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H-E-B regains top spot from Amazon as favorite grocer of 2022

H-E-B came in at No. 1 in Dunnhumby’s ranking in 2019, only to be dethroned by Amazon for the next two years. 

H-E-B regains top spot as consumers' favorite grocer of 2022

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Grocery cart and store shelf on a pink background

Grocery

, Amazon this week announced its latest bid to become a digital grocery powerhouse and compete with Walmart. Consumers can now purchase perishable grocery items through its same-day delivery service.

The service is now available to shoppers in 1,000 locations across the US, and the e-comm giant said that’ll expand to 2,300 by the end of the year. Perishable items include produce, dairy, meat, baked goods, and frozen offerings, which can also be ordered alongside any other Amazon products in the same cart.

The move could help Amazon, which has found muted success in the fresh grocery space, compete with its biggest 

, Walmart, which is the top digital grocery retailer in the US, per eMarketer. Walmart currently accounts for approximately 40% of US all online grocery sales, according to Brick Meets Click.

The efforts to win in online grocery come amid the segment’s burgeoning success, with penetration reaching a record 81 million, or 61% of households and US online grocery sales growing 26% YoY to $10 billion in July, Brick Meets Click reported this week. Delivery sales jumped 36% YoY to $4.3 billion, while ship-to-home sales increased 10% YoY to $1.6 billion.

Amazon said it uses a temperature-controlled fulfillment system for the perishable orders, which undergo a “six-point quality check” before they arrive at shoppers’ doors in the same insulated bags they’d receive for Amazon Fresh and Whole Foods deliveries. Delivery is free over $25 or $2.99 under $25 in most cities for Prime members, Amazon said, and $12.99 for non-Prime members.

The company tested the offering in locations like Phoenix, Arizona; Orlando, Florida; and Kansas City, Missouri, and has found shoppers use the same-day delivery service twice as often as those who don’t buy fresh food on the platform, and are increasingly turning to Amazon Fresh and Whole Foods as well, Doug Herrington, CEO of Worldwide Amazon Stores, said in a statement. The company also said strawberries beat Airpods as a top five seller on Amazon in these regions.

Amazon’s other recent efforts to expand its grocery biz include reorganizing its leadership. In 

, it tapped Whole Foods CEO Jason Buechel to serve as VP of worldwide grocery stores while also continuing to lead Whole Foods. And in June, Business Insider 

 Amazon was restructuring its leadership to organize Whole Foods more closely under Amazon’s operations.

Perishable groceries and home goods from Amazon

Amazon ups Walmart competition with same-day grocery delivery

The move comes as online grocery sales grew 26% year over year in July. 

Trader Joe’s, Aldi, and Lidl are running circles around many supermarket chains when it comes to foot traffic, according to the latest data from Placer.ai.

The grocery segment overall increased only 1.5% YoY in the first half of 2025, but foot traffic over the same period increased 11.9% at Trader Joe’s, 7.1% at Aldi, and 4.9% at Lidl, according to a recent 

While some of that aggregate growth could be attributed to the chains adding locations, per-location traffic increases outpaced the segment for the first half of the year, too. While the per-location increase for the segment grew just 1.2% for the period, it jumped more than five times for Trader Joe’s to 6.2%, and for Aldi and Lidl it increased to 2.8% and 2.1%, respectively.

“The grocery segment has never been more competitive, and Aldi, Trader Joe’s, and Lidl have consistently emerged as top players,” the report found. “The three chains share similarities: all offer a limited assortment of groceries and tend to operate at lower price points.”

 from Placer.ai that tracked how Aldi and Trader Joe’s made dramatic foot-traffic gains for the full year of 2024, with Aldi up 18.2% YoY and Trader Joe’s up 6.2%.

As for the first half of this year, the latest report also tracked how Trader Joe’s has gained a greater foot-traffic share in California, from 13.2% in 2019 to 15.7% for the first half of 2025. Over the same period Safeway’s share fell from 25.1% to 24.7%, Ralphs’s from 18.8% to 17.6%, and Vons’s from 16.4% to 14.9%.

A Trader Joe's sign on a store's exterior. 

Trader Joe’s, Aldi, and Lidl are on fire with foot traffic

The grocery segment is up just 1.5%, but Trader Joes is up 11.9% and Aldi 7.1%.

 with Kroger in December, Albertsons has been on a journey to prove that it’s just fine on its own.

