Allegiance Just Made a Quantum Leap in Retail Ads

by Greg Madison

Printed retail ads have been with us since at least 10th century China, when a Song-era merchant named Liu put his logo – a white rabbit – on a printed ad for Liu’s Fine Needle Shop in Jinan: “We buy high-quality steel rods and make fine needles, ready for use at home in no time. Favorable rates for wholesale buyers are available.”

Unsurprisingly, we have no idea what kind of response Liu got. If we use modern response metrics, if at least 4% of the people who saw the ad bought his needles… then he did pretty good. 

Printed advertising for retailers more or less stayed that way for a millennium or so, picking up a few bells and whistles along the way. (Our 10th-century merchant Liu would probably get the point if he saw a 21st-century Wegmans circular.) 

And for decades, if not longer, the printed weekly circular has been a fixture of American grocery retailing.

You know it well: a glossy bundle of deals tucked into Sunday newspapers or mailed directly to households across a trading area. 

Producing and distributing those circulars is involved. Printing costs, paper prices, creative development, and postage and distribution logistics add up quickly, especially for multi-store operators. 

Yet the circular has been a foundational marketing tool: a broad, “shotgun” approach designed to showcase loss leaders, promote key vendors, and drive store traffic. The model works, but, at the end of the day, it’s largely a broadcast strategy: one message… sent to thousands of households, with limited visibility into how shoppers translate advertised items into complete baskets.

(This is important: I’m not advocating for the demise of the venerable ad circular. That would be a huge mistake – more on that in a few.)

Of course, over the past few years, AI is beginning to change that, offering the ability to finely tune messaging and pricing to shoppers and get granular when it comes to return on investment.  

Then, at FMI Midwinter this year, we got a good look at something new from Allegiance Retail Services…

Allegiance is an Iselin, NJ-based cooperative, with a network of more than 125 independent and co-op Northeastern grocers. They provide customized retail services – advertising, marketing, tech, and merchandising – for operators in one of the toughest grocery markets in the country. 

Allegiance’s position gives it a commanding view of promotional mechanics and shopper behavior across several different banners and NE sub-regions.  

They’ve developed a powerful tool that promises to boost margins and traffic and deliver the kind of granular data that’s potent ammo for the marketers — one that’s actually useful and enjoyable for customers. 

And it’s coming directly to the Northeast grocery market.

Let’s take a look…

Smarter Promotion for a Tough Northeast Market

Allegiance Retail Services’ new “PrepPal” initiative represents a generational change to the (very) old-school circular model.

It certainly looks like the right tool at the right time and place. Because Allegiance’s network is embedded in dense, high-cost markets, their promotional tools must function at scale while serving local sales territories. That “balancing act” – standardization on the back end, flexibility at the store level – is central to how many Northeast operators compete. 

Enter PrepPal.

Outlined in a recent presentation, PrepPal is an AI-powered meal-planning platform designed to convert weekly circular promotions into structured, AI-curated five-day meal plans accompanied by integrated shopping lists.

“PrepPal evolved from how we think about promotions and driving healthier food choices,” said Allegiance President and CEO Joseph Fantozzi in a press release. “Instead of asking shoppers to figure out how to use weekly deals, Aiden is showing them – clearly, simply, and in a way that drives action. Those actions translate directly into list building, cart completion, and repeat engagement for our retailers.”

So this is far, far beyond simply featuring discounted items.

What the system actually does is to organize featured products into complete meal solutions. Prepal distributes the content across channels, and customers can review them via email, social media channels or, of course, the  retailer’s own website.

Customers will engage with “Aiden,” a branded AI “robot chef” – a persona that scans the circular and assembles meal ideas using items already featured in the ad. 

The output? Recipes, ingredient lists, and a consolidated shopping list designed to simplify the planning process.

The tech is cutting edge but the concept is straightforward: instead of relying on shoppers to determine how to use a discounted protein or pantry item, PrepPal simply bundles those items into ready-made meal frameworks. 

From a retailer’s perspective, that shift changes the function of the circular from an unwieldy, if beloved, promotional catalog to an elegant basket-building machine.

And in the Northeast, where margin pressure is compounded by high labor cost, pricey real estate, and relentless discounter expansion, an “elegant basket-building machine” isn’t just nice to have – it’s actually a potent defensive weapon.

When Aldi and Lidl are compressing base-price perception and club formats are capturing bulk trips, regional grocers need promotional tools that drive full-meal attachment. 

