The Next Grocery Frontier: Dietary Profiles and Health-Based Personalization

The New Battleground for Grocery Loyalty

For years, grocery personalization meant generic “healthy” badges and broad wellness aisles. That’s no longer enough. Shoppers with allergies, chronic conditions, or specific nutrition goals expect journeys that reflect their real-world constraints and choices, not just past purchases.

According to Incisiv’s Grocery Benchmark Report 2024, 68% of retailers now offer dietary restriction filters, and leaders are even more advanced, with 70% of leaders versus 34% of non-leaders allowing shoppers to filter by dietary preferences directly in search and browse. Yet only 38% of leaders and 13% of non-leaders enable shoppers to create full dietary profiles that capture ongoing needs rather than one-off filters.

Health-driven personalization is becoming the next competitive frontier. Grocers that move from simple tags to rich dietary profiles can unlock higher trust, more repeat visits, and durable, wellness-led loyalty.

Why Health-Based Personalization Is Still Lagging

Most retailers recognize wellness as a growth driver, but many still deliver fragmented or superficial experiences. Three gaps stand out:

• Fragmented view of shopper health: Many grocers offer single-filter options (such as gluten-free and lactose-free) but treat each session as a reset. Without a persistent dietary profile, health needs feel like a manual chore the shopper has to repeat every time.

• Shallow understanding of risk and goals: Allergies, chronic conditions, and long-term health goals rarely align. Few retailers capture health concerns, doctor-advised restrictions, and fitness or weight-loss goals in a structured profile that guides every decision.

• Limited use of AI for wellness journeys: AI engines often optimize for relevance or margin but ignore health context. This means they can still recommend items that conflict with a shopper’s needs, thereby missing an opportunity to position the grocer as a trusted wellness partner.

The result is a disconnect: shoppers are thinking in terms of “diet, health, and risk,” while many grocers still think in terms of “categories, price, and promos.”

From Static Preferences to Living Dietary Profiles

AI enables grocers to transition from one-time preferences to personalized dietary profiles that evolve with shoppers’ lives. Here’s how that shift comes to life.

1. Capture the Whole Dietary Picture, Not Just the Last Basket

Dietary profile creation

The first step is a profile that reflects the whole person, not just one transaction.

• Structured profile setup: Leading retailers now offer explicit dietary profile creation, with 38% of leaders vs 13% of non-leaders enabling shoppers to define allergies, medical constraints, and nutrition goals in one place.
• Multi-signal enrichment: Profiles deepen over time by blending declared data (e.g., allergens, diets) with behavioral signals, such as recurring “free-from” purchases or consistent avoidance of certain ingredients.
• Unified across channels: When profiles sync across app, web, and in-store loyalty, shoppers do not need to restate their needs, and every touchpoint reflects their health context.

This transforms dietary profile AI from a checkbox feature into a foundation for health-based grocery personalization.‍

2. Turn Dietary Profiles into Everyday Health Guidance

Health concern tracking

A profile matters only when it shapes decisions on every visit. That means turning dietary data into daily guidance.

• Health-aware recommendations and filters: With 68% of retailers offering dietary restriction filters, the next step is to link filters to the shopper profile, so shoppers automatically see “safe” and goal-aligned products first.
• Expert-backed journeys: In 2023, leaders were 29% more likely than non-leaders to offer personalized interactions with nutrition or shopping experts, demonstrating how advisory support can be integrated into dietary profiles 
• Tele-nutrition integration: Only 9% of retailers offer tele-nutrition appointments, but leaders are far ahead in enabling tele-nutrition booking directly from the experience: 63% of leaders versus 6% of non-leaders 

When done well, health concern tracking turns the grocery app from a place to simply “check off a list” into a practical companion for everyday wellness.

3. Use AI to Track Goals, Outcomes, and Wellness Signals

AI for wellness personalization

Once profiles and journeys are in place, AI can connect the dots between intent, behavior, and outcomes.

• Goal-aware nudges: AI can adapt recommendations and bundles to specific goals such as lowering sodium, increasing protein, or improving gut health, guided by what shoppers consistently buy and avoid.
• AI as a wellness tool: In a recent survey, 35% of Americans already use AI to manage aspects of their health and wellness, including meal planning and nutrition research, highlighting growing comfort with AI in everyday health decisions.
• Wellness at market scale: The global health and wellness market is estimated at $6.87 trillion in 2025 and is projected to reach around $11 trillion by 2034, underscoring the long-term upside of aligning grocery journeys with a broader wellness economy.

These trends frame wellness grocery trends as a durable, structural shift rather than a passing fad

Why It Pays Off: The Business Case for Dietary Profiles

Health-based grocery personalization is not just a customer experience upgrade. It directly supports growth and margin.

• More spending from health-focused shoppers: In the U.S., one-third of food and beverage spending is now driven by health-focused decisions, totaling an estimated $638 billion, according to Circana’s “A Pulse on Consumer Well-Being” report. Retailers that serve these needs more precisely can capture a disproportionate share of this spend.
• Access to a fast-growing wellness revenue pool: The personalized retail nutrition and wellness market was valued at approximately $3.39 billion in 2023 and is projected to grow at a CAGR of 15%+ from 2024 to 2030. Grand View Research predicts that grocers who embed dietary profile AI can tap into this growth with subscription, add-on, and premium wellness propositions.
• Stickier loyalty and lower churn: When shoppers feel their allergies are protected, their health goals respected, and their time saved, they are far less likely to switch. The combination of safer baskets, less cognitive effort, and ongoing wellness support turns dietary profiles into a loyalty engine rather than a one-off feature.

What Grocers Need to Make Dietary Profiles Work

. To operationalize health-based personalization, grocers need three foundations.

• Clear, value-led profile design: Profiles should be easy to set up, centered on shopper benefits (“keep your family safe,” “simplify your diet”), and flexible enough to accommodate evolving health needs, not just static diet labels.
• Rich, health-ready product data: Every SKU needs standardized attributes for allergens, nutrition thresholds, certifications, and health claims. This enables engines to reliably match dietary profiles with suitable products without requiring manual intervention.
• Trust, consent, and governance: Health-related data is sensitive. Grocers must be transparent about how dietary information is used, provide granular controls, and avoid any experience that feels like “health scoring” or cross-selling unrelated services.

Retailers that invest in these capabilities can safely scale dietary profile AI while maintaining shopper trust.

Takeaway: Turn Wellness into a Loyalty Driver

Dietary profiles and health-based grocery personalization are becoming the next significant differentiator in the grocery industry. Leaders are already pulling ahead, with 38% enabling complete dietary profile creation and tele-nutrition, as well as expert access and health-aware filters. 

The opportunity is clear: utilize AI to understand dietary needs, guide everyday choices, and minimize friction for shoppers seeking to eat and live better. Grocers that seize this next frontier will turn wellness into lasting loyalty. Those who delay will continue to watch as health-focused shoppers drift to competitors who better understand their profiles.

Need a custom fulfillment roadmap or a competitive benchmark? Contact the Grocery Doppio team at insights@grocerydoppio.com