Kroger Unveils Most Comprehensive Digital App Refresh to Date

While The Kroger Co. first dipped its toe into digital transformation 15 years ago with the rollout of its original mobile app, the company has since made leaps and bounds in the digital space in an effort to evolve alongside its customers.

In what is perhaps its biggest tech-facing evolution to date, Kroger recently unveiled its refreshed digital app, which leans on personalization and simplicity to connect savings, pharmacy visits and online orders into an innovative platform.

While The Kroger Co. first dipped its toe into digital transformation 15 years ago with the rollout of its original mobile app, the company has since made leaps and bounds in the digital space in an effort to evolve alongside its customers.

In what is perhaps its biggest tech-facing evolution to date, Kroger recently unveiled its refreshed digital app, which leans on personalization and simplicity to connect savings, pharmacy visits and online orders into an innovative platform.  

According to Kroger Group VP, Digital Experience and E-Commerce Jody Kalmbach, the latest iteration of the app offers a customer-centric, food-forward experience for shoppers that was inspired by shoppers themselves.  

“We spent a lot of time listening to customer feedback,” Kalmbach told Progressive Grocer. “Not only talking to them directly, but also observing behavior within the app and really figuring out where there were friction points that needed to be addressed. So it really started with the customer.”

One of the key benefits of the refreshed app is a streamlined experience with simplified navigation and design. All savings offers like coupons, weekly ads and points are now in one location, and thanks to advanced data science, personalized coupons and deals are easier than ever to serve to users.

“When you think about savings in particular, this is just such an important component to our customers right now – bringing all the savings components together within one section of the app so that you're not having to navigate around between weekly ads and digital coupons and other personalized offers,” Kalmbach explained. “You can just go to one destination and see all of it.”  

The app also employs food-first storytelling with cleaner visuals and less clutter, which helps highlight fresh food, products and meal inspiration. Additionally, a next-level Shopping Assistant will go live later this year to help customers quickly put together their shopping basket through a conversational search model that can understand requests, build menus and add ingredients to customers’ carts.  

For Apple iOS users, all of these features are built upon the tech company’s new Liquid Glass software design. Kroger worked extensively with Apple on the updates, which Kalmbach said was another avenue to help improve the shopper experience.

“We think leaning into Apple's standards for their new design system is going to simplify the experience for customers,” Kalmbach explained. “We are one of the earliest adopters of it from a retail perspective and we're very excited about the feedback that we're getting from customers as they're engaging with it.” Continued Kalmbach: “I think the more and more you can deliver a sort of native experience to the device that you're on, that again underscores the customer-centric approach that will help simplify things.”

Other key features of the refreshed app include a renewed focus on discovery, as well as bringing mission-based experiences to the forefront. That discovery hinges on using what Kroger knows about its customers and delivering relevant new products, meal ideas or recipes directly to them within the app. Mission-based experiences tap into all the ways customers shop, whether they’re looking for dinner ideas or restocking their usuals, and making it as personalized as possible to do exactly what they need to do in the moment.

For Kalmbach, the launch of the refreshed app is another exciting beginning for Kroger.   “This is really sort of day one of this next level of the simplified experience,” she mused. “We're just going to continue to optimize it, both with where we know the customer wants us to go, but also based on feedback that we receive.”

Read the entire Current with Kroger for Period 10, 2025