There are plenty of ways to run a successful supermarket; the industry’s strongest operators have been demonstrating that for decades. But a new report from retail strategy and design firm ChangeUp offers us a compelling look at just how different those approaches can be — and why shoppers respond to them.
ChangeUp’s 2026 Experience Report ranks Costco, H-E-B, Wegmans and Publix among the 10 strongest retail brands for customer experience. That’s a pretty impressive showing for food retail, especially considering the competition includes specialty retailers, apparel chains and other businesses built around attracting customers into physical stores.
What’s particularly interesting is just how little these four companies resemble one another, operationally speaking.
Costco ranks first overall, followed by H-E-B at No. 2, Wegmans at No. 8 and Publix at No. 10. Each supermarket chain has developed a distinctive approach to merchandising, service and customer engagement. And each has given shoppers a reason to choose its stores, beyond mere proximity.
Four Retailers, Four Different Approaches
Costco has built an enormously successful business around value, limited assortments and the pleasure of finding something unexpected. Its rotating merchandise gives members a reason to browse, while its reputation for quality and pricing provides reassurance that the trip will be worthwhile.
H-E-B has gone a different way. Its strength lies in local relevance, community connections and an understanding of the markets it serves. ChangeUp describes a retailer whose customers identify with the brand in ways that go “above and beyond” grocery shopping. That kind of loyalty is difficult for competitors to replicate.
Wegmans, meanwhile, has turned its supermarkets into something like a destination. Its prepared foods, expansive assortment, fresh departments and service-oriented approach encourage shoppers to spend time in the store. The report specifically notes that customers are willing to travel farther to shop there.
Then there’s Publix, which continues to demonstrate the competitive value of good old-fashioned customer service. Associates who walk shoppers to products, help with groceries and maintain clean, pleasant stores may sound like relatively simple differentiators. But those practices have become less common in the wider industry as retailers focus on labor productivity and operating efficiency.
Of course, none of these approaches is really revolutionary, or all that difficult. But the consistency with which these companies execute on their respective approaches is the key.
The Danger of Reading Too Much Into Rankings
There is an important qualification to make here.
ChangeUp surveyed more than 6,500 consumers and evaluated more than 300 retail and restaurant brands, using eight measures of customer experience alongside online sentiment analysis. Those measures include memorability, advocacy, return intent, relevance and how tough customers believe a brand would be to replace.
It’s useful research, but it measures consumer perceptions and intentions rather than consumer behavior, like shopping frequency, basket size, market share or profitability.
The survey also expanded considerably from last year, adding more than 100 brands. That means movements in the rankings can reflect changes in the competitive field rather than improvements or deterioration in an individual retailer’s performance.
Wegmans, for example, is a new entrant to the study. Its No. 8 ranking is impressive, but that high position doesn’t establish that the chain improved its customer experience over the past year. Publix, meanwhile, maintained essentially the same underlying experience score.
And because ChangeUp is itself a retail design and brand strategy firm, its emphasis on the importance of physical shopping experiences should be understood in that context.
None of this makes the findings any less interesting, but they should color the conclusions we draw from them.
What Other Supermarkets Can Learn
I think differentiation is the important takeaway from all this.
Supermarket operators have spent enormous amounts of time and money trying to improve efficiency, simplify operations, control labor costs and make shopping more convenient. Those are all legitimate priorities, particularly in an industry where margins are exceptionally tight.
Then again, there’s a danger in allowing operational efficiency to become the organizing principle of the entire customer experience. Stores can become so standardized, so focused on throughput and so similar to their competitors that shoppers have no real reason to prefer one over another.
That’s a disadvantage in a world where pickup and delivery make it easier to purchase groceries without entering a store at all.
The four retailers highlighted in this report offer different responses to that challenge. Costco gives shoppers discovery and value; H-E-B delivers local relevance; Wegmans provides assortment and an engaging shopping environment; and Publix emphasizes personal service.
Of course, all four also benefit from substantial scale, established reputations and resources that smaller operators would find hard to duplicate. Their experience rankings alone don’t prove that these particular strategies produce superior financial results.
But there’s no reason why smaller operations can’t consistently deliver something that shoppers can’t get somewhere else. It might be an exceptional meat department, prepared foods that customers specifically seek out, knowledgeable employees, locally relevant products or simply a shopping experience that’s more pleasant and dependable than the competition.
But clearly, from this report, that certain something needs to be recognizable to customers and supported by the way the store actually operates.