Retail Daily Minute | McCormick's $45B Unilever Food Deal, Macy's Launches Ask Macy's AI Shopping Assistant & Allbirds Sells for $39M

Hello everyone, I am Chris Walton and you are listening to the retail Daily Minute, your quickest fastest breakdown of all the day's top retail news. Today is April 1st, 2026 and this edition is brought to you with the help and support of DuVo. Someone on your operations team is likely copying and pasting data between systems right now. Who knows, you might even be doing it while you're listening to this very podcast. I hope that is not the case, but it could in fact be true. So why not let DuVo do that work instead? And to learn more visit DuVo.ai, that's DuVo.ai. And did you listen to the podcast I recorded with DuVo CEO Tom Cooper that I told you about yesterday yet? If not, then what are you waiting for? Because it is going to absolutely blow your mind. In today's retail Daily Minute we've got news on Macy's rolling out a new AI-powered shopping assistant and the bittersweet but predictable final chapter of the All Bird story. While we begin today with the biggest deal in packaged food in years, McCormick is acquiring Unilever's food business in a transaction that values the unit at nearly $45 billion. To be specific about what's on the table here, McCormick will pay $15.7 billion in cash with Unilever's shareholders ultimately owning 55.1% of the combined company and Unilever itself retaining a 9.9% stake. The portfolio McCormick is absorbing is a who's who of pantry staples like Hellman's mayonnaise, my fave on french fries, nor seasonings and soups, Marmite and more. Combined with what McCormick already owns, specifically Frank's Red Hot, Cholula, French's Mustard and Mayo, you are looking at a condiments and flavor company of truly extraordinary scale. The deal is expected to close in mid-2027 pending shareholder and regulatory approval and McCormick is projecting 3% to 5% organic sales growth after integration. McCormick's CEO, Brennan Foley, has noted that the company has been eyeing Unilever's food business for years and Unilever's desire to shed slower growing food assets in favor of its faster growing personal care segment created the opening. This is a case where two-party strategic imperatives aligned almost perfectly. Unilever already completed the separation of its ice cream business late last year and this deal continues that sharpening of focus. For McCormick, the acquisition dramatically expands the top of its revenue funnel in categories adjacent to its core spice and seasoning business and about 70% of the acquired sales volume comes from just two brands, in Hellman's and Norr, which limits integration complexity somewhat. But the market's initial reaction tells you everything about the skepticism around mega mergers in this space. Unilever shares fell roughly 6% and Unilever also dropped about 4% on the news. Because investors have seen this movie before with deals like Kraft-Tynes and Keurig Dr. Pepper and they know the gap between deal logic and deal execution can be enormous. Barclays, for example, flag the execution risk and the fact that Unilever's shareholders will hold majority ownership of the combined entities as reasons for tempered enthusiasm. The deal does not include Unilever's food business in India as well, which is a notable carve out to watch as it implies continued complexity in one of the world's most important consumer markets. McCormick will maintain its headquarters in Hunt Valley, Maryland, add an international headquarters in the Netherlands and pursue a secondary European stock listing, all of which signals this is intended to be a global integration and not a bolt on. Now before we get to our next headline, let's take a quick break to hear about another one of our sponsors, Miracle. Miracle is the catalyst of commerce. Over 450 retailers are opening new revenue streams with marketplaces, dropship and retail media and succeeding. With Miracle, unlock more products, more partners and more profits without the heavy lifting. What's holding you back? Visit Miracle.com that's M-I-R-A-K-L.com to learn more. Alright we are back and our next headline has to do with Macy's, launching an AI powered conversational shopping assistant called Ask Macy's. And the early performance numbers I have to say are turning some heads. Formerly released on March 23rd after a quiet internal dark launch in December, Ask Macy's is powered by Google's Gemini platform and is now available across Macy's digital properties including its app. The headline number here is that during the beta testing period revenue per visit was 4.75 times higher among customers who used Ask Macy's compared to those who didn't. This is a significant early signal and it's the kind of data point that tends to accelerate internal investment decisions. The tool helps shoppers discover brands, find personalized product recommendation and includes a virtual try on feature. And crucially Macy's went through an internal feedback loop with employees before public release to refine tone, functionality and the types of clarifying decisions the assistant asks. What's also worth paying attention to here is the framing that Macy's chief customer and digital officer Max Mangy put forward at Shop Talk. He said Ask Macy's quote is not about search, it's about curated discovery. That distinction matters enormously. Search is reactive. You get what you ask for. Curated discovery is proactive. You get what you need and sometimes what you didn't know you needed. A sentiment with which I agree 100% with Max. If Macy's can consistently deliver on that promise it has the potential to replicate the best version of the in-store associate experience at digital scale, which has been the holy grail for department store operators for over a decade. The tool also transparently tells users quote our AI is learning and may make mistakes end quote, which is also the right posture at this stage and likely builds more trust than over claiming. The broader implication for the department store space is also significant. Macy's has been navigating a prolonged restructuring closing underperforming stores while investing in its Bloomingdale's and Blue Mercury formats. A tool that demonstrably lifts revenue per visit if those beta numbers hold at scale could be a meaningful lever for improving the digital economics of the core Macy's template. So let's all watch how quickly Macy's pushes this into loyalty marketing and whether it integrates with personalized email and push notification flows. And finally we close today with a story that is part eulogy and also part cautionary tale. Allbirds has agreed to sell all of its assets and intellectual property to American Exchange Group for just $39 million. To put that number in context, Allbirds raised $348 million in its 2021 IPO and briefly commanded a valuation north of $4 billion on its first day of trading. A $30 million sales price to a privately held management firm that owns Aerosol and Jonathan Adler is a staggering fall from that height to say the least. Shareholders still need to approve the deal which is expected to close in Q2 with proceeds distributed in Q3. Shares actually jumped unbelievably 36% in after hours trading on the news which sounds counterintuitive until you realize that the stock had already fallen so far that the $39 million sales price represented a genuine premium to where it was trading. The Allbirds story is one, retail and venture capital will be studying for years. The brand had something genuinely rare at one point, a product with a clear point of view, a loyal early adopter base in Silicon Valley and a sustainability narrative that resonated. The problem of course was the post IPO playbook. Allbirds expanded aggressively into physical retail and adjacent categories, leggings, brackets, performance running shoes, just to name a few and that diluted rather than extended what made the brand special. Co-founder Tim Brown later acknowledged the expansion it cost the company quote some of our DNA but rapid growth as it turns out is not always the same thing as smart growth and the pressure to grow into a multi-billion dollar valuation pushed Allbirds into territory its brand simply could not support. American Exchange Group will now attempt to stabilize and extend the brand the way it has with other acquired names. The wool sneaker isn't dead but its next chapter will look very different from the story its founders imagined. That's all for today. Thanks for tuning in. Once again, this has been On Me Talk Retail. I am Chris Wallin and as always be careful out there.