Omni Talk Retail

Live from the Vusion podcast studio at booth 913 at Groceryshop 2026 in Las Vegas, Ben Miller sits down with Bobby Watts, SVP and Executive Lead of AD Retail Media at Ahold Delhaize USA, to explore how retail media is evolving and where the industry goes next.

Bobby explains the scope of AD Retail Media across Ahold Delhaize USA’s banners and shares his perspective on the priorities shaping retail media today. The conversation covers the opportunity within physical store portfolios, what advertisers are looking for from retail media and the platforms and technology needed to meet increasingly sophisticated demands.

In this episode:

• What falls under AD Retail Media across Ahold Delhaize USA

• The biggest priorities shaping retail media today

• Unlocking the value of physical store portfolios

• What advertisers are seeking from retail media

• Balancing awareness and conversion

• The technology required to support sophisticated advertisers

• What could be the biggest development in retail media in 2027

🎧 Subscribe to Omni Talk for more conversations with the leaders shaping grocery and retail.

In this week’s Omni Talk Retail Fast Five, sponsored by the A&M Consumer and Retail Group, Mirakl, Ocampo Capital, Quorso, Veloq, and R&S Logistics, Chris Walton is joined by Omni Talk contributor and GrocerTalk host Ben Miller for another round of Fast Five fun, recorded live from the Vusion podcast studio at Groceryshop 2026 in Las Vegas. This week, Walmart fills up, Costco delivers, Harps gets AI, Toys R Us gets bigger, and Meta gets its glasses on.

Chris and Ben dig into five of the biggest stories in retail this week, including:

• Walmart+ adding CITGO to its Gas Savings benefit, expanding the program from 13,000 to more than 17,000 participating stations nationwide and giving members 10 cents off per gallon. (Source)

• Costco expanding its delivery reach by joining both DoorDash and Uber Eats nationwide, giving members another way to get same-day and scheduled orders from nearly all of its U.S. warehouses. (Source)

• Harps Food Stores naming longtime employee and former meat and seafood category manager Will McDoniel as its first director of AI strategy and innovation. (Source)

• Toys R Us opening 120 new stand-alone stores this holiday season, bringing its stand-alone footprint to 160 locations and adding features like Creator Studios, cafes and candy shops. (Source)

• Meta Lab, the store concept behind Meta’s AI glasses, nearly doubling its retail footprint with six new locations while expanding its Best Buy shop-in-shop presence. (Source)

The episode wraps with a lightning round covering which retailer deserves its own prestige TV drama, what words should be added or removed from the dictionary, and plenty more retail and pop culture fun.

Plus, everyone’s favorite A&Mer, Chad Lusk, joins Chris for 5 Insightful Minutes.

P.S. Be sure to check out all our other podcasts from the past week here, too: https://omnitalk.blog/category/podcast/

P.P.S. Also be sure to check out our podcast rankings on Feedspot.

Music by hooksounds.

Breaking news from Groceryshop 2026: Dollar General is joining the Instacart Marketplace, a new partnership exclusively revealed to Omni Talk Retail by Ryan Hamburger, Chief Commercial Officer at Instacart, during a live conversation with Ben Miller from the Vusion podcast studio at booth 913 in Las Vegas.

Ben and Ryan also unpack Instacart CEO Chris Rogers’ opening Mainstage Keynote, including the potential impact of AI agents and assistants on grocery, the continued affordability imperative, and the challenges retailers are working to solve. Ryan shares how Instacart supports its retail partners through Instacart Enterprise and discusses other major brands joining the Instacart Marketplace, including Gopuff and Airbnb.

In this episode:

• Dollar General joining the Instacart Marketplace

• What the Chief Commercial Officer role covers at Instacart

• Ryan’s biggest takeaways from Chris Rogers’ Groceryshop keynote

• Why AI agents and assistants could reshape grocery

• The continued importance of affordability

• How Instacart Enterprise supports retailers

• The biggest challenges Instacart is hearing from retail partners

• Gopuff and Airbnb joining the Instacart Marketplace

• What Ryan thinks was missing from the opening keynote

🎧 Subscribe to Omni Talk for more conversations with the leaders shaping grocery and retail.

Live from the Vusion podcast studio at Groceryshop 2026 in Las Vegas, Chris Walton sits down with Myron Frazier, Chief Merchandising Officer at Sam’s Club, to explore what value means for today’s increasingly deliberate consumer and how Sam’s Club builds its assortment around that idea.

Myron discusses the history behind Sam’s Club, the role of Member’s Mark, and why a curated assortment can be an advantage even when consumers have access to virtually unlimited choice. He also dives into the technology supporting the member experience, from scan-and-go and exit arches to one-hour delivery, and how those capabilities fit into Sam’s Club’s long-term strategy.

In this episode:

• How Sam’s Club defines value for its members

• What the company’s history can teach today’s merchants

• The role of Member’s Mark in the Sam’s Club assortment

• Why offering less can create an advantage

• How scan-and-go and exit arches support the member experience

• The role of one-hour delivery from Club

• What’s ahead for Sam’s Club’s merchant team in Q4

🎧 Subscribe to Omni Talk Retail for more conversations with the leaders shaping retail.

Welcome to Omni Talk's Retail Daily Minute, sponsored by R&S Logistics, ZenlineAI, and Mirakl.

In today's Retail Daily Minute, Omni Talk's Chris Walton discusses:

• Amazon cuts off Meta's Muse AI agent, citing undisclosed access and credential-storage concerns amid the broader agentic-shopping turf war.
• Best Buy launches a TikTok Shop storefront in late October, offering nearly 10,000 products with creator and retail-media tie-ins ahead of the holidays.
• Sam's Club Connect debuts AI-powered Predictive Precision Targeting and an expanded Omni-Impact measurement suite, built around a P&G case study.

