Fresh is one of grocery's greatest paradoxes.
Fresh departments, from produce and meat to seafood, deli, bakery, and floral, are some of grocery's biggest trip drivers. They influence where shoppers choose to spend their grocery dollars and help shape the overall basket. Yet despite their importance to the shopper mission, much of fresh has historically been difficult to measure.
For years, retail media could connect advertising exposure to packaged goods purchases through barcode-based attribution. But many fresh products operate differently. Loose produce, service-counter items, and other weighted products rely on PLUs rather than UPCs, leaving a meaningful share of the fresh basket outside traditional closed-loop measurement.
As marketers face increasing pressure to prove the impact of every media dollar, that gap has become harder to ignore.
Fresh Drives More Than Category Sales
Albertsons Companies shopper research consistently ranks fresh produce among the top stated trip drivers. In traditional grocery, deli, dairy, and meat also rank among the leading reasons shoppers choose a specific store to shop in. In fact, getting the best fresh products remains one of the primary reasons shoppers visit multiple retailers in a given week.
That shopper behavior reflects a broader industry trend. According to EMARKETER, 85.4% of U.S. consumers purchase fresh foods at grocery stores and supermarkets, making them the most popular destination for fresh purchases by a wide margin.
When shoppers choose where to buy fresh, they're often choosing where to buy everything else as well.
Everything about fresh points to its value. The challenge has been proving that value with the same rigor applied to packaged goods.
The Measurement Gap
Traditional retail media measurement was built around UPCs. A packaged product is scanned, matched to a product catalog, and tied back to advertising exposure.
Fresh products often break that model.
Many produce, meat, seafood, and deli items are sold loose and by weight. They transact using PLUs, the four- and five-digit codes commonly found on fresh products. While PLUs identify the item itself, they were never designed to carry brand information. As a result, many fresh purchases have historically fallen outside closed-loop attribution.
For years, marketers relied on halo metrics, category trends, or limited UPC-based reporting, leaving a significant portion of fresh sales unaccounted for.
The result? One of grocery's most influential departments was also one of its hardest to measure.
Bringing the Whole Fresh Basket Into View
Albertsons Media Collective's Fresh Closed Loop Measurement capability connects campaign exposure to verified fresh purchases across both in-store and online transactions using first-party loyalty data spanning 51 million members.
Vendor and SKU mapping now covers approximately 98% of fresh SKUs and approximately 100% of weighted PLUs across produce, meat, seafood, bakery, deli, and floral categories.
In practical terms, that means the loose bananas count now, not just the packaged goods.
Albertsons Media Collective is currently piloting Fresh Closed Loop Measurement with fresh brands and commodity organizations across meat, deli, and produce.
Today, Fresh Closed Loop Measurement enables advertisers to measure attributed sales, attributed orders, and return on ad spend (ROAS) across fresh categories that have historically been difficult to measure. Looking ahead, it creates a foundation for deeper basket-level insights and future incrementality testing.
What This Means for Fresh Advertisers
For growers, commodity boards, fresh suppliers, and branded fresh companies, Fresh Closed Loop Measurement helps turn assumptions into verified outcomes.
Fresh Closed Loop Measurement can help advertisers:
- Measure categories that were previously difficult to attribute
- Understand campaign impact across the fresh basket, not just select packaged items
- Connect media investment to verified sales outcomes rather than directional estimates
- Evaluate seasonal programs against the demand windows they were designed to influence
- Build a stronger business case for fresh media using measurable performance
Ready to learn more about how Fresh Closed Loop Measurement can support your business? Connect with your Albertsons Media Collective representative.