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- [00:02]
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Hello and welcome to Episode 6 October 14, 2025 edition of the Commerce Rift with the CPG Guys. I'm of course your co host Sri Rajagopalan AKA Papa Raj, co founder and CRO of Think Blue Consulting. And I'm joined by my co host and founder of the CPG Guys PBSP aka Peter Vs Bond. How you doing this Saturday morning?
- [00:21]
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3 While I should probably be completely overjoyed with the fact that the Dodgers are advancing the World Series, I'm more in awe the fact that our our beloved New York Giants actually beat the Eagles on Thursday Night Football that I don't think either one of us would have been running to the sports book in Las Vegas to place a bet on. Happening. You know, that was just out of control. But you know, on the riff, we're of course sharing our opinions of what we consider to be the most important news items from our great industry of CPG and retail Omnichannel. Please follow us on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube. Easy to find us. Look for CPG guys. Same across all those platforms. It's that easy. So let's get to the week. Sri Our first topic is ChatGPT and food ordering. What's this all about?
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While the Giants certainly surprised us, maybe now we'll start talking about football finally, because they've been irrelevant for a decade and we haven't said a word so Uber, Instacart, Target and DoorDash amongst 11 partners that will integrate with ChatGPT later this year, according to a Monday announcement by OpenAI, the developer of the AI powered chatbot. The partnerships come on the heels of OpenAI's introduction of apps that people can chat with when using ChatGPT. The move is happening a few months after Fiji Simo exited the CEO role at Instacart to become CEO of OpenAI apps. OpenAI noted that these partnerships make it possible for app developers to reach over 800 million ChatGPT users, a potentially sizable grocery delivery audience. In a LinkedIn post, Dodash said that this partnership with ChatGPT will provide added convenience to consumers. The e commerce delivery company added in an email statement that it would share more information on the collaboration in the near future. Soon you'll be able to see fare ranges, ETAs and browse restaurants right in the chat GPT before seamlessly finishing your trip to actually order in the Uber apps. We can't wait for people to try and tell us what they think, uber Chief Product Officer Sachin Khansal said in a statement on Monday. OpenAI announced that several apps including Booking.com, figma, Expedia, Spotify are now available for logged in ChatGPT users in certain geographic areas. You asked for AI. Here it is in action. Peter this could be scary to some, but for the consumer this is a bonanza. What do you think?
- [02:37]
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I agree Sri let's go to Purchase New York, where PepsiCo reported fiscal third quarter earnings and revenue that actually topped Wall Street's estimates. Food and beverage giant reiterated its full year forecast. PepsiCo also announced the departure of its CFO Jamie Caulfield, and announced his successor, Walmart executive Steve Schmidt International Growth offset another quarter of declining volume in North America not an unfamiliar conversation. We've been hearing it since Cagny back in February. But shares of the company rose more than 2% morning trading. Here's what the company reported for its fiscal third quarter compared to what Wall street was expecting. Earnings per share $2.29 adjusted versus $2.26 expected revenue of 23.94 billion versus $23.83 billion expected. However, the Frito Lay and Gatorade owner is still seeing softer demand for its products. PepsiCo worldwide volume for both food and drinks fell 1% during the quarter. The metric strips out pricing and foreign exchange fluctuations. CEO Ramon Lagarada said that at the company's conference call the volume was also softer as PepsiCo shifts to smaller packaging sizes to appeal to price conscious sumers, real people living on a cash flow statement, as we've discussed in the past. SRI While the shift hurts volume, it lifts revenue in particular PepsiCo's struggle in its home market in recent quarters, leading the company to invest back into its brands and to explore cost cutting measures. Sri, what are you thinking?
