What's In-Store: August Update
Hello, welcome to our August newsletter, diving into the most interesting things we've spotted from the world of retail and CPG over the last month.
1 August 2026
Hello, and welcome to our August newsletter.
And here you’ll see a change. Last week, we rebranded. VST has become Vazen. We’re the same team, the same work, the same data flowing through - but the name has caught up with the business we’ve become. I write more about this at the bottom of this message, but for now… on with the show!
This month: a summary of big M&A consolidation deals in CPG and retail that signal strapping in for headwinds in the late 2020s, a look at AI missing a trend it shouldn’t have, and new products in a post-protein world.
And lastly, a survey on how you’re using AI (anonymous, if you wish!).
As always, if you see anything you like, dislike, or just simply have a way better opinion than mine, please hit reply.
July’s Interesting Things
- 2026 CPG Deals Up Driven by Big 3 - The Food Institute reports that CPG deal values doubled in the first quarter of 2026 versus the previous year, reversing a four-year decline. Why the change? Well, 3 monster deals. Kimberly-Clark buying Kenvue, McCormick buying Unilever’s Food business, and KDP buying JDE. This is real structural realignment, which makes me sound like I’m doing an MBA. What’s more interesting is that it feels like brands are aligning their portfolios around efficiencies in manufacturing and supply chains, after decades of organic growth that have created a messy set of brands that do not benefit each other in some cases. As always, we go back to “only play where you can win” - and I expect CPGs are strapping in for headwinds likely to last throughout the late 2020s.
- Kroger Acquires Giant Eagle for $1.65bn - Kroger announced the agreement to acquire the Pittsburgh headquartered family-owned grocer. This would give Kroger a significant footprint (197 supermarkets, before a small number of store divestitures) across the Pittsburgh, Upper Midwest and Mid-Atlantic region, where it’ll stand up against Albertsons, after their $25billion merger collapsed in 2024. The article below suggests a tougher time for brands to come, where Kroger will push a more sophisticated Private Label onto the shelves, but we also know how brands can win with Kroger through customer loyalty programmes and shopper understanding. Opportunities, certainly - though likely not for another 24 months yet.
- AI Missing Trends? - At Cannes Lions, the festival where marketers go to create fun LinkedIn videos about how hard life is, P&G’s Chief Brand Officer bucked the AI trend by sharing the need for human creativity in brand building. The example of Dawn’s PowerWash, brought from the US to the UK which initially flopped because AI missed a trend. “AI could have analysed millions of data points on cleaning habits, but it would not have understood the deep-seated cultural ritual of soaking dishes in the UK.” Ignoring the fact that I clearly need to hand in my British passport for having also missed this cultural ritual, if the right data inputs were included, modern AI functionality would have absolutely spotted this. Human creativity is important, just not for this reason.
- New launches
We have rebranded
VST is now Vazen.
Nine years ago, we started VST with a straightforward mission; take store trials virtual, to save our clients money by launching better changes, faster. The idea being that applying modern software techniques would benefit FMCG retailers, CPG brands, and shoppers.
What I didn’t predict in 2017 was where this would take us. Ingesting planogram data and shopper behavioural data at an industrial scale from retailers and CPGs. We gradually built a set of software products with our client partners based on their requests which organically led to us receiving millions of rows of data, every single week.
It’s unstructured, often messy data, that we’ve spent years curating and honing into very specific data tables. It’s not glamorous, and it’s something that makes me not-very-fun at dinner parties, but organising planogram and shopper data together has changed shelves in major retailers across the globe now.
Somewhere along the way, VST became more than Virtual Store Trials, though changing a name was something we kept pushing away. But earlier this year, something did change.
AI got good. Well, it got really good when sat on top of highly curated data tables reliably and securely. I joke that when we first tried our conversational analytics model on top of our datasets that I became the best category manager in the world.
But it’s the biggest step forward I’ve seen in my time in the industry – tech-enablement for teams at its absolute pinnacle. It gives you analysis that you’d previously wait weeks for, insights at a scale humans can’t reach alone, and decisions grounded in nine years of data that you can trust. It feels like the right time for a new name.
Last week, VST became Vazen.
It’s the same company, with the same team, the same independent ownership, the same partners, and the same nine years of evidence and data behind us. The name is just catching up with what we’ve become.
There’s a lot more detail on how this related to our clients (in short, nothing for you to do!), but there is an update to our product names, and a more detailed blog explaining where we’re going next.
Take our AI Survey
At an event in June, every conversation we had seemed to start with CPG brands telling us, “well, it feels like we’re a little behind on AI adoption” - and not every brand can be behind, can they?!
What this points to is actually that the hype surrounding AI is bigger than the reality of actually using it. But we believe it’s time to catch up. We’re looking to understand how you’re using AI within your business today so we can help you reach your goals faster.
If you can spare 5 minutes for a survey, please follow the link here. Answers will be kept anonymous, but if you’d prefer to have a conversation rather than complete the survey, please feel free to hit reply to this email. Warning: you will have to speak to me.
We’ll be collating these answers and sharing a route forward with the group over the next couple of months.