Target Joins Grocers Wooing Gen Z With Wellness Offerings

This week in grocery, Target focuses on wellness, Reynolds sees trade-down and Flashfood expands.

Big-box chain Target announced the expansion of its center-aisle wellness offerings Thursday (Feb. 9) with more items such as vitamins and deodorants.

“Self-care is one of the areas where we are seeing the fastest growth,” Cassandra Jones, the retailer’s senior vice president of merchandising, essentials, beauty and health, said in a corporate blog post.

Indeed, wellness-focused kinds of moves can be key to reaching younger consumers, who tend to be more health-focused than their older counterparts, according to findings from “How Digital Has Changed the Consumer Healthcare Experience and Expectations,” a PYMNTS and CareCredit report.

For instance, the study, which drew from a survey of 17,000 U.S. consumers, found that over two-thirds of Generation Z and millennial consumers track their health using wearable healthcare tech. In contrast, only 47% of Generation X consumers and 23% of baby boomers and seniors do the same.

Consequently, across the grocery industry, leading players have been looking to attract younger shoppers with expanded wellness products and services. For instance, Albertsons Companies announced in a Monday (Feb. 6) press release that it is launching Sincerely Health, a wellness platform that includes fitness integrations with trackers such as Apple Health and Fitbit, pharmacy offerings such as prescription management tools and vaccine appointment scheduling and goal-tracking features, among others.

The move comes about a year after leading grocery retailer Walmart announced the launch of a range of features across its own digital wellness hub. Plus, in the fall, Instacart debuted Instacart Health, a platform including nutrition features, healthcare integrations, B2B wellness perks and more.

Reynolds Sees Ongoing Effect of Inflation on Consumers’ CPG Preferences

Reynolds Consumer Products, the company best known for its tin foil and its Hefty garbage bag brand, shared on a Wednesday (Feb. 8) call accompanying its fourth-quarter financial results that inflation concerns continue to influence consumers’ choice of center-aisle products.

CEO Lance Mitchell noted that private-label share increased in party cups, plastic wrap and parchment paper, although it decreased in tin foil, food bags and trash bags. In other cases, consumers’ behaviors changed not in terms of switching brands but in terms of the quantities that consumers bought.

“We’ve also seen some trade-down in some channels to lower pack sizes, but not a shift from brand to private label,” Mitchell said.

Research from the January edition of PYMNTS’ Consumer Inflation Sentiment study “Consumer Inflation Sentiment: Perception Is Reality,” for which PYMNTS surveyed more than 2,100 consumers in December, revealed that 69% of consumers have made changes to their grocery shopping lists in the last year in response to rising prices. Fifty-nine percent have reduced the quantities of items they are purchasing, and 35% have reduced the quality.

Flashfood Taps Brick-and-Mortar Grocery Vet to Help with Expansion

Digital marketplace Flashfood, which enables grocers to sell food that is soon to expire or that is nearly past its prime at discounted rates, is taking more from Ahold Delhaize USA than its customers’ money.

The eGrocery platform announced Thursday that it has appointed Nicholas Bertram, a long-time grocery industry executive who spent nine years working for multinational grocery giant Ahold Delhaize, the last four of which as president of subsidiary The Giant Company, as president and chief operating officer.

“Nick brings an unprecedented level of first-hand leadership experience with some of the biggest names in the retail sector,” Flashfood founder and CEO Josh Domingues said in a statement. “…Nick has seen how the level of waste experienced by grocers represents billions of dollars in lost revenue and understands the massive impact this also has on our planet.”

Flashfood has an existing relationship with Ahold Delhaize USA, having launched a test with Giant Food back in 2021 and, more recently, having expanded its trial with Stop & Shop to 34 stores. The digital platform’s expansion is helped by consumers’ mid-inflation demand for lower-priced alternatives.

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