A Kroger 'King' Maker Reveals The Keys To Getting On Shelf – And Staying There

0:10Hello, friends. I'm Ray Latif and you're listening to the number one podcast for anyone building a business in food or beverage, Taste Radio. In this episode, we're joined by Todd Davis, a veteran retail buyer with Kroger-owned King Soopers and City Market. Todd Davis, a seasoned Kroger executive with over 30 years of experience, has a sharp instinct for what makes a brand not just survive, but soar. As the category manager for natural, local, and multicultural brands at Kroger's King Soopers and City Market Banners, Todd has spent decades championing innovative products and the passionate founders behind them.

0:52But for him, it's not just about the numbers. It's about purpose, authenticity, and impact. In this episode, Todd shares his strategy for identifying standout brands and why he's especially driven to support women-owned and BIPOC-owned businesses. He also discusses his hands-on relationship-first mindset and his belief in brands that are shaking up traditional retail by selling with heart, disrupting with intention, and truly connecting with today's consumer.

1:23Hey folks, it's Ray with Taste Radio. Right now, I am honored to be sitting down with Todd Davis of King Soopers and City Market. Todd, great to see you. Hey, great to see you as well, Ray. Thanks for inviting me by. I really appreciate that. Yeah, we're here at Expo West 2025. How many Expo West is this for you? This is actually my second Expo West, and I've been to one Expo East and a lot of Cahy shows as well. So it's been a lot of, you know, a lot of understanding the brands out there as I go to them and just kind of get some insight from them. So it's been a pleasure coming out here to Expo West.

1:53It's always fun, and I enjoy it a lot. Have you been able to walk the floor much? I have. I have. I've already kind of came into some brands that I'm interested in, bring it in for 2025 and see how they're going to work out in our division. Yeah. How long have you worked for King Soopers? I worked for King Soopers for two years, but I've been with Kroger for 30 years. 30 years. Yes, sir. 30 years. That's impossible. You look like you're 30 years old yourself right now. I appreciate that, Ray. But no, I have a long journey. My journey's been all over the place, from store leader, store director, to division rollout manager over process changes and solutions, and understanding 5S and best practices, and even starting off as a bagger.

2:31So I've been having a very fruitful career. I love that. I love that you started out doing probably the most basic job you could do at the store and working way up to where you are right now. And your specific focus at King Soopers is? Natural foods, organics, local, and multicultural. Amazing, amazing. I got to address this because you mentioned before, Haps on the Mics, you're also an avid collector of hip-hop music. Correct, correct. To the point where you have a title. Yes, I do. I'm the largest hip-hop collector in North America. It's one of those things that I started out when I was 11 years old.

3:04I just really got into it. And over time, just started getting artifacts, pieces, very rare items, very rare items. I have over 40 ,000 cassettes, 10 ,000 vinyl, and about 40 ,000 CDs as well. And a lot of merchandise and, you know, like little statues and all that kind of fun stuff out there. Amazing. Who's your favorite artist? If I had to go overall, my favorite artist is, it's going to be a cliche ask, but Eminem. I like it really, I like Eminem. I liked his journey from 1997 to now. still active and he never just he never changed who he was yeah that's what i like about he was very his authentic self i like that he was authentic self have you ever had a chance to meet him no i actually um they reached out to me and wanted me to do like a documentary with eminem as far as his biggest fans but i haven't heard anything back yet so we'll see how it goes so i'm sure eminem has a lot of fans out there yeah clearly you're passionate about hip-hop clearly you're passionate about grocery i feel like that is the key component of having a successful career and doing whatever you're doing is being really loving what you're doing.

4:08When it comes to the success that you've had over the years, and I'm looking at, you know, some of the things that you've accomplished with King Soopers over the past year in 2024. And it's just really impressive. If you look at the sales for natural, the sales for some of the local brands that you work with, it's really amazing. How do you think about getting up every day and doing what you do and going to work, being as passionate as you were from the first day you joined Kroger? Yeah, I would tell you, Ray, that when you think about it, every day is a present. That's why it's called present.