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You know Peter, this volume challenge is gone now for two plus years and brands simply know that it's the price increases of the COVID era necessitated by a lot of commodity increases. Once P Ls are adjusted, it's difficult to take price down and they're struggling with that and have given up a lot of volume in the last two years. Now the problem is if you take price down, will the volume come back? I mean, who knows? But I just think the cola wars therefore are far from over and it's no longer a Coke and Pepsi Cola war. It's the Cola war for volume. And struggles are still the way. Instacart is now collaborating with TikTok on a program that will integrate the company's retail media network data into the platform. Platform's ad manager, the company's announced in a press release. Select CPG advertisers will soon be able to use Instacart data for targeting and measurement and to enhance the shoppable ad formats. Instacart is integrating its purchase and grocery selection data directly into the TikTok ad manager. The integration makes Instacart the first RMN or retail media network to offer marketers end to end capabilities natively on TikTok, according to release details. The move follows other recent efforts from Instacart designed to boost its appeal to Advertisers. With the TikTok integration, Instacart aims to establish itself as the most advertiser friendly media network, providing its data to help brands reach new and motivated audiences with minimal friction. While other retail media networks have worked with TikTok on specific campaigns, Instacart is the first to work with TikTok on what we're calling an end to end integration, said our friend has also been a guest on the show Ali Miller, Instacart's GM of Advertising. As she said to Adweek, that means advertisers would soon be able to use Instacart's audience segments to better target campaigns on TikTok's platform to reach consumers with high purchase intent. Additionally, they'll be able to enhance shoppable formats through TikTok's Smart plus campaigns, which are integrated with Instacart grocery selection data. The TikTok partnership is part of the company's strategy to help marketers cut through fragmentation and complexity by allowing them to tap into Instacart's retail media data whenever they're buying media for release details. I Personally think Instacart TikTok this could be a marriage made in heaven. What do you got next?
- [06:26]
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Well, Sree, I'll just say that next to AI at Advertising Week, I think the Instacart TikTok partnership was the biggest buzz going on. I actually saw Ali Miller on stage at Adweek House talking about this very topic and everybody is really taking notice of this combined relationship. Let me wrap it up here. Consumers are expected to spend in record amounts this year for the Halloween holiday, not adjusting for inflation. The National Retail Federation predicts consumers will spend $13.1 billion on Halloween in 2025, up nearly 13% year over year. But what's interesting is where consumers are looking to buy Halloween products continues to evolve. So with specialty retailers like Party City and its Halloween City banners having disappeared from the landscape, other companies are looking to gobble up that share. Here's who should start gaining some share going into the year, the discount stores could be the top destination to buy Halloween products, with 42% of consumers saying they'll buy goods from those retailers this year, according to NRF. That's up from 37% last year and marks the highest we've seen since the pandemic actually started. Given consumers are looking to spend at record levels for the holiday, it's not surprising that they're looking to save a little money. While NRF leaves the definition of discount stores up to how consumers interpret generally includes dollar stores and off price retailers. So consumers across income segments are already shopping discount and dollar stores are aiming to get the their buck, especially on everyday essentials like groceries. That's according to Kate Thomas, who leads the Kearney Consumer Institute. But that sets the discounters up for success in other categories as well. It feeds into the little treat economy, which has been a phrase that has been coined of recent Consumers feel good about optimizing where they can, but do not want to be completely indulgent. They are picking up a fun Halloween decoration and a small fun, indulgent and otherwise practical shopping trip.
- [08:43]
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So volume challenges as PepsiCo reports, Uber Instacart, Target and DoorDash coming together to leverage ChatGPT and then Cola wars continuing all the way as we just mentioned in TikTok. As Peter said he saw it ad week, Ali Miller on stage, ads manager taking control, giving data, sharing it, et cetera, with Instacart working together, which I think is a marriage made in heaven. And then of course we couldn't end this without talking about Halloween. So that's our take on relevant commerce happenings from so many announcements this past week we thought were meaningful and could not be passed on for a rif. We hope you enjoyed it. Click like our posts on all platforms. Follow us on LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok, and now YouTube. Thank you and see you next week for another edition of Commerce Rift by the CPG Guys.
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