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Foreign It's April 21, 2026 and this is the Commerce Rift brought to you by the CPG guys. 10 minutes of the news stories that matter in commerce this week. I'm your co host pvsp, and I'm joined as always by Paparaj himself, the father of pop stars, co founder of Think Blue Consulting, sree. How's your weekend treating you so far?
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Peter? But I'm looking forward to seeing you in person this week as we navigate the year, as well as hosting our dinner with Kara Quinn on Tuesday in none other than lovely Stamford, Connecticut, my first home after graduating college.
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Strategery indeed. The CPG guys are getting together all right, let's talk about uber making a $318 million chess move on the Global Quick Commerce board. Last Friday, Uber deepened its position in Delivery Hero, the German listed global delivery giant, picking up an additional 4.5% ST from Delivery Hero's largest shareholder process for roughly 270 million euros. That brings Uber's total holding in DeliveryHero to approximately 7%. Not a controlling stake. Not a takeover bid, but not casual either. Let's set the scene. Delivery Hero operates in roughly 70 countries. Its brand include Talabat across the Middle East, Glovo across Southern Europe, and Foodpanda in Southeast Asia. It's the most geographically expansive quick commerce and food delivery platform on the planet. And it's no longer just food Quick Commerce. Gross merchandise value at DeliveryHero grew more than 30% year over year in 2025, surpassing 7.5 billion euros. And the company is targeting nearly 10 billion euros in 2026 groceries, household essentials, health and beauty. The full CPT category set delivered in minutes. Uber is simultaneously expanding aggressively into new European markets Austria, Czech Republic, Denmark, Greece, Romania, targeting an additional billion dollars in gross bookings over three years. Delivery Hero gives them a strategic ally and global optionality without the regulatory headache of an outright acquisition. Now, there's a regulatory backdrop worth understanding here. Sri In August 2025, the European Commission approved process's acquisition of just Eat Takeaway, subject to Process significantly reducing its shareholding in Delivery Hero. Process needed to sell and Uber stepped in opportunistically but with clear strategic logic. So for CPG brands, here's the signal. Delivery Hero is a digital partner to over 80,000 vendors spanning groceries, household goods, electronics, even pharmaceuticals and multi vertical customers on the platform spend on average ready for this five times more than food only customers with a substantial frequency uplift following their first Quick Commerce order. Read that again. Five times more. That is the power of becoming an everyday app. Doordash Bot Deliveroo Now Uber is anchoring into Delivery Hero. The global quick commerce infrastructure is consolidating fast and the brands that figure out how to activate across these platforms with the right assortment, the right sponsored placements, the right promotional architecture will win the replenishment moment that is moving off the physical shelf and onto the screen. The question I'll leave CPG leaders with do you have a global quick commerce strategy or just a domestic one? Because the platforms making moves right now are are building the rails that will carry consumer demand in over 70 countries for the next decade. Over to you Shree.
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All right, let me tell you about 12,000 reasons why in store retail media just got a lot louder. I mean literally this week Dollar General announced a major expansion of its in store Audio network, partnering with QSIC, an AI powered audio platform, to roll out approximately 6,000 additional stores across 48 contiguous United States. The program will ultimately bring in in store audio capabilities to 12,000 locations by the second quarter of 2026, doubling the retailer's existing network and significantly expanding its measurement of infrastructure. Now before you dismiss just music in store, let me be very clear about what this actually is. The enhanced platform integrates point of sale data, curated music and AI generated audio ads to deliver localized real time messaging tailored to each store's environment. Critically, QSIC platform provides closed loop reporting ad verification capabilities aligned with Interactive Advertising Bureau standards iab, enabling advertisers to measure incremental impact and link campaign exposure to actual sales outcomes. That last part is a game accountability, attribution, proof that it work. That is exactly what brand partners have been demanding from retail media for quite a bit. And now they're going to get it at the point of purchase through a speaker in store. And let's talk about the store base itself. As of January 2026, John the EG operates 2890 stores across the US and Mexico. 12,000 of them will shortly be running targeted AI audio. This platform delivers more targeted messaging, especially in underserved and often overlooked rural areas. That is the Dollar General shopper. That is the audience that CPT brands with mass market procures cannot afford to ignore. Think about the brand audience that's called Coca Cola, PepsiCo, General, Milk, Hershey, Craft, Mark, Nestle, Procter and Gamble, Unilever. Every single one of them now is an accountable audio lead. The pointed decision. An AI that knows what's selling in that plastic store, that specific community in real time and can serve an audio ad exactly at the moment that matters. I'll take in Store Audio Most underrated channel in retail media right now. Digital creams get the headlines, Search gets the dollars. Audio is ambient, intrusive in the best possible sense, and thanks to QSIC flows, loop measurement signals, finally provable. Dollar General just made it a serious CPG media vehicle overnight. Congratulations to our friend Austin Leonard of the Dollar General Media Network for this brave new exploit.