The Retail Daily Minute has been rocketing up the Feedspot charts, so stay informed with Omni Talk's Retail Daily Minute, your source for the latest and most important retail insights.

Live from the Vusion podcast studio at Groceryshop 2026 in Las Vegas, Chris Walton catches up with Mark Williamson, AVP of Retail Media at Costco, to discuss the evolution of Costco’s retail media capabilities and how the business is balancing advertising with its core membership experience.

Mark looks at Costco’s rebuilt ad server, clean room, offsite measurement and search integrations, while explaining how retail media connects to a business where much of the shopping still happens inside the warehouse. The conversation also turns to the next phase of digital discovery as AI agents increasingly enter the shopping journey.

In this episode:

• The progress of Costco’s retail media technology stack

• Building retail media around the Costco membership experience

• How Costco connects ad exposure to in-warehouse sales

• The role of membership in Costco’s retail media strategy

• Why the warehouse remains central to Costco’s advertising proposition

• How AI agents could change search, discovery and advertising

• What it means to reach a shopper when the shopper is an AI agent

🎧 Subscribe to Omni Talk Retail for more conversations with the leaders shaping retail.

Fresh off the Groceryshop 2026 mainstage, Ben Miller sits down with Yael Cosset, EVP & Chief Digital Officer at Kroger, live from the Vusion podcast studio at booth 913 in Las Vegas, to unpack Kroger’s AI strategy and what comes next as the company moves from experimentation toward more advanced AI applications.

Yael discusses the foundations behind Kroger’s AI strategy, the launch of its AI Shopping Assistant and how the company is thinking about the progression from assisted to augmented to autonomous AI. The conversation also explores governance, the role of humans as AI becomes more capable and how AI can help simplify the business and give associates more time with customers.

In this episode:

• Kroger’s AI strategy and the foundations needed to scale it

• What Kroger is learning from its new AI Shopping Assistant

• The evolution from assisted to augmented to autonomous AI

• Where human oversight fits into an increasingly autonomous future

• How AI can simplify work for Kroger associates

• The potential impact of AI across customers, associates and the business

• What AI could mean for the future of Kroger’s 84.51 proposition

🎧 Subscribe to Omni Talk for more conversations with the leaders shaping grocery and retail.

Live from the Vusion podcast studio at booth 913 at Groceryshop 2026 in Las Vegas, Chris Walton sits down with Brian Monahan, SVP of Retail Media at Albertsons Media Collective, to explore how the retail media business has evolved since their last conversation and where AMC is headed next.

Brian breaks down Albertsons’ focus on “collective growth” beyond advertising revenue, including category growth and household penetration, while discussing how retail media increasingly connects merchandising, stores, digital and operations. He also shares his perspective on why new shopping experiences may be more important than traditional programmatic targeting and where the creator economy could intersect with retail media.

In this episode:

• How Albertsons Media Collective has evolved over the past year

• Why new shopping experiences may be underhyped in retail media

• Measuring retail media success beyond ad revenue

• Connecting merchandising, stores, digital and operations

• Where the creator economy and retail media could intersect

• What Albertsons Media Collective could look like in the years ahead

🎧 Subscribe to Omni Talk Retail for more conversations with the leaders shaping retail.

In this episode, sponsored by Instacart Enterprise, Portager, Vusion, and Sifter Solutions, Ben Miller is joined by Lauren Livak Gilbert, Executive Director of the Digital Shelf Institute, live from Las Vegas on the eve of Groceryshop 2026, to unpack the latest grocery news and trends shaping the global grocery and CPG industry.

This week, they discuss:

• UK concerns over autonomous delivery robots, following a YouGov poll and the end of Starship Technologies’ Sheffield pilot. (Source)

• Target naming Mark Weinstein as its new Chief Marketing and Guest Experience Officer, and what his appointment could mean for the shopper experience. (Source)

• Morrisons rolling out “Shop to Light” across more than 200 stores, and whether the ESL use case adds real value for shoppers. (Source)

• Kroger removing Red Bull from its stores and fuel centers, amid its push to challenge suppliers on pricing. (Source)

Plus, Lauren joins us to preview Groceryshop 2026, including the key themes to watch and her one must-see session, and of course, she shares a global grocery story in GrocerTalk Grab & Go.

A few things worth checking out from this week’s episode:

Follow along with Omni Talk’s coverage from Groceryshop 2026, including exclusive interviews with executives from Kroger, Sam’s Club, Hy-Vee, Costco, Albertsons, Instacart, Ahold Delhaize and more. Catch the interviews across the Omni Talk LinkedIn page, podcast channels and YouTube.

Episode 006. Welcome to GrocerTalk.

P.S. Be sure to check out all our other podcasts from the past week here, too: https://omnitalk.blog/category/podcast/

Music by hooksounds.com.

Welcome to Omni Talk's Retail Daily Minute, sponsored by R&S Logistics, ZenlineAI, and Mirakl.

In today's Retail Daily Minute, Omni Talk's Chris Walton discusses:

• J.C. Penney's Q2 sales fall more than 8% as the department store loses market share, even as beauty and active apparel post gains.
• Wegmans commits $110 million to a new refrigerated distribution facility and return center in Rochester, N.Y.
• Presto's drive-thru voice AI integrates with Toast's POS ecosystem, aiming to ease adoption for mid-market restaurant chains.

The Retail Daily Minute has been rocketing up the Feedspot charts, so stay informed with Omni Talk's Retail Daily Minute, your source for the latest and most important retail insights.