What's In-Store: January Update

Stepping into 2026, slowly remembering how to “do work”. January’s here, and with it comes the latest slice of interesting things happening around the world of retail. 

We cover everything from The New Consumer’s latest trends report, to Mars completing its acquisition of Kellanova, and another step forward (and backwards) for AI in merchandising - this time in vending machines.

We also ran a webinar last month looking back at a case study from Reckitt and a demo of our Fixture Visualizer software. You can watch it here, or read more below.

December’s Interesting Things

1. The New Consumer - The latest New Consumer Trends Report looks into how US consumers are behaving and thinking. There’s a lot to unpack, but the section on GLP-1 users (from slide 82) is well worth some time. It shows 80% of GLP-1 users believe it’s making their lives better. They’re spending more in CPG than before, and trading up across every category surveyed. They’re buying better quality, not just less volume. Whilst 90% of users say they’re interested in new food brands designed specifically for them, stated interest doesn’t always translate into purchases. My expectation is continued growth in higher-quality options within existing categories rather than a flood of new brands.
   
   1. https://newconsumer.com/trends/consumer-trends-2026/
2. Thrive Market Goes Dry - The US online grocer bails on booze, eliminating alcohol entirely from its marketplace. It will instead replace the category with non-alc beer, wine, and cocktail options. Whilst alcohol sales are in decline in the US, this feels more like a simplifying-logistics play (servicing alcohol in different states is hard), wrapped in a health-messaging blanket.
   
   1. https://www.cnbc.com/2025/12/10/online-grocer-thrive-market-goes-dry-non-alcoholic-products.html
3. Mars Completes Kellanova Acquisition - The combination of Candy and Snacking giants is big and gives the combined businesses a chance to dominate the “fun” sections of the store. And the announcement video gives us a good idea of where the marketing of the brands is headed.
   
   1. https://www.linkedin.com/posts/mars_bettertogether-futureofsnacking-proudlymars-activity-7404874356675256321-Wxtg/
4. Kroger on Robotic E-Commerce Fulfillment - Kroger announced it was shutting down its robotic fulfillment centres - ultimately not predicting the future of e-commerce would be rapid delivery and needing to be located in high-population density areas to be commercially viable. Instead, its turning its attention to third party delivery companies and store-based fulfillment. Hindsight is a wonderful thing but an expensive mistake to make, to the tune of $2.6billion.
   
   1. https://www.grocerydive.com/news/kroger-ocado-close-automated-fulfillment-centers-robotics-grocery-ecommerce/805931/
5. Claude AI Tries Vending Machines - The Wall Street Journey let an AI agent powered by Claude run their vending machine. As a conversational chatbot, the journalists found ways of changing what it should order, including a live fish and a Playstation, but also how much it should charge for it (often - free!). A fun experiment (and an excellent read!) on the perils of AI autonomy, but the lack of nuance from LLMs show how far off we are from AI autonomy in many practical applications.
   
   1. https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/anthropic-claude-ai-vending-machine-agent-b7e84e34

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Webinar - Test Your Shelf Strategy Before You Launch It

We ran a webinar in December demonstrating how we test and validate shelf strategies and win retailer buy-in. Featuring a real case study from Reckitt, a live demo of our Fixture Visualizer - the fastest way to build and test shelves. You can watch back here.

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If you’d like to learn more, then please simply reply to this email or contact any member of the team.

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Predictions

A couple of years ago, we ran a predictions quiz on what was going to happen in the year. Now we’re bringing it back. It’s mostly shopper-trends related (we are who we are), but also with some more general trends. There will be a prize. I don’t know what that is yet, but I promise it’ll be something good.

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Make your predictions here.

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