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At the CPG guys, we're excited to partner with today's sponsor, Confido. Think about how many different workflows your team is managing right now. Your sales team is planning promotions in a spreadsheet. Your finance team is manually managing deductions from a dozen different retailer portals. Your ops team is building forecasts in a totally separate tool. When something changes, a promotion shifts. A big deduction comes in. Nobody finds out until it's already a problem. Most CPG brands are running these processes in silos, and the cost isn't just time, it's the decisions that don't get made or get made on bad information. Confido is the end to end platform for CBG operations built specifically for brands to run. All of it in one place. Trade promotion, management deductions disputes, sales forecasting, demand planning and retail analytics. When your trade events are connected to your forecasts and your deductions are automatically matched to your promotions, your whole team is finally working from the same picture. Over 200 CPG brands, including Olipop, Bear Bells and Simple Mills, already use it. Go to confidotech.com cpguys to learn more. That's confidotech.com CPG guys Yes, Sri, I wouldn't be surprised if this is something we end up talking about on the stage at the Cannes residence of the CPG guys and the FMCG guys later this summer. Do check us out. All right, let's explore leadership, shall we? Because conagra Brands just made a move that lets you know a lot about where the company thinks it needs to go. Conagra announced this week that John Brace has been named President and Chief executive officer, effective June 1st of this year. He succeeded Sean Connolly. I used to work with Sean back in the day at Campbell's Soup, who led the company for more than a decade and whose departure was announced simultaneously. So who is John Brace? Right. He brings more than 35 years of consumer goods experience with deep expertise in strategic portfolio management, brand building and driving operational excellence to deliver profitable growth. Most recently, he served as president and Chief Operating Officer of the J.M. smucker Company up in Oroville Ohio where he oversaw US Retail International away from home sales operations and supply chain. And before Smucker, well, He spent approximately 30 years at Procter and Gamble. You got to remember that Smucker bought some of the old Procter and Gamble food brands back in the day when I was at Dunhumby. Ultimately he became the senior vice president General manager of P&G's $6 billion North American family care business, leading brands including Charmin, Bounty, Puffs and Pampers. This is a pedigreed operator. SRI P and G trained Smucker seasoned and critically. Someone who can understand what it means to run a massive CPG portfolio through a period of genuine category disruption. He's got his challenges ahead of him because this is exactly what conagra faces right now, right? The company has been navigating consumer risk, trading down in some areas, gravitating towards wellness and others, and increasingly skeptical of of ultra processed foods across the board. Their portfolio, Bird's Eye, Healthy Choice, Slim Jim, recalenders, Hunts spans a wide range of consumer need states. The question is whether the portfolio hangs together strategically or gets rationalized further under Brace's new leadership. His background gives you some clues. At Smucker, he drove growth in key brands and executed significant productivity improvements. At P and G, he delivered a market share, leadership and and margin expansion in the category defined by operational scale. The combination brand discipline plus operational rigor is exactly what a company like conagra needs right now. Sean Connolly did meaningful work stabilizing conagra. After years of aggressive acquisition led growth. Brace now inherits a leaner portfolio and the mandate to grow it. Watch his first 90 days very closely. Sri the acquisition he pursues or doesn't, the brands he doubles down on or exits will tell us everything about where conagra is headed. Big shoes, strong resume, interesting moment. CPT guys will be watching sri close us out.
