This session was recorded as part of the Amazon Vendor Summit on Day 1. In this session, Matt Ulmer (SVP of E-commerce at CA Fortune) breaks down Amazon’s accelerating push to win grocery—and what vendors need to do to stay ahead in 2026. Matt explains Amazon’s shift from the “everything store” to the “everyday store,” driven by unified same-day grocery shopping inside the core Amazon cart, supported by an expanding Sub Same-Day (SSD) fulfillment network with growing cold-chain capabilities. He outlines the practical playbook for vendors—building the right 1P assortment (especially low-to-mid ASP), aligning pack architecture for margin and basket profitability, tightening OTIF performance to protect in-stock and ranking, sharpening grocery-specific content to win conversion fast, and using advertising plus Subscribe & Save to compound visibility and repeat demand.
Paul Sonneveld
Next up, we have Matt Ulmer. Let me just bring him up here, and I'll introduce him very briefly. Matt is the SVP of e-commerce at CA Fortune. With deep grocery and CPG experience across Amazon, Matt's really going to unpack today, Amazon's grocery strategy and what it means for vendors heading into 2026. He's also going to share practical levers that brands are using to win in fresh whole foods and the wider grocery programs. Being a grocery man myself from many years ago, very keen to hear what Matt has to say. Matt, fantastic to have you here today.
Matt Ulmer
Thanks, Paul. Appreciate it. Thank you for having me. It's an exciting time in grocery, especially being associated with Amazon, with everything that's happening. And so I'm excited to be here to talk about it. Grocery is my passion. I've been doing it for twenty years. And so watching Amazon go through their different iterations and then seeing what's happening right now. It's a timely time to have this conversation.
Paul Sonneveld
Fantastic. Well, the floor is all yours, Matt. And let me know if you need me to warm up any presentations on my side or whether you're good to go.
Matt Ulmer
Yeah, let me see if I can get it brought up here by sharing my screen and then we'll take it from there. So, again, thank you for having me. Extremely excited to walk through this presentation and talk a little bit about grocery and Amazon. I'm Matt Ulmer. I'm the SVP of e-commerce sales and sales operations at CA Fortune. I've got twenty years of experience in CPG and in grocery, spending the last quite a few years in the Amazon space and watching it change rapidly. So, CA Fortune, we are a US-based national sales brokerage and marketing agency in the consumable space with a significant client base on the grocery side, and it's like I said, just really excited to see what's happening.
For those of us that have been around Amazon and the grocery space from the beginning, we've watched it change a lot. They went through Prime Pantry. They had Whole Foods. They purchased, had a great overlap with their Prime member. They've tried to do Amazon Fresh in different parts of the platform as well as in stores. And, you know, it continues to show that Amazon is committed to winning in grocery and it's changing even more rapidly.
So why does it matter to Amazon to win in grocery? It's obviously a massive total addressable market, over a trillion dollars of in-home food consumption in the U.S. Frequently is extremely important. So obviously, loyalty is the engine that increases trips in basket size. And so Amazon's theory in winning in grocery is that they know that the reason consumers are out taking trips multiple times a week is to do their grocery shopping. When they're out doing their grocery shopping, they're either shopping in mass merchandisers and buying other products in those mass merchandisers or shopping at grocery stores and buying multiple things in the grocery store, but also stopping at other places to buy products. They believe that if they can move those trips to become online and purchasing at Amazon and remove the need for them to go out to take those trips, Amazon will capture the rest of those purchases that are happening when those consumers are out doing those trips. And that is their goal to move from the everything store to the everyday store.
And so if you go into your Amazon app and you're clicking around, you're going to see things called the same day store or essentials. They've been doing different AB testing, try to figure out how they want you position that to the consumer base, but it's a huge part of their strategy. They know that the grocery consumer is extremely valuable to them, and they want to continue to drive that loyalty. And then obviously they want access to the data and the advertising power that goes with it. There's a significant amount of merchant media dollars that are spent across CPG. They want access to those media dollars to drive their profitability. And then the last mile and infrastructure leverage, if they can be delivering to somebody's door every day and they can increase the size of the basket that they're delivering, they can increase the profitability. And so that gives them more leverage.
