Kroger is back in growth mode with Giant Eagle acquisition

CPG Playbook // July 1, 2026 Kroger is back in growth mode with Giant Eagle acquisition By Mitchell Parton Ivy Liu On Wednesday, Kroger announced that it would buy Giant Eagle for just under $1. 7 billion, a signal of the grocer’s urgency to boost its footprint. The move enters Kroger into attractive adjacent markets, CEO Greg Foran said in a statement.

“Giant Eagle is a well-run, high-quality regional grocer with a strong reputation for fresh products, pharmacy, private label and customer loyalty,” he said. A Kroger representative told Modern Retail it will retain the Giant Eagle brand name. Kroger expects the deal to close in 2027.

Kroger has been struggling with intense competition from a wide variety of retailers, from Walmart to Amazon, Trader Joe’s and Aldi, while consumers have been more cautious in their grocery spending amid higher gas prices and the reduction of SNAP benefits. Kroger grew its sales 2. 9% from fiscal 2024 to 2025, excluding fuel.

Its newly appointed CEO, Foran, had been looking for new avenues of growth after its proposed $25 billion merger with Albertsons failed to move forward a couple of years ago.

Modern Retail spoke with several industry experts who agreed that the deal will expand Kroger’s reach and abilities beyond just growing the store count — through Giant Eagle’s unique demographics, retail media capabilities and local reach as a regional grocer with a strong following.

Kroger currently has about 2,700 stores; it opened 16 new stores but closed 50 during its last fiscal year, according to Grocery Dive. Foran, a former Walmart executive, said earlier in June that Kroger would need to expand its store count while he also works to simplify Kroger’s pricing strategy, cutting costs and improving its back-end store operations.

“Competitors have continued to grow their footprint while we stepped back,” Foran said in the company’s first-quarter earnings call. “Our existing footprint is one of our strongest assets, but standing still in store growth means standing still in market share.”

Giant Eagle operates 197 supermarkets and 11 standalone pharmacies in north and central Ohio, western Pennsylvania, northern West Virginia, Maryland and Indiana. Giant Eagle establishes a presence for Kroger in Pennsylvania, where it doesn’t currently have stores.

Giant Eagle, meanwhile, does about $9 billion in sales, according to Kroger’s press release announcing the deal. It had been investing in its products and stores through a new business strategy called “Because it Matters,” which it announced last year.

The strategy was designed to position itself as both a growing supermarket and pharmacy retailer, Justin Weinstein, Giant Eagle’s evp and chief merchandising and marketing officer, told Modern Retail at the time. The “Because it Matters” campaign included a new brand campaign, seasonal pricing initiatives, expanded employee training and store remodels.

That campaign also followed a significant shift in strategy away from convenience stores and toward pharmacies, after last year acquiring prescriptions for 78 Rite Aid locations and selling its $1. 6 billion GetGo convenience store business.

Brad Jashinsky, director analyst at Gartner, expects the deal to face less regulatory scrutiny than Kroger’s previous attempt to acquire Albertsons because of its smaller size and less overlap in store footprint.

“The acquisition helps Kroger continue to scale up as competitors like Amazon and Walmart continue to expand their grocery market share,” with the added benefit of being able to finance the deal with cash, Jashinsky said. The acquisition will also bring Giant Eagle’s retail media network, Giant Eagle Leap, into Kroger’s ecosystem.

Giant Eagle has been investing in the retail network to leverage its local specialization with advertisers. “While we are not the largest grocer in the country, we have a real role to play in a market like Pittsburgh or Cleveland, and brands want to leverage Giant Eagle as that platform,” Weinstein told Modern Retail last year.

“We’ve been focused on things like omnichannel programming, custom campaigns, personalized offers — those are things that actually add value to the customer.”

Marlow Nickell, CEO and co-founder of Grocery TV — an in-store retail media tech company that had worked with Giant Eagle on its digital screen network — said in an email that Giant Eagle ran one of the most successful in-store media rollouts his company has seen.

An in-store media campaign for Rockstar Energy Drink at Giant Eagle earlier this year generated 6. 2 million total impressions and an 18% lift in sales for the Rockstar brand, for example. “Giant Eagle’s loyal shopper base is exactly the kind of high-frequency, high-trust audience that makes in-store media work well,” Nickell said. “That