Kroger Unveils Most Comprehensive Digital App Refresh to Date
The Kroger Co. first began its digital transformation 15 years ago with the rollout of its original mobile app. The company has since made leaps and bounds in the space as it evolves alongside its customers.
Most recently, Kroger has unveiled perhaps its most significant digital evolution yet — a refreshed app designed to simplify the shopping experience and bring a “food-forward” focus to customers’ digital journeys.
The latest version integrates savings, pharmacy visits and online orders into a more personalized, streamlined platform.
"We spent a lot of time listening to customer feedback," Kroger Group VP, Digital Experience and E-Commerce, Jody Kalmbach, said in an interview with P2PI sibling publication Progressive Grocer. "Not only talking to them directly, but also observing behavior within the app and really figuring out where there were friction points that needed to be addressed. So it really started with the customer."
Simplified Savings and Navigation
A key enhancement is the consolidation of savings offers — including digital coupons, weekly ads and loyalty points — into one location. Backed by advanced data science, the new system makes it easier to serve personalized deals, coupons and recommendations to users.
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“When you think about savings in particular, this is just such an important component to our customers right now – bringing all the savings components together within one section of the app so that you're not having to navigate around between weekly ads and digital coupons and other personalized offers,” Kalmbach explained. “You can just go to one destination and see all of it.”
Food-First Storytelling and Visuals
The redesigned app also features cleaner visuals and reduced clutter to emphasize fresh food, products and meal inspiration. Later this year, Kroger plans to launch a new Shopping Assistant powered by conversational search that can understand requests, build menus and automatically add ingredients to a shopper’s cart.
Built with Apple’s Liquid Glass Design
For Apple iOS users, all of these features are built upon the tech company’s new Liquid Glass software design. Kroger worked extensively with Apple on the updates, which Kalmbach said was another avenue to help improve the shopper experience.
“We think leaning into Apple's standards for their new design system is going to simplify the experience for customers,” Kalmbach explained. “We are one of the earliest adopters of it from a retail perspective and we're very excited about the feedback that we're getting.”
Continued Kalmbach: “I think the more and more you can deliver a sort of native experience to the device that you're on, that again underscores the customer-centric approach that will help simplify things.”
Personalized Discovery and Missions
Other updates include improved product discovery and mission-based experiences that help shoppers find what they need — whether restocking staples or exploring new meal ideas. These enhancements build on Kroger’s goal of using data to create more relevant and personalized interactions.
For Kalmbach, the overhauled app is another exciting beginning for Kroger.
“This is really sort of day one of this next level of the simplified experience,” she said. “We're just going to continue to optimize it, both with where we know the customer wants us to go, but also based on feedback that we receive.”
The app refresh is currently live for both iOS and Android users.
This article was originally published by P2PI sibling brand Progressive Grocer.