Now, how are they planning to win? So, same-day delivery now with fresh groceries. And so you guys have seen this out in the news. They did some tests that were happening in several cities here in the US, where they were putting regular everyday grocery items in the core platform. So you didn't need to click through and go to fresh, click through and go to Whole Foods. You would buy it with everything else. And they saw a ton of adoption and obviously some really good traction early on. And so they're expanding that to twenty-three hundred zip codes by the end of 2025. And I've seen projections they'll get across the total U.S. by the end of 2026 in terms of every zip code. That's a significant change from where they've been in the past.
And so it's really all falling under one unification of one grocery strategy. This came when they promoted the Whole Foods CEO to lead all of grocery within Amazon. And so what does that all mean? It means that they want to bring everything into their core platform and be able to service it from one car experience. So in order to do that, they're building out what they're calling an SSD network or their sub same-day fulfillment network. They have about a hundred thousand ASINs that sit in this network today. And that is key to terms of how are they going to fulfill it from an everyday delivery perspective. Within that network, they're going to enable cold chain capabilities so they can be frozen and refrigerated. And then they're also going to be utilising the Fresh and the Whole Foods perishable network to be able to deliver all of that produce that you love getting at both of those places. And they want to unify that under one platform in cart experience.
And so you see a couple of screenshots here on the right. This is in my market here today. I can go on the Amazon app. I can type eggs, and I can see options, ASINs for selecting to put into my cart. And those are not specific Whole Foods offers. Those are not called out as Amazon Fresh offers. You can add them to your cart and then you can see my cart on the right. And you can see the gas gauge where if you get over twenty-five dollars, you get that free delivery same day. And then you can also see that the cart has the eggs, but also has a weighted vest. So you can get your grocery along with everything else in the same cart.
Those of us that have been in grocery working on Amazon have been waiting for this to happen for a long time to really drive that awareness and adoption of Amazon's grocery solution for consumers. Because before it was always clunky and weird when they had pantry, you had to go into a different part of the app. They had a different cart when it was fresh and whole foods, similar things, had their own cart. It was a different experience. And it wasn't that seamless experience that we come to love and know from Amazon that would reduce friction at all costs and reduce clicks at all costs. And that's what they're trying to get to.
So, what does that all mean? So, how do you go win? How do you go attack this? If you're a manufacturer and you want to win in grocery sub same day assortment, will be 1P primarily with a focus on low ASP. The reality is they're trying to meet where the consumers are in terms of their grocery shopping experience. Most of that shopping experience is buying individual items that are somewhere in the four to eight-dollar range. They need to build those baskets to make it profitable to deliver, which is why they have the twenty-five-dollar minimum. And so being on 1 P will be paramount in making sure that you understand your ASP strategy.
Now you also have to understand how to work with Amazon Vendor managers to broaden your assortment beyond just low ASP items, thinking about selling full cases or multi-packs, other things, items over fifteen dollars, at least over ten dollars to try to drive profitability across your total portfolio. Because as Martin mentioned, at every AVN they'll come in and they'll be talking about that net PPM or their contribution profit, depending on which metric works for them to have that discussion and try to drive leverage. So you have to think about your cohesive strategy across your portfolio to drive total profitability for Amazon. But having that low ASP is going to be really important.
Now, for those of us in the grocery industry, we understand the large players in that space. Amazon is not there yet. And so, expecting Amazon to drive your total national trade strategy at this time is probably not realistic. But you do have to understand Amazon's ever-evolving grocery pricing strategy because they will be disruptive in the space. And so if you understand their strategy, it's evolving as we speak, where they're trying to become a lot more geo-local in terms of their pricing against some of the largest grocery players in the space.
Today, if you've got an offering at Walmart or at Target, you're largely going to get price-matched against those. And you have to understand what's that going to do to your net PPM and how do you have to invest with Amazon to drive the right strategy? I do think that it will evolve over time. I believe Amazon will be a top-five grocery player as they expand this within the next three to five years, and probably a top three within the next ten. That's going to change how the grocery industry goes about their merchandising and pricing strategies. You're really going to have to have a very specific channel strategy to understand how to win on Amazon as well as everywhere else.
