Issue #76: Consumer Trends Deep Dive

Good morning (that feels weird to write!). This weekend, I was fortunate to spend time celebrating my grandparents’ 60th wedding anniversary (a big congratulations to them!)! Instead of skipping this week, however, I had a lot I wanted to discuss, so I figured a mid-week issue would have to suffice. Who knows? If this works, I might have to start doing additional pieces mid-week.

(Also, I am working on my 2026 predictions. What do you anticipate happening in 2026?)

Consumer Trends Deep Dive

In terms of content tracking consumer behavior, one of my favorites is the collaboration between Coefficient Capital and The New Consumer. Every month/quarter, they survey over 3,000 customers to understand their sentiment. Recently, they asked how consumers are looking at 2026 and beyond (full report here). I highly recommend reading through the whole report, but I thought I would pick out a few of my favorite takeaways to share.

Takeaway #1: Health & Fitness Are A Major Status Symbol

It might be a sneak peek for a future issue to come, but this question and response really resonated with me. Health and Fitness have always been major status symbols, but I think they are going to further rise in another way: food. Food has always been a status symbol and has always been related to health, but it has not fully made it to the mainstream to the level I think it will in the future. Social media has made it too easy to show off many things, especially now groceries, restaurants, and food you make. Where you shop, what brands you consume, etc. will continue to rise in prominence. Whole Foods is undergoing a transformation, Produce has brands now, a Tiktoker opened a premium grocery store, and Erewhon is opening on the East Coast. All trends that lead me to think that food, and the retailers that provide that food, will continue to further become status symbols.

Takeaway #2: Consumers Are Trading Up In Health, Wellness, & Pet

Similar to the prior graphic, consumers are indicating they are willing to spend more on wellness products, fresh fruits, vegetables, meat, and seafood. One other category that stands out on the list, though, is pet food! For a while now, there has been discussion about consumers spending more on their pets. The spending has continued to rise, but the question was always, where will the cap be? Based on these results, it seems that there is room to keep growing. This indication of willingness to spend, coupled with the rise in pet ownership overall, illustrates that the pet market is an exciting market to be in. I am going to be paying more attention in the space next year, because I feel there is not a retailer dominating the space like you see many other startup retailers do. Does anyone have any favorite pet companies to follow?

Takeaway #3: Gen-Zennials Love Being Online

At a first glance, compared to prior generations, Gen Z and Millennials are more likely to feel like themselves online. While that is true, what stands out to me most is how Gen Z has shifted compared to millennials. Gen Z is less likely to favor online, and more likely to prefer offline engagement. This statistic is just another to show there is a possibility that millennials may be the most online generation EVER, and future generations are reverting to less online. It will be interesting to follow along further, but it does in fact seem that Gen Z and Gen Alpha after them will be less online than their millennial counterparts. Even if the trend holds to just be slightly less, it has the ability to profoundly shift how society will function. Retailers take notice!

Consumer Trends Deep Dive

This is just a snippet of the many fun statistics in the report. There is so much fascinating data there, and a lot of pertinent information to those in the retail space that could really impact. What are your favorites?

Walmart Partners With Wing To Launch Drone Delivery

Wing has been working for a while now to do drone delivery with actual products, as they are more of a service provider, like UPS. After partnering with Crumbl Cookies in Houston, Wing is now partnering with Walmart. Also starting in the Texas area in Dallas, that was successful enough to expand beyond Dallas. At six Walmarts in Atlanta, grocery items, last-minute gifts, household goods, and OTC medicine are all eligible for drone delivery. The average flight time is five minutes or less. It is unclear what the maximum order value or size the drone can deliver. I am also interested in seeing how the checkout experience works, and delivery process happens. Is there a remote pilot, or are these autonomous? After this pilot, the plan is to further expand to 100 additional locations in 2026. It will be exciting to follow along as this new delivery method expands and see how it handles weather, as Atlanta and Dallas are not exactly notorious for tricky weather.

California Pizza Kitchen Finds New Owners

California Pizza Kitchen is a staple of malls across America. However, as malls struggled, combined with its own operating challenges, CPK really saw its business take a tumble. And they are not alone. Yum Brands is exploring a sell-off of Pizza Hut. This type of fast-food/fast casual pizza is not resonating with today’s consumers. Consumers would rather eat frozen pizza at home, make their own pizza, or go to a higher-end pizza establishment. However, even with the declining interest, there is still an opportunity to win the pizza market. That is what CPK’s new investors are betting on. Consortium Brand Partners, Eldridge Industries, Aurify Brands, and Convive Brands will acquire CPK for nearly $300M. These are some heavy hitters in the fast casual/quick service business. Convive owns the U.S. portfolio of Le Pain Quotidien and The Little Beet. Aurify Brands is a franchisee of Five Guys and Wingstop, and owns restaurant brands Melt Shop, Fields Good Chicken, and Happy Monkey. There is the opportunity to build a bigger brand in the space, but the market will continue to shrink as consumers indicate it is not something they prefer.

Shopify and Google Launch Agentic AI

For those unfamiliar with the ins—and-outs of the AI space, Agentic AI is essentially having an army of personal assistants at your disposal. In the commerce world, that manifests itself as having agents shop or surface links based on your query. ChatGPT has been the first mover in the space, but other incumbents are getting involved.

Let’s break it down:

• Shopify launches agentic commerce integrations - Shopify merchants (aka most eCommerce websites) now can surface their products in ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Microsoft Copilot with a single configuration in the Shopify dashboard. This will be big as these products continue to rise in importance for product discovery, browsing, and commerce

• Google launches Doppl - In existing eCommerce experiences, one of the most challenging parts is not being able to truly see and visualize the product. Google is looking to change that with its app Doppl, which helps people experimentally visualize and try on things

DoorDash Launches Zesty

Restaurant discovery and the social feed have been merging ever since Instagram launched. With the launch of Beli over the last couple of years, this has become even more true. DoorDash decided to get in the game with Zesty, an AI-powered social app to help people find restaurants. Despite Beli having restaurant recommendations, as a power user, I would not say finding restaurant recommendations, especially in an easy interface (or chatbot) is its strong suit. Still, Zesty falls even shorter than that. The recommendations are all over the place, and people have to download a whole separate app. I applaud the effort, but it seems like this initiative will fall flat. It will be interesting to follow along how many of the AI-press release initiatives get implemented long-term and how many fall flat.

Additional Links:

1. DoorDash launches integration with ChatGPT to directly order products from ChatGPT (read more here)

2. Nathaniel Ru, Co-Founder and Chief Brand Officer at sweetgreen, announces that he will be stepping down (read more here)

3. Noah Glass, founder of restaurant tech company Olo, shares his predictions on the industry for 2026 (read more here)

4. NYC is testing moving goods between the boroughs via boat (read more here)

5. According to new data, Americans are increasingly abandoning purchases if they lack trust (read more here)

6. Whole Foods is opening a new daily shop location in Hoboken (read more here)

7. Chewy reported earnings, and its stock is rallying despite missed earnings (read more here)

8. L.L. Bean is planning to open eight new stores in 2026 (read more here)

9. Instacart is no longer doing its price testing that sparked controversy with its dynamic pricing (read more here)

10. Ahold is shifting to in-store fulfillment instead of having a centralized, separate from-store fulfillment centers (read more here)

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