What changing food habits mean for brands: Takeaways from Groceryshop 2026

Ask someone what they’re having for dinner tonight and you might learn more about how food habits are changing than you would from a shopping list. 

Maybe their usual choices are changing. Maybe they want to try something new. Maybe they saw a recipe on social and want to make it tonight. Or maybe convenience wins and they need dinner at their door as quickly as possible.

These may seem like small decisions, but together they’re changing how people discover, consider and buy food, and creating new moments when brand preferences can change. 

At Groceryshop 2026, that evolution was at the center of many of my conversations with brands and industry leaders. We kept coming back to the same question: How can food brands keep pace when customer needs — and the journeys shaped by them — keep changing? 

For food marketers, three ideas stood out to me.

Moments of change are moments of opportunity

Food shopping is habitual — until it isn’t. A new health goal or a change in routine can suddenly affect what customers put in their baskets. And when habits change, long-standing brand preferences can change with them. 

Onstage with Nicolle Poole, VP of Walmart, Inc. Shopper Marketing, PepsiCo, we explored this through the lens of health and wellness — and how new priorities can lead customers to make different choices within categories they already shop. 

Walmart first-party research shows just how significant those shifts can be. “Healthy Shifters” represented approximately 15% of active Walmart shoppers and 19% of Walmart GMV in Q2 2026.¹ As they transitioned, brand loyalty declined 52%.² 

For marketers, that creates an important window: when customers reconsider how they eat, they may also reconsider what they buy. 

Walmart’s grocery scale gives brands a unique view into those changing needs and behaviors. We’re the #1 U.S. online and overall grocer³, with 92% of U.S. households shopping at Walmart for groceries.⁴ 

The opportunity isn’t simply to reach more shoppers. It’s to understand when needs are changing and find relevant ways to show up in those moments.

The grocery journey doesn’t always start in the aisles

As customer needs change, the way they discover, consider and buy products changes with them. In my conversation with the CPG Guys at Groceryshop, we explored how the customer journey is becoming more connected and less linear. 

Discovery might begin with a recipe on social. A CTV ad could introduce something new. Or someone might realize late in the day that there’s nothing planned for dinner. Each is a different starting point, but they can all end in a grocery basket. 

For food marketers, that means starting with the customer need, not the channel. 

What’s for dinner? How are my health goals changing? What do I need tonight? 

From there, marketers can consider how different touchpoints work together to meet that need and move customers from inspiration to purchase. 

Convenience adds another dimension. Faster fulfillment options like Walmart’s Express Delivery can bring moments of inspiration closer to purchase. A full-funnel, omnichannel approach can help brands connect those moments, reach more shoppers and inspire basket growth.

More touchpoints make measurement more important — not less

A more connected customer journey gives brands more opportunities to influence it. 

We’re already seeing the potential when solutions work together. Across applicable Food & Beverage campaigns, average brand spend increased 51% with one ad product, 76% with two and 100% with three.⁵ 

But more touchpoints also mean more questions. 

What actually changed behavior? What contributed to incremental growth? And what should a marketer do differently next time? 

That’s where commerce signals become particularly powerful. Signals across stores, site and app can help marketers understand how customer behavior is changing. Connected measurement can help show what’s working and give marketers insights they can apply to what comes next. 

The bigger opportunity is to create a smarter feedback loop: understand change as it happens, respond to the needs it reveals, measure the impact and use those learnings to make the next decision smarter. 

If there’s one thing I left Groceryshop thinking about, it’s that customer needs will keep changing. 

Food marketers don’t need to predict every shift. They need to recognize when habits are changing, show up across the moments that matter and use commerce signals to understand what actually drives growth. 

Because when customers change their habits, they create an opportunity for brands to change with them. That’s where I think the future of food marketing gets really exciting.

Sources: ¹Walmart first-party data, Jan. 1, 2022–June 30, 2026. Data calculated from a 10% random sample of all Walmart shoppers. Active shoppers defined as shoppers with at least one Walmart transaction in that time period or after. Only the most recent transition included for shoppers that had multiple transitions. ²Shopper loyalty described by shopper loyalty score measuring the set similarity of brands purchased each month at the department level in the Food category. Walmart first-party data, Jan. 1–Dec. 31, 2025. ³EMARKETER, US Digital Grocery Forecast, 2025. ⁴Nielsen NIQ Unit Share Report, FY25.  ⁵Walmart first-party data. Analysis based on all applicable Food & Beverage campaigns that ran Jan. 1–Apr. 30, 2026. Products include Sponsored Products, Onsite Display and Offsite Display only; excludes CTV and social. Results are compared as a % increase against the same brand/item set, then averaged across all brands (n = 128). Average brand spend is the average per-customer spend on items in the featured + halo item set during the analysis period, regardless of ad attribution.