Of course, in the office, different team members need even more… 

The Promise of Quality Data for Everyone Concerned 

Going by what we’ve seen so far, the meals are presented as “shoppable,” allowing customers to add recommended items directly to their cart in supported e-commerce environments.  This is the marketing gold; the process basically closes the loop between advertising and transaction, something traditional printed circulars have historically struggled to measure.

For operators in “loyalty-rich” markets like those common across the Northeast – where co-ops and multi-banner groups often rely on shared data infrastructure – the ability to tie circular content directly to transaction data may prove especially powerful. Organizations like Allegiance basically sit at the nexus of that data flow; they’re coordinating ad files, vendor participation, and digital execution across multiple banners.

The program also introduces a structured vendor participation component. 

Brands can participate through a “PrepPal Item Feature,” which requires a four-week lead time and that the item be featured in the weekly ad or on promotion. 

Eligible products are rolled up into meal plans and promoted across social, email and web channels, with each program running for a week.

The materials we’ve seen specify that programs include post-analysis, incorporating sales performance, customer loyalty data, and Google Analytics. 

Given the industry’s recent high-profile struggles with “dirty data,” the prospect of clean, actionable data that actually enables return on investment for participating brands is welcome indeed.  

From an operational standpoint, PrepPal leverages a lot of the bona fide good data retailers already possess – weekly ad files, promotional calendars and digital content channels – and layers AI-generated meal logic on top. Because the meals are built directly from circular items, the platform aligns with existing merchandising strategies. 

In other words, there’s no need to spend bandwidth on developing entirely new product mixes.

For Retailers and Customers, Big Potential Benefits 

From all of this, it’s not unreasonable to expect that operators could see increased item attachment rates, higher basket totals, and boosted digital engagement. 

When featured products are positioned as components of complete meals rather than standalone deals, the likelihood that shoppers purchase complementary items may rise. A promoted pasta item, for example, becomes part of a full baked ziti dinner, complete with sauce, cheese, and sides.

Earlier, I hinted that PrepPal could prove useful and enjoyable for customers, too. That’s because, for them, the value proposition centers on simplification. 

Meal planning can be time-consuming, particularly nowadays when shoppers are attempting to maximize promotional savings. 

By translating flyer items into ready-to-execute meal plans, the system reduces the pain-in-the-neck factor in planning a slate of weeknight dinners. The integration of a consolidated shopping list helps streamline the process.

Allegiance Executive Vice President and CI/MO Donna Zambo said in a press release, “Retail media and promotions are most effective when they solve a real customer problem. Aiden turns promotional storytelling into practical application by helping shoppers use weekly deals, while strengthening promotional performance across digital and in-store channels.”

Ultimately, Allegiance’s approach here aligns with broader industry trends… but it’s out in front of them. 

As grocery retailers invest more heavily in digital commerce, retail media networks, and loyalty analytics, effective tools that hardwire advertising directly into measurable transactions are becoming absolutely invaluable. 

Converting circular content into interactive, shoppable digital experiences is a logical, yet powerful next step.

The Good Old Circular Matters in the NE; It Isn’t Going Away

Now, absolutely none of this is to suggest that traditional circulars are yesterday’s news, or that they should go the way of the dodo. As it happens, axing the circular would probably be a colossal mistake.

The circular really moves the needle in the Northeast; it’s one of the most circular-engaged regions in the country,  according to Flipp. Their data shows print over-indexes here relative to most of the US. 76% of Northeastern shoppers read weekly ads and a quarter of that number read them solely or mostly in print.

Plenty of shoppers like to get them in hand. Some shoppers love them. Many expect them. Flipp researchers said 71% of the people they asked would miss them if their local grocery stores stopped sending them.

Some Cosmosoft research found that 40% of consumers regularly seek out deals in circulars. 24% of them feel printed, in-hand ads are less cognitively stressing than digital. 

There is more illuminating research; there are more compelling numbers. 

But I think it’s enough to say that the evidence strongly suggests the venerable old advertising circular has plenty of mojo in the 2020s… and a retailer who got rid of their circular in the name of “progress” just might live to regret it. 

Good thing, then, that PrepPal doesn’t eliminate the traditional circular; it builds upon it, makes it vastly more useful – and, potentially, lucrative. That old-fashioned weekly ad, with all of that goodwill baked in, remains the source of promotional data. The AI layer simply reorganizes that information into a more structured format designed for modern digital consumption.

So, in that sense, PrepPal should be viewed as a modernization effort rather than a replacement strategy. The mailed circular will no doubt continue to introduce shoppers to weekly deals, but that digital meal-planning layer offers a way to massively deepen engagement, improve the metrics and ROI, and very likely increase basket efficiency.