And then after that, you really have to deliver on time and in full, which is vital to fuel the algorithm. Amazon was not built for grocery. They were built to sell TVs and books. And so their backend and having a clean catalogue is not an easy thing to do. So understanding how to deliver each and full cases and have all of those offerings is going to be really important. Then, understanding how to process those POs, get them out at the right time, do the right advanced shipping notifications will be extremely important and really important to driving that growth because you have to be in stock, right? Your shelf placement is dependent on an algorithm when you lose your shelf placement you're dropping and you're removing yourself from search and you have to build yourself back up.
Then the fourth thing understanding that conversion focus content especially images is really important very different than shopping at the physical shelf. In grocery, you have four images and four seconds to communicate your value proposition and drive that conversion on Amazon. And you do that differently than you do on the shelf. And so you have to have a very focused strategy against that. You have to do a lot of A-B testing, trying lots of different content and how to communicate that value proposition.
And then the last part we all know is to maximise Amazon advertising to drive performance. Driving performance on Amazon is different than driving it in-store. You have shopper marketing levers in the store to drive people to your listings or to your products on the shelf. On Amazon, you have advertising to help you do that. So understanding all the different levers within advertising, using them thoughtfully and efficiently to drive to your listing, will be really important. And then incenting subscribe and save will be paramount on top of that. Okay, that was a lot quickly, but happy to take any questions and chat through grocery further.
Paul Sonneveld
Thanks so much, Matt. That is really fantastic. Yeah, for those of you, if you have questions for Matt on the grocery space or CPG, pop them in. I have pulled up a couple of questions that I've already received. And let me put those in front of you now, Matt. First of all, let me just make sure I can see that. What specific operational or commercial changes should vendors expect as Amazon really looks to unify fresh whole foods and grocery under one experience? I mean, if you're sort of crystal ball looking in 2026, into the new playbooks, scorecards coming, how do you look at that?
Matt Ulmer
Yeah, as we talk to vendor managers and talk to our clients, they're clearly evolving how they're thinking about grocery and how they have to attack that space. I do think that the fresh teams will get collapsed within the core vendor manager teams. You're going to see those supply chains start collapsing and being offered as one unified solution. And then the next piece to understand is how does Whole Foods fit into all of those? I do think that they understand that it might not make sense to have completely separate teams across both and to find a way to think about how do they serve the consumer across those offerings in different ways, but with one team.
Paul Sonneveld
Thanks, Matt. The next one here was, When you think about getting into that SDD network, I mean, what do you see or what have you seen? What are the top three to five criteria that Amazon uses to decide which grocery SKUs or products get SSD placement, velocity, margin, pack size, shelf life and the like, and what data can vendors bring really to strengthen that case?
Matt Ulmer
Yeah, that's a great question. Definitely use your Amazon data that you have today. If you have larger pack sizes or full cases that you sell or multi-packs that you sell that have good velocity, especially on the dollar side, communicating those to your vendor managers, helping them understand the opportunity to sell those in each or a low ASP is definitely going to have an impact and making sure that you're working with the vendor manager and trying to connect through them to the subsame day assortment group that's deciding that assortment.
I would also use data you have from your broader market. So they're going to be looking for high penetration items, items that are broadly carried in the grocery market, because they want to go out and capture that share. And so they're looking at data from large national grocers, from Walmart and other places. And then they always want those emerging brands that are growing quickly. And so if you can show growth quickly, if you can show adoption rates, and then if you can show that you're capturing market share, I bring all that data to the table.
Paul Sonneveld
Next one, for grocery specifically, let's talk about content, right? Which content elements, you mentioned that, I think it's four seconds, you mentioned this memorable thing, you know, four seconds, you know, within that context, right? Which content elements in your experience, I mean, I know you guys do a lot of grocery, which content elements do you feel have the biggest impact on conversion when it comes to grocery and CPG? Is it nutrition panels? Is it A-plus content, ingredients, videos? Would love to hear what you are seeing, what's been successful for you, and if there's any category-specific do's and don'ts.
Matt Ulmer
Yeah, great question. As I mentioned earlier, you have about four images and four seconds to communicate that value proposition. The what that is and how to do it with your images depends a lot on the category and the solution of your product. But I firmly believe in having lifestyle shots of people enjoying your product. Extremely important. I do believe in infographics, communicating what the solution of your product is. So if there are specific benefits, if it's high protein, if it's convenience, or if there's functional benefits, making sure that you're calling those out. And then if it's better for you calling out how it compares to maybe non-better for you products, really important to be able to do quickly.