The grocer has managed to get its “mojo” back, per former CEO Vivek Sankaran, in part by doubling down on its digital business to help it compete with giants like Walmart and Costco. Albertsons’ digital sales rose 24% YoY in Q4, the company reported in April, while its loyalty members jumped 15% to 45.6 million.

Digital sales have proven to be crucial to grocery industry growth over the past year. E-grocery sales surged during the Covid-19 pandemic, then cooled between 2021 and mid-2024 as shoppers returned to IRL shopping. But sales have 

 up again in the past year as retailers double down on promotions for their pickup and delivery services. Sales jumped 27% YoY to $8.7 billion in May, according to Brick Meets Click.

Albertsons launched its first-party digital experiences through its app just four years ago, and has been working to catch up to its competitors since then, Jill Pavlovich, SVP of digital shopping experiences at Albertsons, who oversees the grocer’s app, website, and in-store digital offerings, told Retail Brew.

“As we think about this year, the path that we have ahead of us, it’s really taking what we’ve developed a step farther and really bringing the digital experiences more deeply into stores,” she said.

Four platforms—e-commerce, loyalty, pharmacy and health, and its mobile app—have been key to its blossoming digital business, Sankaran said in January.

Albertsons’s mobile app has served as a “Swiss Army knife of tools” to help shoppers, Pavlovich said, adding that last year was centered around “strengthen[ing] the core” and focusing on the “basics,” with updates that included in-store geolocation with real-time coupons. It’s also recently added a capability for consumers to upload their own recipes or recipes they’ve found online into the app and, using generative AI, digitize them, making the recipes shoppable across Albertsons’s offerings.

“This year is all about taking the things that reduce the cognitive load and taking them a step farther, leveraging the rate at which technology is changing to really give our customers a human multiplier—make it super easy for them to shop with us,” she said.

Daily monitoring of call service logs, checking reviews in the App Store and Google Play Store, and connecting with customers (and non-customers) directly to get their feedback helps the retailer establish both its annual digital product roadmap as well as make any real time adjustments necessary, Pavlovich said.

That continual iteration is necessary as more tech-savvy, younger consumers opt for online shopping for themselves and their early-stage families for the first time, she noted.

“Their expectation of technology is omnichannel experiences, so they have a lot less barriers to entry to engage digitally and convert online,” she said. “If we continue to keep up with our customer and meet their needs through our digital and omnichannel experiences, we’ll see that growth continue for Albertsons and also for the industry as well.”

As Albertsons takes on online grocery leaders like Walmart and Amazon, Pavlovich said its loyalty program (which it 

 last year) and its “differentiated services” including special occasion planning offerings like catering and party supplies, will help it compete. This year, the grocer aims to add digital ordering capabilities for in-store services like its bakery and floral department, she noted.

Albertsons also announced at Cannes Lions this year that it’s 

 in-store digital ad displays as it looks to grow the reach of its retail media network Albertsons Media Collective. The pilot is in its early days, but Pavlovich said “initial feedback is positive” as the grocer aims to use ads to boost discovery and brand awareness for shoppers.

“It’s not just an ad to be an ad; it really has to aid in the customer shopping journey and purchasing decision,” she said. 

Pavlovich is hopeful that customers will be receptive to digital in-store screens, though she noted the grocer has had “varying successes” with other innovations. The in-store mode for its app has been a bright spot, quickly adopted by 10 million customers, Pavlovich said. However, checkout options similar to Amazon’s Just Walk Out technology, which the grocer previously 

"It’s been very experience-dependent, and we just continue to watch and keep a pulse, because the trends continue to emerge, and we’re learning of adoption in other industries or from other retailers,” she said. “We want to make sure that we keep up and we try again.”

Inside the growth of Albertsons’s digital business

Jill Pavlovich, the grocer’s SVP of digital shopping experiences, breaks down updates to its mobile app, AI innovations, and more.  

Albertsons is piloting digital ad displays in stores this summer, the grocer announced today during the Cannes Lions in France.

Its retail media arm, Albertsons Media Collective, is partnering with digital solution company Stratacache for the pilot, which will see digital screens deployed at stores in two regions, its Northern California and Jewel-Osco divisions, this summer. The screens will be placed in “high-traffic areas with impactful touchpoints in the customer journey” throughout the store, the company said, including the store entry and produce department. The company is showcasing the new advertising features at a mock grocery store set up at Cannes this week.