4:42So it's a gift to you. So you got to go out there and get it. I mean, you got to really go out there and see how can you make a difference in your life. I was telling Jane Miller just the other day that when you think about the tombstone, one of the things on the tombstone is that the most important thing on there is not your name. It's not the day you was born, not the day you left us, not even your family. None of that is important as the dash, the smallest thing on the tombstone is the dash. And we're currently, we're all in our dash right now. And so when you look at the day you was born, dash, the day you left us, that dash is the most important thing on there.

5:17And so every day I kind of take that concept and that practice and how can I make a difference? Because a lot of us are living for our resume. Some of us are living for our obituary. So you just got to go out there and really get it every single day. I love that. I've never heard that before. The dash is the most important thing on your headset. Yeah, the most important thing. And again, I got some good news for you. We're in our dash right now. Yes, we are. God for that. It's a good thing. Yeah. You reached out to us and I'm so happy that you did. I assume that you listen to Taste Radio and you consume BevNet and Nosh content on a pretty regular basis.

5:52How do you interpret, dissect, evaluate some of the industry news that you read and hear about? I just think that you have to go out there and get that information. Some of it's not going to go to you. I just do a lot of things to go out there and just capture what's the newest thing, what's the gap opportunities with our division. Is there something out there that I need to bring in that we don't have in? Or is there something out there that I need to expand the SKUs on? There's a lot of different things that I identify when I'm out there looking for what can be a market disruptor or what can be something in the market that I need.

6:25And I digest all that information. But the most important thing I do is I go out there and make our competition as well. Have a conversation with the people within the store and just, hey, what's working for you? How's this brand working for you? And if it's something that's working well in their retail and I don't currently have it in our retail, let's have some conversation with their brand and see can we bring it in. I think that's really important to not get stagnant and stale. just continue to grow every single day. The 1 % rule, you know, get 1 % better every single day. Yeah. I see a lot of brands here at Expo West and I love shopping at stores and finding something new.

6:58It's pretty rare when I go into a store and say, hey, I've never seen this brand before. And I'm interested and attracted to products for a variety of reasons, but I'm not a retail buyer. What motivates you to pick something off a shelf, learn more about it, taste it, and potentially put it on your store shelves? Yeah, there's a couple of things. First of all, is people. I think that the brand, once I meet that brand and get to know the people, I think that's really important. Another thing too, is that let's try something new. I think every single day we just got to go out there and get something new.

7:29And so when I look at those brands and I identify those brands that I want to, what I want to bring in, I think what's real important is how can it make a difference? And here's the most important thing with the brands I bring in, because a lot of brands I bring in, they're not in line, they're not in the park, they're not down the aisles. I use a shipper program or NCAP, things like that. And so what that means is that a lot of those items are not on the shopping list. So how can I get this item that's not on the shopping list that's going to be incremental impulse buy inside the shopping cart?

7:59And so what I do is that we have different ways and methods we do it. We do a lot of demos and sampling. We do any kind of thing that they can do from their side as far as email blasts to their consumers, their DTC consumers. We just have a lot of things and avenues that we do to get that brand and some excitement about it. Some excitement more than anything is one of the key components of it. I asked you this when we first chatted, do you have more brands coming to you? Are the brands that are on your shelves, are they the result of more inbound interest in being at King Soopers and City Market?

8:31Or is it more you going out there in the market and saying, hey, we want you in our stores? A little bit of both. There are some times where I go out there and treasure hunt. I call it treasure hunting. I go out there and try to find a brand that's going to be a treasure for us. And then sometimes, a lot of times, especially from a local perspective, a lot of local brands in Colorado reach out to me and say, hey, Todd, what can I do to get on the King's Super City Market Shelf? And so we begin our discussion like that. I'm sure there's a lot of times when you've said no. I'm sure there's a lot of times when you say this is not the right fit.

9:03But how do you determine, even if you like a brand, that it is not the right fit? Or how do you determine if a brand doesn't necessarily fit into your personal life, but is a good fit for King Soopers? How do you differentiate? How do you make that decision? So there's a few things. One of the things I do is that I take emotion out of promotion. There are some items that I just don't have a taste for. I don't like cold coffee. I can't drink cold coffee. Just upsets my stomach. But we've done some deals with some cold coffee brands, some super coffee, rise coffee. And, you know, those are successful brands that we partner with.

