between Big Y, Stop & Shop, Aldi, Trader Joe’s, Target and Walmart all within 5 minutes of each other. Stop & Shop is now my auto pilot destination, based on their fresh sourdough bread. It’s heads above all the other stores. That one product won me over. That was the differentiated product that set my auto pilot.
Isn’t Stop & Shop middle market?
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The essence of my comment is already quoted in the article – in that Kroger is too stuck in the middle and not nearly differentiated enough. That doesn’t work in today’s cutthroat grocery market. However, what I will add here is that a lot of this is cultural. Prior to Greg Foran, Kroger was far too passive; rather than doing the hard work of reinvention it pinned all of its hopes on the failed merger with Albertsons. Greg Foran comes from the Walmart culture and brings the kind of energy that Kroger now needs to get back on the front foot. This will, however, take a lot of time.
I’m going to drop in the Suggestion Box that you be listed as co-author (it looks like you pretty much wrote the first three paragraphs!) 🙂
“Stuck in the middle” is a differentiating factor. The middle is huge and a worthy target for excellence.
It’s stuck in the middle in terms of attributes. That is not differentiation; it’s a recipe for being forgettable and it’s why Kroger suffers customer erosion from all sides. If it wants to serve a mass of customers – the so called middle ground – that’s fine, but it still needs points of differentiation. Look at Tesco in the UK. It has the highest grocery market share because it wins – or comes close to winning – across multiple dimensions. Its value tier is as competitive as Aldi, its premium tier (Finest brand) is as good as many higher quality players, its ecommerce in grocery is as good as Amazon, its stores are just as good (if not a little better) than most other grocers. And so forth. That’s what Kroger should aspire to.
They serve a large portion of customers in a given market, which, in itself is worthy. In that space, they’ve been able to be average to just good enough with most major levers – quality, price, variety/selection, convenience, customer service. The big question is how long can they continue this while many of their trade areas also see more low price formats with good experiences and higher end stores with better quality, variety and service.
Indeed – they are losing market share across most of their trade areas. They need to stop that bleeding. Fortunately, there is time to do it and the slippage is certainly not terminal.
I agree with Greg Foran’s assessment and applaud the sense of focus and urgency.
Kroger’s issues didn’t appear overnight, and they won’t be fixed overnight either.
For a company of Kroger’s scale, sustained improvement comes from getting hundreds of small things right every day across thousands of stores. Customers rarely think about organizational structure, executive changes, or strategic plans. They notice whether shelves are stocked, associates are available, checkout is efficient, and the overall experience feels worth their time and money.
The encouraging part is that these are solvable problems. The challenge is maintaining disciplined execution across the entire chain, not just in the best-performing locations.
Consistency remains one of the most powerful competitive advantages in retail.
Greg Foran is correct to target executional opportunities and store conditions to improve a 1% comp sales performance. But accounting for inflation and product/supply chain increases, that means sales and/or customer or basket performance are actually in negative territory. Good store execution and better standards alone could yield a 1%-3% performance improvement to satisfy Wall St. For the longer term, Kroger needs to truly differentiate itself beyond noted ideas like new aprons, cleaner stores, or speedier checkout. Although those are good, Foran eventually must push the boundaries of quality, or lower prices, or a better experience, or innovative personalized loyalty well beyond current levels. Operating in the middle, yet just a little better has a limited shelf life against low price leaders and higher quality formats.
I’d gladly skip any number of “f”‘s for an explanation of how they accomplished the former, given the latter. And yes, Mr. Foran – hey…there’s our F ! – is quite correct that “That’s not sustainable”: long-term, the superposition of exponential costs on arithematic revenue is doom.
Greg Foran is pointing to the right problems. Kroger needs a clearer reason to be chosen.
That is the risk of living in the middle. When a grocer blends into the market, shoppers split the basket across stronger options.
Store standards matter because grocery is built on trust. The produce wall, meat case, checkout lane, pickup order, and associate experience all tell the customer whether the brand is sharp, ready, and worth the trip.
The Five Fs are a strong reset: fast, fresh, friendly, for you, and affordable. Simple words. Hard execution.
I would add one more F: Focus.
Kroger has scale, loyalty data, private label, store reach, and a retail media engine. Those strengths need to show up where the customer feels them most: in the store, in the basket, in the price, and in the experience.
Foran brings needed urgency. Now Kroger needs operating rhythm, store discipline, and a sharper customer promise.
Grocery habits are built one trip at a time. Kroger has the assets. Now it needs the focus to make every trip worth choosing.
Foran correctly names the symptoms. But symptoms aren’t the disease. Kroger’s deeper problem is that it has never resolved a more fundamental question: what kind of grocer are we, and for whom? Without a clear answer, every operational fix improves execution inside a strategy that doesn’t work.
The RMN piece is telling. Kroger Precision Marketing is slotting allowances with a digital interface: extracting value from brands for visibility, not creating value for shoppers. That distinction matters. A retailer that monetizes brand access rather than shopper relevance is solving the wrong problem. The Five Fs are a sound operational reset. They are not a strategic identity. Kroger needs both, and only one is on the table.
Every person who has replied to today’s question agrees that Greg Foran has done a great job of identifying the problems facing Kroger, but they also agree that there is something missing. I would boil this down to a clear focus, “Unique Selling Proposition
Why should a customer with so many options shop at Kroger, and how do we keep all of our employees focused on making sure we live up to our USP.
Kroger isn’t Whole Foods. Kriger isn’t Aldi. Kroger isn’t TJ’s. Nor should it be. It is smack in the middle, probably the biggest share of the grocery market.
The fundamentals of business are what Kroger is missing, and they are well identified in today’s discussion. How can a grocer operate in any part of the market without the Five F’s? It doesn’t matter if you choose to operate at the top of the market or at the bottom.
Over the past decade, Kroger has lost its way as a business and has looked for silver bullets to correct its problems.
Bland. Isn’t that the malady that has been, and continues to, eat away at the whole middle market of retail? Wasn’t ‘bland’ the death sentence of a couple of middle-market department stores? Isn’t differentiation one of the primary paths to success in retail? And yet here we sit having the same conversation about one of the biggest grocers in the country. It’s not like both the problem and the solution are hard to spot these days.
I like the ‘Five Fs’, but they sound more like table stakes than the recipe for distinction and differentiation. I think a lot of grocery shopping is done based on habit and momentum. Customers get locked into one store and reward program and then go on auto pilot. When I get in my car I have a choice between Big Y, Stop & Shop, Aldi, Trader Joe’s, Target and Walmart all within 5 minutes of each other. Stop & Shop is now my auto pilot destination, based on their fresh sourdough bread. It’s heads above all the other stores. That one product won me over. That was the differentiated product that set my auto pilot.
Isn’t Stop & Shop middle market?