Key Takeaways

1. Grocery-anchored retail has not just recovered — it has pulled away from every other retail asset class in investor demand, occupancy stability, and development activity. CBRE, JP Morgan, and JLL all name it the most favored retail property type heading into 2026.
2. Grocers are actively expanding. More than 80% of new retail space built in Dallas-Fort Worth in 2025 was occupied by grocery concepts. Another 34 stores are expected to open in that market alone over the next two years.
3. The conversations at ICSC Las Vegas are no longer just about landing a grocer. They are about landing the right grocer — one whose customer profile, format, and volume expectations actually match the trade area. Getting that wrong is expensive.
4. Landlords and developers who arrive at ICSC with independent sales forecasting and market validation have a fundamentally different conversation with grocery tenants than those who arrive with demographics and hope.
5. Grocery expansion in 2026 is format-specific. Discount, specialty, and small-format concepts are growing faster than conventional full-line stores in many markets. Understanding which format actually fits your trade area is the starting point for every serious grocer conversation.

Grocery has always been the anchor of retail real estate. What is different right now is the degree to which it has separated from everything else.

JP Morgan’s 2026 Commercial Real Estate Outlook describes retail as experiencing its strongest valuations in a decade among active shopping centers, and points directly to grocery-anchored and neighborhood centers as the engine driving that performance. CBRE says risk-adjusted returns in well-located grocery-anchored centers look especially attractive this year. More than 80% of the new retail space built in Dallas-Fort Worth in 2025 was absorbed by grocery concepts, and 34 more stores are expected to open in that market through 2026 and 2027. Institutional capital that spent years avoiding retail is returning, and grocery-anchored centers are leading that re-entry. The fundamentals are not subtle.

At ICSC Las Vegas this May, grocery will be the most active conversation on the show floor. Grocers across every format are hunting for sites. Developers and landlords are competing for their attention. Municipalities are hoping to attract them. And investors are paying a premium for centers where a grocery anchor is already in place and performing. Understanding what drives that performance — and what threatens it — is what separates the participants in those conversations from the observers.

Not All Grocery Is the Same

The single biggest mistake we see in grocery-anchored conversations is treating grocery as a monolithic category. It is not. A conventional full-line grocer, a discount operator like Aldi or Lidl, a specialty concept like Sprouts, and an ethnic or community-focused market all have fundamentally different customer profiles, volume expectations, site requirements, and competitive sensitivities. What makes a trade area viable for one format can make it exactly wrong for another.

This is where field intelligence matters. Discount grocery operators are expanding aggressively right now because two years of consumer trade-down behavior have built a loyal, habitual customer base that shows up weekly and spends consistently. Their expansion criteria are tight and data-driven. Aldi and Lidl have both posted traffic growth well above the broader supermarket category, and their site selection teams know it. They are not going to open in a market they have not already modeled. When they show up to ICSC Las Vegas with interest in a specific corridor, it means their internal analysis already supports the location. The developer or landlord who shows up with independent validation that mirrors their own model is the one who shortens the path to a deal.

Specialty grocery is operating differently. Sprouts is opening 40 locations this year, and most of its recent expansion is running through smaller-format stores that fit into mixed-use and urban infill locations where a conventional grocer would not go. Their customer is a different household profile than Aldi’s, and the trade area math that works for a discount operator will produce different results for a specialty concept. The developer who knows which concept fits which trade area before the meeting starts is not guessing. They have done the research.

Why the Landlord-Grocer Conversation Has Changed

There was a time when securing a grocery anchor was largely a function of relationships and persistence. A developer with the right connections and the right site could get a grocer to look seriously at a project and work through the analysis together.

That dynamic has not disappeared, but it has changed significantly. Grocers today are operating with more analytical rigor than at any point in the past two decades, and they are doing it because the cost of a bad location is existential. A grocery store that opens below its sales forecast does not just underperform — it creates a cascading problem for the entire center, strains the operator’s portfolio, and puts the landlord-tenant relationship under serious pressure from the first lease year. Grocers know this. Their real estate and research teams are sophisticated, and their site approval process is not going to be moved by optimism or a compelling developer pitch alone.

What moves the process is independent market analysis that matches the grocer’s own methodology. A sales forecast built from gravity modeling and field research, a competitive assessment that shows how existing stores in the trade area are actually performing, a clear picture of the demographic profile that drives the grocer’s core customer, and an honest evaluation of the risks the site carries. The landlords and developers who bring that analysis to ICSC Las Vegas are having a categorically different conversation than the ones who arrive with broker packages.

What Investors Are Seeing

The investment market has arrived at the same conclusion the operating market reached a few years earlier. Grocery-anchored centers deliver what institutional capital wants right now: stable cash flow, low vacancy, high tenant credit quality, and structural protection from the dynamics threatening other retail formats. Best-in-class grocery-anchored centers in top markets are trading at cap rates between 5.25% and 5.5%. Institutional interest has expanded beyond trophy assets to include neighborhood centers, strip centers anchored by strong grocery operators, and value-add opportunities where a center’s anchor is performing but the inline mix has room to improve.

Burton Property Group recently recapitalized three grocery-anchored centers in Alabama for over $124 million. Ram Realty acquired a Sprouts-anchored center in North Carolina, with their principal describing grocery-anchored retail as benefiting from attractive sector fundamentals driven by strong tenant demand and limited new supply. The institutional buyers are not chasing yield. They are following the traffic, and the traffic is following the grocery anchor.

For owners attending ICSC Las Vegas with grocery-anchored assets, this is the strongest disposition environment for well-performing centers in years. For developers and landlords without a grocery anchor, it is the clearest signal yet that landing the right grocer is not just a leasing objective — it is a portfolio strategy.

The Research Question That Determines Everything

Every serious grocer conversation eventually arrives at the same question: what will this store do in sales? That number drives everything — rent affordability, the developer’s pro forma, the municipality’s tax revenue projections, and the grocer’s decision to commit. Getting it right is the difference between a deal and a dead end.

We have been building grocery sales forecast models for a long time. The methodology involves going into the field, assessing competitive store performance directly, understanding the actual trade area dynamics, and building a gravity model that reflects the real world rather than theoretical assumptions. It is not a process that can be shortcut with traffic data or demographic averages. The grocers who use this kind of analysis — and most sophisticated operators do — achieve forecast accuracy within 5% of actual first-year sales. That level of precision is what makes a deal bankable.

At ICSC Las Vegas, the landlords and developers who arrive with that level of analysis on the table are not hoping a grocer says yes. They are presenting a credible case for why the answer should be yes — and giving the grocer’s real estate committee everything they need to approve it internally.

CRE360 has been building grocery sales forecasting models and market validation studies for landlords, developers, and municipalities for decades. If you are heading to ICSC Las Vegas this May with a site that needs a grocery anchor — or a grocery tenant strategy that needs sharper intelligence — schedule a consultation before the show.