9:37But one of the things that I tell you that makes me go out there and select those brands and sometimes you have to say no to them is that a lot of things are data driven. You know, so we look at data and then also just I call it good analytics. Kind of like is this is this brand really going to work in our store, in our region? And what I do is that go out there, talk to the brand, tell them what my expectations are. They tell me what they expect from us as the King Super City Market. And then what we do is have a conversation and let's give it a try. Because I think you miss 100 % of the shots you don't take.

10:11So I think it's really critically important to just give a brand a try. Now, there are some times where it's not a no, but it's a not right now. There may be some things from a capacity standpoint you're not ready for. There could be a lot of different variables that make me say, not right now, not right now. Let's get some growth in you. Maybe you have to go to another retailer first. There are some other things that plays a part in that, but it's never really a no. It's more so like a not right now. How long is the lead time to go from I like your brand to getting on shelf? Do you have a cycle at King Soopers or is it very much, hey, we like this brand.

10:45You can be in our stores next month. Yeah, it's from brand to brand. So like say, for instance, we just did something with Bonfire Burritos. in Colorado, in Golden, Colorado, Ray and the team out there. And one of the things about them, they're already a successful brand. They're successful. And so it was just turning that switch on and just it's the right thing for business. And it has a brand of You Love Cookies. I know Debbie Chattarini is going to get me about this, but You Love Cookies. She came in my office and she just heard about me looking for local retailers and she was doing some cookies.

11:15And we went from the infancy of packages and a Ziploc bag to being on our shelves today. So it's all about the brand expectations, what the brand know. And also, not only that, is that how much passion, I know we talked about that earlier, but how much passion does this person have that want their brand on the shelf? Because the hard work is keeping it on the shelf. Absolutely. Not getting it on the shelf. So that's the key. That's the key. You mentioned Super Coffee. I spoke with their founders about three years ago, and they said getting on shelf is the easy part. Yeah, that's true. That's the easy part.

11:46And people don't recognize that the hard work comes after. Correct. And the hard work comes after in maintaining and enhancing your relationship with your buyer, with that buyer relationship. And I'd love to just chat about a few things as it relates to best practices for maintaining and enhancing that relationship with your retail buyer. How do you say as a brand founder, how do you say no politely to a request that you may have of the brand and the founder? Well, if they can't say yes, what's the timeline? If you can't, if I say, hey, I need 300 shippers. And they say, well, Todd, we can't produce that many.

12:23And so I give them a timeline. Okay, I'll give you six months to produce that. And if they can't meet that timeline, then, you know, there's nothing I can do about that. But a lot of times I tell them why I'm saying no, because I think that's an important element of it, because that can go and course correct if needed to bring that whatever that no was to life. How about transparency? When there's something that they need to tell you and it may not be something you want to hear, Is transparency always the best practice or is it let me wait to give them bad news? No, I think transparency is always a good thing.

12:55I think it's a good thing, especially because the one thing you don't want to do as a brand is overpromise and underdeliver. I think that's the bad, bad way of thinking. And I know a lot of brands get excited like, oh, my God, I'm being King Soopers in City Market. But don't overpromise and underdeliver. Just tell me what you can do. Tell me if these the things I'm asking for are attainable. and if they are attainable, let's work and let's do some business together. But the one thing I don't want you to do is say, yeah, Todd, I can get those 300 shippers to you by next Monday. And then all of a sudden, me and my team is writing a sales plan together and I reach out to them and say, okay, they're going to be in the store.

13:30I need them in the store this Wednesday. I need another month. That's not the right thing to do. Yeah. And for you as the buyer, the last thing you want is empty shelves and you're going to have to fill those shelves with something else. And it may not be the brand that you were working with, but hey, it's filling your shelves. And it's true because, you know, I have leadership that I'm responsible for. I have rules and P &L that I'm responsible for. And so the things about it is that if leadership, I'm telling them leadership, I'm getting excited about a brand, I'm posting on LinkedIn, I'm doing all these different things to get excited about the brand.

