Kroger has revealed that boost by Kroger will now include Disney's streaming options as part of its annual membership subscriptions.

According to Progressive Grocer, for its $99 a year plan, new enrollees and existing members may select a complimentary subscription to Disney Basic with ads, Hulu with ads, or ESPN plus for the duration of their $99 annual membership.

For its dollar 59 plan, new enrollees and existing members may select a complimentary, one time, six month subscription to Disney Basic with ads, Hulu with ads, or ESPN Plus.

Chris Kroger landed Disney.

It's big news.

Yeah.

So what do you think this means for the retail subscription landscape?

Oh, wow.

I mean, if you're scoring at home, and let's score this at home.

Yes, you've got Amazon with Amazon prime.

Pretty formidable, right?

Kroger and possibly albertsons down the road, who knows?

Disney plus.

Yep, also pretty formidable.

Walmart, Paramount plus, not as compelling, but okay.

I mean, especially if you like Yellowstone, wherever the hell that show is going.

And so the regional grocers, if you think about it, are going to have a tough time competing because people are going to become more sticky to Amazon, Kroger and Walmart for e commerce, grocery by way of these subscription programs and how enticing they are.

And once you get people into them, it's hard to switch.

Right.

And so the other part of this that makes me wonder who loses out nationally is target too.

Like who's target bringing into the party at this time?

I mean, is PBS available?

Like, like what other.

They have a great menopause documentary coming out this weekend or next weekend.

You never know.

Services out there, they're not dead yet.

Yeah, maybe Netflix.

Maybe.

Maybe Netflix gets into this party at some point, which would be kind of game changing if you could convince them to come in.

But, you know, I think grabbing Disney was a great coup for Kroger, and people are gonna rue the day, I think, that they were able to get that potentially, given all the content Disney has under its umbrella.

So I think this is big news, and it just shows you that the subscription battles are heating up.

They're going to get more and more varied and more and more differentiating and more and more enticing.

Yeah, I mean, I think the consumer wins.

Yeah, agreed.

We interviewed Vanessa Yates.

She's the SVP of Walmart plus a couple days ago.

And one of the things that I thought was most interesting about that conversation is when we talked about the future of the Walmart plus membership.

One, how do you keep that price point at $98 and not increase it yearly like we're seeing from Amazon and some of the others.

And how do you get more products or more value for your consumers under that same umbrella?

And one of the things that she talked about that I think will be really interesting, especially as more Gen Zers and Gen Alpha come into the subscription market.

What else do they add to that?

And when does hospitality start to come?

And airlines like, you know, we know that that generation prioritizes experiences, so how do they bring more of that into this experience?

Even healthcare and other things, too.

So that's something that we'll be watching really closely and on one side of it, and then I think the other part is Christy Argyll on Albertsons media collective we talked to yesterday, too.

And you think about the retail media side of it and the data sharing that's happening between these companies now, when you're connecting these programs and you have visibility not only to what the retail or what the customers are doing in a kroger, but what their behaviors are on Disney, on ESPN, on Hulu, and then what their, you know, down the road, what their extensions might be, where they like to vacation, what, you know, they.

What spending they do on their credit cards, and help kind of further inform the full package of what that membership can offer them.

Yep, 100% agree.