Foran's First Play: What Kroger's New CEO Just Told the Market

A New Voice at the Top

When Greg Foran stepped onto Kroger's Q4 earnings call on March 5, 2026, it marked more than a quarterly recap. It was the first time suppliers, analysts, and industry watchers got to hear directly from the man now running the country's largest conventional grocery chain. One month into the job, still in what he called the assessment phase, Foran was disciplined about what he shared. But what he did say was pointed, and if you sell to Kroger, it deserves your full attention.

His opening signal was unambiguous: the strategy Kroger already has is sound. He is not here to tear it down. What he wants to do is operationalize it faster, and he made clear that the single biggest priority is top-line growth.

What He Did in Month One

Before making any public declarations about direction, Foran spent his first weeks doing something notably hands-on. He toured stores. He visited distribution centers. He walked manufacturing facilities. He watched customers shop. He held one-on-one conversations with leaders across the organization.

That pattern will sound familiar to anyone who tracked his time at Walmart U.S. Foran built his reputation there as a store operator first. He is known for getting close to the details of how product actually moves, how associates work, and how shoppers experience a store visit. Under his watch, Walmart U.S. posted positive comparable sales growth for twenty consecutive quarters. He did not do that from a conference room.

What he told analysts after that month of learning: Kroger has tremendous strengths, the foundation is right, and his job is to bring it all together. He said to expect a fuller strategic plan before the end of the year. This call was a preview, not the full picture.

Five Priorities — What Foran Actually Said

Foran did not leave the call without substance. Across his remarks and Q&A, five themes emerged clearly.

1. Price the customer can feel

Price trust is not new language at Kroger. But Foran said it with notable urgency. He wants customers to feel the difference when they walk into a store, and he is committing to the highest level of price investment dollars in several years. The mechanism for funding that investment is cost removal, not margin sacrifice. He specifically named sourcing, procurement, and direct import structures as areas with untapped savings, places where he believes Kroger has been leaving money on the table.

2. Sharper promotions

He named promotions explicitly as a lever he wants to sharpen. This is not a generic statement. Coming from a CEO with Walmart U.S. DNA, sharpening promotions means more precision, better ROI measurement, and likely less tolerance for promotional spending that does not move the needle on traffic and basket size. Suppliers who are running broad promotional programs without clear sales lift data should take note.

3. Store execution as the foundation

Foran said it plainly: running great stores is how you win in food retail. He wants a great experience consistently delivered in every store on every visit. He flagged small consistency gaps as the things that erode shopper loyalty over time. For suppliers, that has a direct implication. A CEO focused on store consistency will put pressure on in-stock performance, shelf appearance, and replenishment accuracy in ways that a headquarters-focused leader might not. If your items are not performing at shelf, that signal will travel faster up the chain.

4. eCommerce profitability — in 2026

Kroger's pivot away from centralized automated fulfillment centers to a store-as-hub model is not a future plan. It is already in motion. Adjusted eCommerce sales grew 20% in Q4, reaching $16 billion annually, and Foran expects the operation to be profitable in the first half of 2026. Partnerships with DoorDash, Uber Eats, and Instacart are already exceeding initial expectations and are projected to contribute more than $1.5 billion in sales this year. The store is the warehouse now. That changes how your product needs to be set up, packed, and replenished.

5. AI and technology as productivity tools

Foran is not chasing AI for its own sake. He is using it to reduce shrink, improve labor scheduling, and launch agentic shopping tools that help customers build baskets, plan meals, and manage budgets. A division-wide rollout of Kroger's AI shopping assistant is planned for later in 2026. From a supplier perspective, agentic shopping tools that help customers plan meals and build baskets are new discovery surfaces. Your product's digital content, images, and search relevance matter more than they did a year ago.

What This Means If You Sell to Kroger

Foran comes from Walmart. That background matters in a specific way. At Walmart, he was not known as a merchant who loved complex supplier programs or promotional layering. He was known as an operator who believed that the right product, at the right price, in a well-run store, was the formula. Simple, relentless, and measurable.

That lens has implications for how Category Managers will be prioritizing conversations in 2026, and likely how they'll be evaluated. A CEO driving toward price investment funded by procurement savings will create internal pressure to find those savings, and supplier agreements will be part of that review.

The Bigger Picture

Kroger posted $34.7 billion in total sales in Q4, its best market share gains since 2021. The business is not in crisis. But it is also not growing as fast as Foran wants it to, and he said so directly. That combination, a solid foundation with an urgent mandate to grow, tends to produce a particular kind of energy inside a large retail organization. Things that were moving slowly start moving faster. Decisions that were getting deferred start getting made.

The full strategic plan is still coming. June 2 is the next watch date, when Kroger reports Q1 2026 results and Foran will have had roughly four months in the chair. That call will tell us a lot more about where this is all heading.

For now, the message from the top is clear. Kroger has all the ingredients to win. The new CEO's job is to bring it all together, and he intends to move fast.

From Cincinnati CPG Edge, keeping you in the Kroger know.