Dive Brief:
- Kroger will make improving its store experience a top priority as it looks to boost its performance, newly appointed CEO Greg Foran said during the company’s earnings call Thursday morning.
- The grocer generated identical-store sales excluding fuel of 2.4% during the fourth quarter of 2025, led by digital, pharmacy and fresh sales. Sales came in at $34.7 billion, up slightly from 2024.
- Kroger recorded positive share growth for the first time in fiscal year 2025 during Q4, reflecting the company’s best share performance since 2021, Board Chairman Ron Sargent said during the earnings call.
Dive Insight:
Foran, a former CEO of Walmart U.S., made clear that he believes Kroger’s future success depends on operating its supermarkets better. The company also needs to find ways to bring down prices, he said.
“When you combine competitive prices with strong, fresh, and a well-run store, you drive traffic, you grow baskets, and you gain share — that’s what I want to accelerate at Kroger,” Foran said. “I’ve spent my career in food retail, and running great stores is how you make that happen.”
Foran said Kroger needs to grow sales more quickly, which he said would stem from giving customers “a compelling reason to shop … by offering great value, great products and a great experience.”
Foran said he will also focus heavily on cutting costs and lowering prices while delivering a better experience so “customers see and feel the difference when they shop with us.” To achieve that, Kroger will pursue “every available margin dollar across the business,” a drive that will include improving sourcing as well as streamlining and modernizing processes, he said.
Kroger will also make its e-commerce operations a central focus of its efforts to better serve shoppers, Foran said.
“Customers want convenience and are increasingly shopping online to buy food. We have the assets to meet that demand, and e-commerce is a key focus area for us,” he said.
Foran said he is pleased with the progress made under Sargent, who served as the grocer’s interim CEO for nearly a year, pointing to the company’s moves to add and remodel stores, in addition to stepping back from the investments it made in automated order fulfillment facilities.
“I like what I see. I don’t think this is about Kroger coming up with a completely different strategy. I think we’ve got a good strategy. It is about executing well, and it is about moving faster,” Foran said.
A former CEO of Air New Zealand, Foran used an aviation analogy to sum up his early sense about Kroger’s prospects.
“We’ve got to think about how we gradually take this Boeing 787 at 42,000 feet and just glide past it in and keep everyone on an even keel and land this plane safely,” he said. “The objective is to do that and to win. You know, we didn’t come and invest in all this so that we can come second.”
During the call, CFO David Kennerley said Kroger expects identical sales growth without fuel to come in between 1% and 2% in 2026, with the figure for Q1 near the bottom of its full-year range, in large part because of declining egg prices.
For the full year, Kroger saw identical sales without fuel increase by 2.9%, double the rate it turned in for that metric during 2024.
Kroger’s e-commerce sales rose in 2025 during Q4, Sargent said, adding that the company’s digital operations are now a $16 billion business. He said Kroger will turn a profit online this year, a goal he laid out during Kroger’s third-quarter earnings call last December.
Sargent added that Kroger expects its convenience offerings, which it runs with Instacart, to generate more than $1.5 billion in sales in 2026.
Kennerley said Kroger expects to achieve savings this year in part by fulfilling more online orders in its stores, using third-party delivery providers and renegotiating supplier agreements.
The company has launched the Kroger Global Capability Center to speed up decision-making and boost productivity. The company expects the initiative to deliver modest benefits this year before generating more meaningful results in 2027 and 2028.
