Image Courtesy of Kroger
October 17, 2025
What Should Kroger Be Looking for in a New CEO?
Kroger, seeking a new CEO since early March, recently revealed it’s focusing on an outside hire for the first time in its 143-year history.
Kroger chief people officer Tim Massa told the Cincinnati Business Courier that the grocer is seeking an external CEO candidate as part of the publication’s C-Suite Awards coverage. Massa’s being recognized in the chief human resources officer category.
The CEO search started after Rodney McMullen resigned following a board investigation of his personal conduct that was unrelated to the business but “inconsistent” with Kroger’s policy on business ethics. Kroger’s lead director Ron Sargent, Staples’ former chairman and CEO, took over as interim CEO as a search ensued.
McMullen’s surprise exit came after Kroger terminated its two-year effort to acquire rival Albertsons in a $25 billion deal, a move McMullen insisted was vital to help Kroger compete on prices with Walmart, Costco, and others. The highly-publicized termination came after the merger was blocked by federal and state regulators on antitrust concerns and led to lawsuits from Albertsons and C&S Wholesale Grocers, which had agreed to acquire divested stores post-merger.
However, several analysts had been critical of McMullen’s overall stewardship as CEO since 2014, including a costly project to partner with British-based online grocery delivery company Ocado — one seeking to build 20 robotic fulfillment centers nationwide.
Critics Say Kroger Has Become Distracted and Off-Message
Some analysts felt the focus on 84.51° data analytics company and building out its retail media network was distracting management from the core grocery business — one that’s losing market share to Walmart, Amazon, Costco, Aldi, and others.
“The golden age of Kroger was before Rodney took over,” Scott Mushkin, CEO of R5 Capital, told Grocery Dive earlier this year. “If you just look at the business … I would say they’re kind of bumping along, kind of hanging on a little bit rather than thriving.”
Mushkin believes Kroger has become less effective at communicating its value proposition versus rivals such as Sprouts Farmers Market and Publix.
“It’s very difficult when you’re multi-banner, multi-regional, with different go-to-market strategies, to define what you are,” Mushkin told Grocery Dive. “It’s the challenge for whoever takes over Kroger: Why, as a consumer, should I shop you beyond location?”
Analysts have also questioned whether Kroger needs to shift from a high-low (HL) pricing strategy driven by promotions to an EDLP (everyday low pricing) positioning. Sargent said in September on Kroger’s Q2 analyst call, “There’s no debate about moving to an EDLP pricing architecture. Kroger is a retailer that for many, many years has been a promotional retailer. Our customers respond to that. Our customers come to us for that.”
Kroger’s Next CEO: An External Hire?
Jose Tamez, managing partner at executive search firm Austin-Michael, told Supermarket News he believes Kroger has a strong internal team, calling out Mary Ellen Adcock, EVP, chief merchant and marketing officer, but said an outside CEO was widely expected. He said, “Oftentimes when a CEO leaves, for whatever reasons, it gives a company a chance to rethink things, reset some things and refresh others.”
Brittain Ladd, a consultant focused on the grocery business, mentioned four potential replacements to the Cincinnati Business Courier, including Greg Foran, who’s credited with turning around Walmart’s grocery business and is stepping down as Air New Zealand CEO on Oct. 20.
He also cited Judith McKenna, former Walmart International CEO whose noncompete agreement expires in January; Hal Lawton, CEO of Tractor Supply; and Tony Hoggett, chief operating officer at meal platform Wonder, and who was formerly Amazon’s top grocery executive.
Asked on the Q2 call by an analyst what traits Kroger’s board is looking for in its next CEO, Sargent said, “You’re looking for critical experiences in people’s backgrounds. I think you’re looking for competencies in terms of expertise of things they’ve done. You’re looking at personal attributes around leadership and style and people skills.”
Discussion Questions
What type of experience and traits should Kroger be looking for in its next CEO?
What are the grocer’s most pressing challenges and realistic opportunities at this juncture?
Poll
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Scott Benedict
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Mohamed Amer, PhD
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Kroger is a huge business. However, it is also one with several legacy issues that need resolving. Among these are upgrading systems to address problems like out-of-stocks, injecting greater efficiency into supply chains, resolving the e-commerce strategy (which seems confused regarding the Ocado partnership), and investing more in stores, including automation for fulfillment. On top of this, Kroger needs a clearer point of difference from the customer perspective. All of this will land on the new CEO’s desk, so they will need to have experience turning around a business and a strong focus on operational optimization.
Judging from the (amount of) criticism the current one has drawn, and scrutiny the next one willl certainly draw, they should be looking for someone who is perfect.
As Kroger enters a pivotal leadership transition—seeking its first ever CEO from outside the company after 143 years of internal promotions—it’s clear the next leader must bring both fresh perspective and deep grocery-retail know-how. The ideal candidate will have a proven track record of turning around large retail operations, fluency in digital / omnichannel execution, and the interpersonal acumen to unify a complex organization under a clearer value proposition. The board’s commentary underscores this: looking for “critical experiences” in candidate backgrounds and “leadership and people skills” in equal measure.
Kroger’s most pressing challenges include eroding market share to aggressive competitors (especially discount grocers and e-commerce players), a fragmented multi-banner strategy that clouds its brand identity, and the fallout from its failed merger with Albertsons — which leaves Kroger scrambling to find growth levers.
Realistic opportunities lie in accelerating its fresh & prepared-foods leadership, building stronger private-label platforms (as Kroger has already begun doing), and leveraging its scale to invest in retail-media and digital-fulfilment capabilities. The right CEO must rally the organization around these strategic pillars while simplifying complexity and driver-discipline across stores, supply chain and digital.
In sum: Kroger needs a leader who can simultaneously stabilize the core business and ignite reinvention. The next CEO must combine operational mastery, digital agility, and a visible, galvanizing leadership style to navigate today’s grocery landscape and steer Kroger toward renewed growth.
Whether they hire internal or external, what matters most is clarity. The brand’s lost touch with its story. Good pricing is becoming table stakes, and this won’t be a differentiator. The next CEO should simplify the message, rebuild confidence inside the org, and make Kroger feel bold again.
This has all the earmarks of a disaster in the making. The board’s language—”critical experiences,” “competencies,” “leadership and people skills”—is corporate-speak for “we don’t know what we need, so we’re looking for everything.” The external candidates mentioned (Foran, McKenna, Lawton, Hoggett) bring impressive credentials but wildly different philosophies, with no apparent understanding of cultural fit because Kroger has morphed into a holding company of grocery banners rather than a unified retail brand.
For decades, Kroger has chased technology’s silver bullet: Ocado fulfillment centers, 84.51° analytics, and retail media networks, while fundamental retail execution languishes. The next CEO doesn’t need to transform Kroger; they need to clarify it. That requires the discipline and conviction to make brutal choices: Which banners stay? Are we promotional or EDLP? What initiatives get killed to restore focus?
After 143 years, Kroger needs someone who can declare what the company will stop being, not add another layer of strategic complexity. Anything less is shuffling leadership chairs while Walmart, Amazon, and Aldi eat their lunch. Kroger’s path forward isn’t outspending Amazon and Walmart on technology; it’s out-executing them on the things that actually drive grocery loyalty: consistent in-stocks, superior fresh departments, store-level service, and banners that feel locally authentic rather than corporate masquerading as “multi-banner strategy.”