14:04And then they can't fulfill that first order and I'm having empty shelves. Leadership is going to look at me about that because that's my responsibility. So I tell the brands I'm transparent. I like to call it hot topics, honest, open, and transparency. So whenever I talk to a brand, we say, let's have a hot discussion. And they tell them, I say, hot is an acronym, honest, open, and transparent. And so we talk about all those things. And a lot of times I've had brands say, I can't do that, Todd, not right now. Let's come back. And we have came back and cycled some brands and brought them back in when they were ready.

14:34So it has worked both ways. How do you talk about success with brands? How do you explain what success at King Soopers represents? So I think success in King Soopers represents is whenever I bring in a brand, a new brand in, they're on shippers. Most brands, their goal is to be in line in a pod down the aisles. And I tell them, I say, okay, so what can we do? And what can I do to help you reach that goal of success? And now once you get down the aisles to your point earlier, the work still begun, but now you're in the aisles. Now you're down the aisles, you're in a pod, you know, planogram, they call it.

15:07And so So now a lot of brands, that's what their success is. Some brands move units very fast because we look at units by store by day. Some brands do very well in there. Some brands are not so much. But a lot of brands, their only goal is to get down the aisles. And then once they get down the aisles, I tell them now the real works begin. Yeah. When I talk to brands, a lot of times they have a pretty robust new product development strategy or at least a vision for what they want to create next, what their innovation strategy looks like. How much should they share that with retailers and buyers like yourself?

15:41They share it a lot. They share what our vision is. Is it important to share it with you guys? It is. It is because I think some brands move a little too fast with innovation and then some brands don't do enough innovation. And I think it's something to share with us because just getting our opinion, you know, we see a lot of brands. I introduced last year 48 brands, new brands to the shelf last year. So a lot of times they shared an innovation for me and I just give my opinion on what what I feel about the innovation and is it a gap opportunity? When I look at gap opportunities, is this something that the consumer is going to want that's new for that brand?

16:15So a lot of time it's just about gap opportunities, identifying things like that. But they do share with me, they do. And I feel it's important too. You've talked about some of the brands that you've worked with that are local to your stores and the importance of maintaining a good presence for local brands. What programs exist such that you're supporting the development of these brands such that they can expand, they can incubate almost in your stores and expand elsewhere? I mean, what programs exist at King Soopers? Yeah, we do have like an incubation program. We call it the Colorado Proud section.

16:48And this Colorado Proud rack is in approximately 70 stores, half of our stores. And it's some items that's just local. You can't find down the aisles. They're not in the pog. They're just in our local area. And what it is is that a lot of those items grow and move the units as far as fast enough that they'd be going to POG. So one of them was Wild Chips. You know, they went to the POG. And so we working with a couple of them now that's moving units so fast that our local rack that we have in our stores, it's not having holding power for it. So we have to get it moved to the shelf. I would call Wild's a pretty disruptive brand in that they do something that isn't common or had been seen before they did it.

17:32They make chicken chips made out of ground up chicken. I don't even know how they specifically do it, but it's a pretty innovative concept. I would call that innovative. I would call it disruptive. How do you define innovation? How do you define disruption? Well, to the brands that, you know, every brand is very passionate about their product. So I get a lot of, it's the best thing ever. It's the best thing ever. Sometimes I do. It really does be the best thing ever sometimes. But what it is is that what I go out there and look for with a disruptive, when you look at a quote-unquote disruptive brand, is it really?

18:08Is it really? And what I mean by that is that is there something in the market that's going to really gain the consumer's awareness and gain the consumer's interest on, you know what, I'm going to try this brand. We worked with Melton Farris, David and Sean. And what it was is that it was a mushroom functional drink, very colorful, very psychedelic looking. And I talked to my boss, Mr. Wasworth, and I say, hey, I want to bring this mushroom drink within the stores. We had some discussion about it and it was like, let's give it a try. Let's give it a try. This drink was only in our shippers for the last six months, did close to half a million dollars in our stores.

