A Dispatch from the 2026 Nourishing Change Conference…
There are conferences you attend, and conferences that actually make you think differently. The third annual Nourishing Change Conference in Des Moines, Iowa, from June 2 through 4 was the latter, and the industry needs to pay attention.
More than 1,200 leaders from science, retail, health systems, technology, and public policy gathered at the Iowa Events Center, co-hosted for the first time by both Kroger Health and Hy-Vee. That co-hosting arrangement alone is telling. And the plan is to expand the co-host participation: in 2027 it will be co-hosted by Wegmans and Kroger. What is telling is that when two competing regional giants decide the stakes are high enough to share a stage, something fundamental has shifted: health and wellness must be an industry initiative!
The theme threading through every session I attended was that the grocery store and the pharmacy are no longer just places people shop. They are, and must become, the front door of American healthcare.
During my fireside chat with Hannah Roshetko Raser, AVP of Front Store Strategy and Transformation at CVS Health, that point came into sharp focus. Hannah has spent nearly a decade leading loyalty, omnichannel, and personalization strategy at CVS, one of the most data-rich retail health organizations in the country. What she understands, and what I’ve been saying for years, is that loyalty is no longer about points and discounts. It’s about trust, relevance, and consistency of experience across every touchpoint a customer has with a brand.
The question I pushed on was “does the customer think of CVS, or Kroger, or Hy-Vee, as their health partner?” Or do they still think of it as a place to pick up shampoo and a birthday card? The honest answer, in 2026, is still somewhere in between. And that gap represents both the industry’s greatest challenge and its most significant opportunity.
What struck me throughout this conference, from Colleen Lindholz’s opening remarks as President of Kroger Health and Aaron Wiese, President Health & Wellness/Retail Pharmacy at Hy-Vee, explanation of how the two companies joined forces to the frank conversations on the show floor, is that the pieces are all there. The pharmacy infrastructure. The dietitians. The loyalty data. The digital tools. The GLP-1 moment is accelerating everything, because suddenly millions of Americans are actively engaged with their health in a way they weren’t two years ago. This is a headwind for food retail.
But here’s what I keep coming back to: all of this technology, all of this cross-industry collaboration, still has to connect to a real human being standing in a real store aisle trying to figure out what to eat. That’s the moment of truth. And loyalty programs, the good ones, built around personalization and genuine value, are the bridge between data and behavior change.
The Nourishing Change Conference is doing something important by convening this conversation. The fact that it’s now attracting 50-plus sessions and 120-plus speakers, and that Hy-Vee joined Kroger Health as co-host, these aren’t just PR moves. They reflect a genuine reckoning across the industry about what retailers owe the communities they serve.
I left Des Moines more convinced than ever that the retailers who win the next decade won’t be the ones with the lowest prices or the biggest square footage. They’ll be the ones who earn the trust of the consumer as a true health partner, and loyalty is the mechanism that gets them there.
