Since its highly publicized breakup with Kroger in December, Albertsons has been on a journey to prove that it’s just fine on its own.

The grocer has managed to get its “mojo” back, per former CEO Vivek Sankaran, in part by doubling down on its digital business to help it compete with giants like Walmart and Costco. Albertsons’ digital sales rose 24% YoY in Q4, the company reported in April, while its loyalty members jumped 15% to 45.6 million.

Digital sales have proven to be crucial to grocery industry growth over the past year. E-grocery sales surged during the Covid-19 pandemic, then cooled between 2021 and mid-2024 as shoppers returned to IRL shopping. But sales have picked back up again in the past year as retailers double down on promotions for their pickup and delivery services. Sales jumped 27% YoY to $8.7 billion in May, according to Brick Meets Click.

Albertsons launched its first-party digital experiences through its app just four years ago, and has been working to catch up to its competitors since then, Jill Pavlovich, SVP of digital shopping experiences at Albertsons, who oversees the grocer’s app, website, and in-store digital offerings, told Retail Brew.

“As we think about this year, the path that we have ahead of us, it’s really taking what we’ve developed a step farther and really bringing the digital experiences more deeply into stores,” she said.

Keep reading here.—EC

Sales for Amazon’s extended Prime Day event that started on July 8 are aren’t quite hitting the heights Amazon saw last year.

According to Adobe Analytics, Prime Day reported $7.9 billion in online spending on Day 1. However, data from Momentum Commerce reportedly showed that Prime Day sales were down by 41% on Day 1 compared to last year. Last summer, Amazon’s Prime Day event drove sales worth $14.2 billion on July 16 and 17.

“We’re pacing towards growth versus last year’s event,” Elizabeth Marsten, VP of Commerce Media at Tinuiti, a performance marketing agency with a strong focus on commerce media, told Retail Brew. “So even though last year was two days, if the pacing maintains through days three and four, it will surpass last year’s Prime Day in aggregate.”

Keep reading here.—VC

Retail executives had planned to head out to the West Coast this week for the NRF Nexus leadership conference, but then the trade group decided to cancel this year’s event “given the current economic uncertainty,” so that members could stay with their teams and focus on their businesses and customers.

Adding to the feeling of anti-climax, Prime Day–which last year began on July 16—got an early start and is already finished up for the season, along with most of the competing sales events from Amazon’s brick-and-mortar rivals.

Here’s what else is going on in retail this week:

In data releases: Two big data releases are coming out this week, starting with the latest Consumer Price Index on Tuesday and monthly retail sales on Thursday. Together the measures should provide a window on how the economy was faring at the start of summer, but won’t account for big sales events such as Prime Day or the ramping up of back-to-school spending.

Keep reading here.—AV

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