Paul Sonneveld
Thank you. Next one here, more of a logistics question. I mean, when the grocery, particularly cold chains, logistics is often the key bottleneck, right? Particularly, you know, summer, winter, you know, got to deal with all sorts of variables. What are the current cold chain capacity bottlenecks in SSD? Is it space? Is it handling time? Presumably temperature right now is not an issue in most of North America. I mean, it's a big issue for us here in Australia. Like, a lot of courses will stop shipping chocolate around and things like that because it's just it's getting too warm. And what can vendors do, actually, if they can show initiative in terms of packaging configurations to really fit some of those constraints.
Matt Ulmer
Yeah, it's a great question. I wish they would tell us. They don't always share. And so I would say the current constraint is just having those refrigeration capabilities in enough sub-same-day fulfillment centers to be able to provide the assortment that they want to provide. They're quickly trying to build it. I would say that if you are a manufacturer that has products that need to be refrigerated or frozen, if you can use any of your current supply chain to help them with the vendor flex capabilities and other things like that, those are great ways for you to partner to be able to get into that sub same-day assortment.
So I'd be asking your vendor manager, are those ways we can partner with you to help you with those constraints or help you build out your network? Because those can be ways for you to get into that sub same day assortment early. And I would highly recommend that if you can get in early and prove out that you are a solution that their members want, you're going to stay in that assortment.
Paul Sonneveld
Thank you. Let's talk pack sizes. This used to be my favourite topic when it comes to grocery. How should vendors rethink, not just think, but rethink in the context of what you shared with us, rethink pack sizes or multi-packs to stay at that low ASP while protecting margin? Have you seen any examples of kind of pack architectures and certain categories that you feel work especially well in SSD?
Matt Ulmer
Yeah, that's a great question. It's evolving quickly, I would say. There are, and it can be category-dependent. So in some snacking categories, having multi-packs that are easy for shoppers to put in their pantry and be a solution for snacking is definitely working. And then don't look for your lowest absolute ASP item. If you have a good price pack architecture set across the grocery space, where you have a low ASP and mid ASP and a higher ASP, looking at value packs and multi packs and things like that, try to avoid your lowest ASP because that's always going to drive your contribution profit down. And so if you can find those things that are a little bit more mid-tier versus a, you know, think like a eight-dollar price point versus a four-dollar price point, I would lead with that solution first. Unless Amazon's really pushing for the lowest ASP, even then, I would avoid it if you can.
Paul Sonneveld
All right. I think we'll head to our last question here, which is a very technical, I guess it's an SEO and supply chain question. What are the OTIF or I don't know if you guys say on-time delivery in full thresholds that truly move the needle in grocery search ranking? Is it about hitting a minimum bar or, you know, actually should you strive to go beyond that bar to kind of increase benefits from an sort of algorithmic or SEO point of view?
Matt Ulmer
Yeah, I would say definitely keep track of your weeks of supply that sit in the network, you know, use a partner or MerchantSpring is a great solution to understand how you're sitting. If they are running really lean, you're going to need to be above 98%. If they're sitting around the ten-week mark, you might be able to get away with something in the ninety five and ninety six percent range to stay consistently in stock downstream. Those are typically the cliffs that we try to get our clients to to get to.
Anytime you drop below them, you tend to see gaps come into your assortment downstream. And then every time you have a gap in the assortment, and you drop off, you guys know that you have to work your way back up. And so you want to be staying in stock as consistently as you can and then protecting those subscribe and save volume at all costs. The algorithm is really looking at subscribe and save in the consumable space. And so we see brands that can get their subscribe and save penetration rates up north of twenty percent are ranking higher than those that are not.
Paul Sonneveld
That's interesting. I hadn't thought about that link between subscribe and save and ranking, which is really interesting. Great. Well, Matt, that brings us to the end of our session on grocery. I really appreciate you taking us through this very dynamic topic. I think we're going to see a lot of things happening in this space, especially in North America over the next year or so. Really appreciate you coming on and sharing your knowledge and expertise. Unfortunately, this is virtual. Otherwise, I would invite the audience to put your hands together to say thank you to Matt. But you just have to trust that everyone's clapping in front of their PC screens right now. Thanks so much, Matt.
Matt Ulmer
Thanks.