18:46They're successful. That was the disruptor. That was something that we really needed. Same thing with St. James T. I work with the St. James T team, brought them in. They're disrupted. They've got to even, they have partnerships with HBO White Lotus. Right, right. So those are some things that, are you truly a disruptor? Because everybody's definition of disruptor is different, even mine. But what I look for is that something that's going to really go out there and get the industry shaken. I like that. Is it ingredient driven? Is it formulation driven? Is it packaging driven when you're talking about innovation?

19:17It's all, it's all. It can be something that's ingredient. And it can be actually sometimes it can be just brand driven or just what's the word I'm looking for? Kind of cycle like what is it? Something that's going to break the wheel, break the cycle of the mundane, every kind of items that we get. That's a lot of things. So it can be ingredient driven. It could be brand driven. It could be creativity driven. A lot of times it's creativity. It was a tea company that was very creative out there in Expo East. I saw last year, no, in Utopia I saw last year. And I thought that was really creative, but I'm a creative thinker.

19:52And so I like a lot of creative thinking brands. Quick break. If this episode has you thinking about what's next in food and beverage, explore BevNet and Nosh Insider, our subscription platform with deeper insights from the BevNet team. Visit tasteradio.com slash insider to learn more. You brought up St. James. I want to stay on that for a sec. St. James was founded by someone who has a ton of experience in the beverage industry. they are well-financed as far as I know. Support on shelf has to be key to potential success. Yes, you could get into 3 ,000 stores, but how well are you able to adequately support those products?

20:31I would assume that the St. James team has done a good job in that respect. Outstanding job. Yeah. How much does that play into your decision-making when you know that a brand And we'll be able to adequately support its products on shelf. It goes back to that early conversation when I had about not overpromising and deliver. So St. James T was talking to me. They had some big dreams. They really had some big dreams. But they were delivering. That's the key. They were delivering on those ideas and those concepts and that creativity that they had. And then it's a great product as well. So when the product's great, the people are great, everything's great about the product.

21:09that's what drives it in and bring it into the stores and really make us, and when I say us, King Super is the city market and Kroger, bring that product in and give the product a chance. One of the amazing things about Expo West is that the evolution of this show has brought a pretty amazing evolution in what we see for package design, for label design. So much of what is on the show floor looks slick, It looks like it's been produced by a pretty high-end design agency. It just looks really cool. Sometimes, though, you see a package or you see a label that could use some work. How do you evaluate, assess when a brand doesn't necessarily have their packaging as buttoned up as they should?

21:59What are some mistakes that you see in packaging that you're like, this is not going to work for our stores? You've got to go back to the drawing board. Yeah, there are some mistakes that's made. You know, a lot of times if you're local, you should have the Colorado Proud symbol on your product. That's how I feel. That's an easy win. If you're in a shipper, let the shipper tell the story about your product. A lot of times, don't give me a corrugated box with just brown boxes and think the chips is going to sell. Let it know that it's non-GMO or zero sugar or zero calories. Whatever it is that you're proud of, let the shipper tell the story.

22:32And that's probably one of the most things I deal with more than anything. The packaging, a lot of people are just really, really passionate about their packaging. So I don't give a lot of input in package design, but what I do give a lot of input with the shippers. When the shippers get to the store, I say, okay, the shipper is going to have to tell the story. And a lot of times, because I work with brands in their infancy, a lot of times we're able to have a discussion about the shipper. The dimensions, what we're looking for. Is it going to be metal? Is it going to be cardboard? board. My biggest thing is that I tell the brands, please make sure that your shipper tells the story.

23:03That's extremely important. Interesting. I've never heard that before, but I think that's such a good point. Yeah, you have to let it, because to go back to melting forest real quick, yeah, zero sugars, non-GMO, sugar-free, so all these other things, but it tells the story on the shipper. So that way you don't have to pick up the can and Google it or look at the ingredient label. The shipper's already going to tell you all the benefits about this drink, about this brand, whatever the case maybe. We've talked a lot about what the relationship should look like, or at least what the communication should sound like when you already have a relationship with someone like yourself.