You may pay a price set just for you.
You've probably noticed the price of groceries creeping up. What you may not have noticed is that Kroger is quietly changing how it sets those prices - and the technology behind it could one day decide what you, specifically, pay at the register. While it may sound like science fiction, it is unfortunately very real and happening in Kroger stores right now.
Here's what "surveillance pricing" actually is, what Kroger has to do with it, and why you should care.
First, to understand "surveillance pricing," we have to understand some related terms.
1. Digital price tags
If you’ve been down a Kroger aisle lately, you may have noticed paper price tags replaced by little digital screens. These are called “electronic shelf labels”, or ESLs. While this may seem like a harmless sign of the times, ESLs mean Kroger can change the price on any item in seconds, from a central computer, across a whole store or a whole region.
2. Dynamic pricing
Because the price is now just a number on a screen, it can be changed on short notice and as often as Kroger wants, based on time of day, weather conditions, how busy the store is, or how fast something is selling. Many users of rideshare apps like Uber and Lyft will be familiar with “surge pricing” which refers to price increases during heavy traffic or severe weather; dynamic pricing in grocery stores is the same idea. U.S. Senators have warned that digital tags could let grocers "calibrate prices to extract maximum profits," using things like weather, holidays, or natural disasters as leverage to get more money out of customers. Kroger claims it does not use surge pricing.
3. Surveillance pricing
This is when a store uses data it has collected about you to set a price specifically for you. As New York's Attorney General put it: "one shopper could buy a gallon of milk at one price while another shopper would pay more for the same gallon later that same day." Not because of a difference in the product, but because of a difference in the customer. Why would a store do this? To maximize profits. Maybe it thinks you can afford more. Maybe it knows you're in a hurry, or that you have no other grocery store nearby.
This raises serious concerns about fair and equal access to food and the potential for discriminatory pricing. And while the tag on the shelf is the part you can see, the part you can't see is the data Kroger has been collecting on you for years.
So is Kroger actually doing this? Here are the facts.
What's proven: Kroger has built exactly the kind of system that surveillance pricing would require. The company serves about 63 million households a year. More than 95% of Kroger's transactions are tied to a loyalty card (The "Kroger Plus" card you scan for the sale price) and Kroger not only tracks the user and purchase data linked to loyalty cards, it makes money from it. The company's data-and-advertising arm helped generate $1.5 billion in profit from its "alternative" businesses in its latest fiscal year. In other words, your shopping history is one of Kroger's most profitable products.
A 2025 Consumer Reports investigation found Kroger builds detailed "secret shopper profiles" on loyalty members, even estimating each shopper's income. The investigation revealed that one customer's profile data may have been shared with more than 50 other companies.
Digital price tags began appearing quietly at Kroger in the fall of 2025 and by summer 2026, reporting showed them in nearly one in four of Kroger's roughly 2,700 stores, across almost all of its divisions. Kroger recently confirmed its Columbus division is next, with about 20 stores already done and 60 more planned by the end of the year, and the whole region converted by the end of 2027.
What Kroger says it does NOT do: Kroger has gone on the record saying that it "does not and has never engaged in 'surge pricing,'" and that it does not use facial recognition tied to its shelf labels or pricing. Independent researchers who studied more than 180 million Kroger prices after implementation of digital tags did not find evidence of surge pricing...so far.
Here's the concern: The capability is real and documented. The data is disclosed in Kroger's own filings. Kroger denies using it to charge individuals different prices today. The problem is what Kroger hasn't promised, and what is yet to come.
When Kroger pledged "no surge pricing," it said nothing about personalized pricing, charging different shoppers different prices based on their data. It has made no written commitment that an item will have just one price per store per day. The technology and the data are loaded and ready. We're being asked to trust that Kroger will never pull the trigger.
What could Kroger do with this system?
Charging more to people with fewer choices. If Kroger is the only major grocery store in your town, you can't just walk out on prices you don’t want to pay. A pricing system that knows that has every incentive to take advantage of it.
Charging more when you're desperate. A parent who just searched "baby has a fever" on their phone could, in theory, be shown a higher price on a thermometer or children's medicine.
Charging more because of who the data thinks you are. When a grocery store secretly estimates your income, the obvious next question is whether that estimate ever affects the price you pay at the register.
Prices you can't trust or check. Today you can see a mispriced item and dispute it. When prices change by the second and are tailored to you, there's no recourse when prices aren’t as expected.
Even if Kroger never flips the switch on personalized pricing, the bigger issue is trust. Groceries aren't a luxury. They're a basic necessity that families need to survive. A grocery store shouldn't treat the checkout line like a poker game where the house can see your cards.
Lawmakers are paying attention
Families aren't the only ones raising the alarm.
U.S. Senators and House members have pressed Kroger for answers and introduced bills to rein in surveillance pricing and restrict digital tags in large grocery stores.
The Federal Trade Commission’s ongoing investigation into surveillance pricing found that companies use a startling range of personal data to set individualized prices, down to your mouse movements on a webpage.
Maryland and Connecticut have already passed laws restricting personalized pricing on food. In June 2026, New York's legislature passed the "One Fair Price Act," which would ban it outright — and it's now waiting on the governor's signature. Similar bills are pending in California, New Jersey, Illinois, and several other states.
The bottom line
Kroger is installing the most powerful pricing technology in its history at the exact moment it knows more about its shoppers than ever before - and it has refused to promise it won't use one to feed the other.
You shouldn't need to be a data scientist to buy groceries without being profiled. You shouldn't pay more than your neighbor for the same gallon of milk because an algorithm decided you would. And you shouldn't be at the mercy of a corporation that has given you every reason not to trust them.
That's why we're asking Kroger for three simple commitments: one price per item per store, per day; full transparency about what data it collects and how prices are set; and a binding promise, not a press-release promise, never to set prices based on who you are.
Kroger is watching its shoppers. It's time shoppers watched back.
Have you seen a shelf price that didn't match the register at your Kroger? We're collecting shopper experiences from across the country. Tell us your story at KrogerHurtsFamilies.com
Sources & further reading
Federal Trade Commission, surveillance-pricing study orders (July 23, 2024) and initial findings (Jan. 17, 2025)
The Kroger Co., Form 10-K and Q4/FY2025 results
UC San Diego / UT-Austin working paper on shelf labels and pricing (July 2025)