Liz Roche, Albertsons Media Collective’s VP of media and measurement, said in a statement the grocer partnered with Stratacache as its technology enables “closed-loop measurement,” noting that “understand[ing] performance helps us fully realize the potential of the in-store channel.” Albertsons said brand partners will be able to measure their ads’ impact including direct sales attribution and sales lift. Standardization of data reporting across retail media networks continues to be a 

Oreo maker Mondelez will be the retailer’s first CPG partner, Albertsons said. Mondelez previously 

 with Albertsons and Fetch on a new retail media integration last year.

Melissa Pitmon, customer director of omnichannel activation of Mondelez, said the screens will allow the brand to market “hyper-relevant content right where purchase decisions are made.”

“It’s a natural complement to our digital strategy and a powerful reminder that the store remains one of the most influential spaces to build brand connection and drive conversion,” she said.

Albertsons said it has a “comprehensive” plan for rolling out the tech to other stores following the pilot.

 the majority of grocery shoppers still shop in stores. As such, adoption of 

 has gained steam among grocers as they look to capture shoppers’ eyes and double down on this additional revenue stream. Analysts 

 last year Albertsons might work to expand its ad business to grow after its 

 have also both recently made strides in in-store digital advertising through partnerships with Grocery TV. (Trader Joe’s, on the other hand, 

EMarketer has forecasted in-store retail media ad spending will hit $1 billion in 2028—but still account for just 1% of omnichannel retail media ad spend.

Albertsons to pilot in-store digital ad displays  

The grocer is partnering with Mondelez on the effort to expand its retail media business. 

AMC will join competitors Regal and Cinemark and begin showing ads at what’s called the “

,” when the lights go down after the previews (which themselves follow commercials) and when its movies had previously begun. The company had considered doing so in 2019 but declined to, stating in a news release at the time that it had concluded “US moviegoers would react quite negatively to the concept.”

 Are there too many commercials at movie theaters? 

, we told you about a Mondelez International lawsuit that claims Aldi packaging for some of its private label products looks so similar to packaging for its products, including Oreo and Nutter Butter, that it is “likely to deceive and confuse customers.”

So we asked if you’ve ever accidentally purchased a store brand instead of an advertised brand because its packaging was so similar. More than 1 in 5 (22.1%) said that yes, you have inadvertently bought a private label dupe when you meant to get the real McCoy, while 77.9% of you never have.

More than 1 in 5 accidentally purchased a look-alike store brand

Plus: Too many commercials at movie theaters?

Hot Topic: More than 1 in 5 accidentally purchased a look-alike store brand

Thrive Market has added a COO role for the first time and tapped Amazon vet Scott Lescher to fill it, rounding out a C-suite full of execs hailing from the e-commerce giant as the online grocer gears up for continued growth.

Lescher is the second Amazon vet Thrive has added to its C-suite in the last year, following the hire of chief merchandising officer 

 in 2024, who spent 12 years at Amazon and worked on its Amazon Fresh business. Thrive CFO Hetu Patel, who joined in 2023 and brought on Lane, also spent over a decade at Amazon. Lescher previously worked with Lane at Amazon.

Lescher spent 15 years across two stints in a number of operations roles at Amazon, most recently director of surface transportation support and fleet. He also served as Uniqlo USA’s director of logistics and supply chain for two years. In an interview with Retail Brew, Lescher described himself as a “builder at heart,” who started at Amazon in 2007 leading hourly associates in fulfillment centers, establishing standards for running those early fulfillment centers, through the launch of ultra-fast delivery and integration of those operations into Amazon Fresh, and finally overseeing middle-mile transportation.

Thrive Market has amassed more than $700 million in sales and ended 2024 with 1.6 million paid members, according to the company, with membership seeing a double-digit percentage increase year over year in the first quarter. Lescher said his joining Thrive will help ensure “the operations space is ready for sustained high growth moving forward.”

“I’ve always gravitated towards the early-to-mid-phase growth opportunities, really helping take operations from the one to 100 phase, helping scale,” Lescher said. “As I learned about Thrive Market, really got to know the team, see the culture in place, I saw an opportunity to really apply this operations toolkit that I've been fortunate to build in all my years with Amazon.”

He’s about two months into the role, and has spent nearly half his time thus far alongside Thrive associates in its fulfillment centers and doing delivery ride-alongs to “see things at the ground level,” he said.