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All right, let's end on something that's equal parts buzzy, business minded, genuinely interesting from what it says about the future of the food delivery channel. Goop Kitchen. Yep, Goop. That's Gwynedd. Paltrow's wellness empire just landed in nyc. The first delivery only location opened in Midtown Manhattan west on April 20, marking the brand's first expansion outside of California. Additional locations offering delivery, takeout and dining options in Manhattan and Brooklyn are set to launch throughout 2026. Let's separate the Gwynedd discourse from the actual business story because the business story is genuinely interesting. Goop Kitchen was founded five years ago in 2021 built as a dark kitchen model, no traditional dining rooms, designed specifically for delivery and takeout and is scale brand, currently serves more than 40,000 guests each week with strong repeat behavior across markets and reports approximately $20,000 in daily revenue per location. That Peter is not a vanity project that is a functioning quick serve restaurant business with real unit economics. The menu was developed by VP of Culinary Chef Kim Floresca whose background includes Michelin starred kitchens. Every dish is engineered specifically for delivery, tested to maintain quality after up to 45 minutes of travel with packing designed to preserve texture and temperature. Repositioning Coop Kitchen Certified clean standards mean no refined sugars, processed foods, gluten, dairy, seed oils, corn, peanuts, preservatives A tight lane, but it's a lane that's significant and growing segment in the New York consumers actively seeking out. Here's the CPG Guy Commerce Lens on the story Coop Kitchen is a proof of concept for premium dark kitchen brands built around the delivery occasion. No dining room overhead, no server labor, a kitchen optimized for throughput not ambiance, and a brand built entirely around clean ingredient standards and a wellness identity that drives remarkable repeat purchase behavior. The model has implications beyond restaurants. The same consumer choosing Boop Kitchen on doordash is making intentional choices about the brands they buy in store. Ingredient transparency, clean labels, functional benefit claims are no longer marketing language. Buzzword. There's a price of entry for a growing segment of urban health conscious consumers willing to pay premium to eat according to their value group Kitchen and by SE is a data point clear signal about where the wellness consumer is going is reminded of CPG brands that clean isn't a trend, it's becoming a baseline. Be very focused.
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That's a wrap on this week's Commerce riff. Quick recap. Uber deepening its bet on global quick Commerce through Delivery Hero, Dollar General and Cusick bringing accountable AI audio to 12,000 stores. John Brace stepping to the top seat at ConAgra and Goop Kitchen proving that dark kitchens and clean food can scale. Reminder to catch up with our recently released episode featuring Christian Hassel, the host of the Inorganic podcast and Benoit Veter, the Chief Media Officer of Liquid Death. Great conversations. You do not want to miss those. If any of this what we talked about today sparked us thought, send us an email. Drop in the comments. We actually read them and we do respond. If you're not already following us on LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook and YouTube. Well, now's the time. We'll see you next week. The content in this podcast episode is provided for general informational purposes only. By listening to our episode, you understand that no information contained in this episode should be construed as advice from CPG Guys, LLC or the individual author, hosts, or guests, nor is it intended to be a substitute for research on any subject matter. Reference to any specific product or entity does not constitute an endorsement or recommendation by CPGuys LLC. The views expressed by Guests are their own, and their appearance on the program does not imply an endorsement of them or any entity they represent. The views expressed by CPTGuys LLC do not represent the views of their employers or the entity they represent. CPT Guys LLC expressly disclaims any and all liability or responsibility for any direct, indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or other damages arising out of any individual's use of, reference to, or inability to use this podcast or the information we present in this podcast.