As COO, Lescher will oversee operations across Thrive’s three fulfillment centers in Nevada, Indiana, and Pennsylvania, the teams working at those centers, supply chain and demand planning, and transportation including last-mile delivery. His previous Amazon experience has helped prep him for these responsibilities.

“By understanding what it takes to be successful at each of those levels, it really helps me be a strong strategic leader on a sort of end-to-end basis in the ops space,” he said.

He aims to “strengthen” the safety culture within its fulfillment centers, ensure consistent member experiences (which will reduce needs for refunds, damaged products, or late shipments), grow capacity, and find efficiencies. Creating efficiencies includes “evaluating and improving” its operation design and potentially turning to technology and “various automation options” to create savings that are ultimately passed on to customers, Lescher said.

Lescher’s work will help launch Thrive, which reached 

 in 2023, into its next growth stage, one that it’s been working to set with a number of recent operational changes. Over the past year, it’s moved its frozen fulfillment in house. Thrive has since shipped more than 1 million units in frozen products itself, boosting delivery speeds by 20% and cutting refunds while giving the company the capacity to carry more frozen SKUs.

The online grocer has also begun making its own deliveries to members in New York and Philadelphia to further improve delivery speed and the quality of customers’ experience. It has used third-party logistics providers for delivery in the past and will continue to do so in other delivery locations, according to Lescher. It’ll evaluate expanding the capability to additional locations and bringing other operations in house “where it makes sense,” he said.

Thrive’s push into further growth comes as online grocery has notably 

 after a post-Covid slump, with sales jumping 15.2% to $9.8 billion year over year in April, according to Brick Meets Click. While ship-to-home grocery delivery remains the smallest online grocery method, compared to delivery and pickup, the segment continues to grow. In April, sales rose 22.1% YoY to $1.9 billion.

Looking ahead, Lescher said his biggest challenge as COO will be accurately predicting what’ll happen next.

“It definitely is a challenging area, especially with a company that’s growing quickly, but we continue to improve the models that we use and make investments so that we make it easier to have high quality forecasts, which in turn improve the member experience.”

Thrive Market hires Amazon vet as first COO

The e-commerce grocery is gearing up for the next phase of growth and has started bringing more operations in house. 

Exclusive: Thrive Market hires Amazon vet as first COO

Kroger shoppers have been unknowingly overcharged for items advertised as being discounted, according to an investigation by 

Across March, April, and May, the publications sent people to shop in 14 states and the District of Columbia at 26 Kroger stores and other banners it owns, like Harris Teeter, Fred Meyer, Fry’s, and Ralphs. These shoppers discovered that more than 150 grocery items, from Cheerios to dog food, had expired sales tags, and were on average $1.70, or 18.4%, more expensive than advertised. One-third of the labels were at least 10 days expired, while five were beyond 90 days.

The reports claim the issues stem from staffing shortages, as the average numbers of employees working and hours worked have both dropped around 10% between 2019 and 2024 at these stores. Kroger said

it is “inaccurate to say the company reduced standards or labor hours” in a statement published by the above publications that was also shared with Retail Brew. Consumer Reports noted Kroger employees “work quickly” to resolve the price discrepancies when consumers identify them—Kroger’s “Make It Right” policy allows workers to do this case-by-case—but many shoppers could also be unknowingly paying the elevated prices.

Inspection and complaint records and internal documents indicate Kroger executives have been aware of the errors, the investigation found.

An Ohio couple told the publications they’d filed three complaints with the Ohio attorney general’s office about their local store’s price errors, and Kroger said it would “ensure that our employees are following proper procedure when removing and updating sale tags.” However, a Guardian reporter headed to the Belpre, Ohio, store in question in May and found 11 expired tags, resulting in about $5 in price discrepancies.

While Kroger said “any error is unacceptable,” it denied pricing errors are a widespread issue.

“The Consumer Reports allegations boil down to misinformation, reviewing a handful of discrete issues from billions of daily transactions,” Kroger Communications Director Erin Rolfes told Retail Brew in an email. “It in no way reflects the seriousness with which we take our transparent and affordable pricing.”

Kroger is among several grocers recently accused of deceptive pricing. This year, Publix faced a class action lawsuit for 

 for weighted items. Last year, Walmart was the subject of a class action lawsuit over 

 Albertsons to pay ~$4 million for upcharging customers.