What the Food & Grocery Conference told us about 2026

There’s something about a packed conference room that cuts through the noise. When you get retailers, manufacturers, economists and marketers all in the same space for two days, the real and honest picture of an industry starts to emerge.

We attended this year’s Australian Food & Grocery Conference, meeting customers, listening to sessions, and having the kinds of corridor conversations that don’t make it into the official programme. Here’s what stood out.

The economy is holding, but don’t mistake resilience for room to move

The macro picture is nuanced. Australia’s GDP growth is tracking at around 2.8% (Reserve Bank of Australia, 2026)  , which sounds healthy on paper. Consumer spending in grocery is broadly steady, and grocery inflation is running just below the wage cycle, so purchasing power is holding.

But the economists at the conference were clear-eyed about the ceiling. Australia’s sustainable growth rate is closer to 1–2%, and the structural constraints keeping it there aren’t going away anytime soon: a housing shortage, expensive energy, slow construction approvals, and flat productivity despite strong activity. The blunt read from the floor was that a moderate economic correction may be needed before supply and demand properly rebalance.

For food and grocery operators, this matters. Stability at the consumer end doesn’t mean calm in the cost stack. Input cost pressures - particularly fuel, energy and labour, are still working their way through the system. The margin squeeze isn’t abstract, it’s real, and it’s showing up on the P&L.

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Freight is a named cost, and that changes the conversation

One of the clearest moments of the conference came from the manufacturer panel. When representatives from McCain’s, Kimberly-Clark and McCormick talked about how they’re responding to rising input costs, freight wasn’t buried in the footnotes. It was named alongside fertiliser and fuel as a direct drag on margin.

The response from the panel was disciplined: drive out internal inefficiencies first, before attempting to pass cost through to retail. Map the full supply chain: from harvest, manufacturing, freight, to the shelf - and find every lever.

“Customers will not pay for inefficiencies. Focus on what we can do differently.”

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That’s a significant shift in framing. When freight moves from a fixed operational line item to an active efficiency lever, it changes what suppliers are looking for from their logistics partners, and it raises the bar for what a logistics partner needs to offer.

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Retailer expectations have crystallised around a few non-negotiables

Both Woolworths and Mars spoke at the conference, and what struck us was how independently they landed on the same themes.

DIFOT. Availability. End-to-end visibility. On-shelf performance. These aren’t new concepts, however the language used to describe them has sharpened. Technology and AI are now genuinely embedded in retailer operations, with multiple use cases live in the market and rolling improvement cycles built into the rhythm of the business. The expectation has moved from “we’re exploring this” to “this is how we operate.”

The Mars session produced a line that’s still sitting with us: “The closer the supplier, the clearer the path and strategy.” It was echoed in different words by Woolworths. It’s about visibility, responsiveness and shared accountability. Retailers and manufacturers are looking for partners who are close to the data, close to the problem, and close enough to act quickly when something shifts.

For suppliers navigating these expectations with lean logistics teams and tight margins, that kind of partnership is harder to build than it sounds. But the message from both sessions was consistent: supplier proximity is a competitive advantage, and it starts with the quality of information flowing through the supply chain.

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Marketing in a noisy market: the lesson from a water brand

The marketing session offered adifferent kind of provocation. The core argument: consumers are drowning inmessaging, and the brain has become extraordinarily good at filtering it out. Only genuinely standout creative breaks through  - not more volume, not louderheadlines.

The example that landed was Liquid Death  - a water brand that grew by radically reframing a commodity product. The takeaway wasn’t “be weird for the sake of it.” It was that differentiation comes from doing things fundamentally differently, not justcommunicating harder. And critically, you build brand and capability before you need it, not when pipeline pressure forces your hand.

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What this means for Ofload’s customers

For the FMCG businesses we work with, particularly those running lean supply chain and logistics teams - the conference themes connect directly to daily operational pressure.

Rising transport costs are becoming a line item that needs to be actively managed, not absorbed. The manufacturers on that panel aren’t accepting freight as a fixed cost anymore, and neither should you be.

The expectation from retailers around DIFOT and availability is only getting more precise. Meeting that standard requires visibility across your freight network; knowing where your product is, what’s moving, and where risk is building before it becomes a service failure.

And the supplier proximity theme cuts right to what Ofload is built for. We exist to give businesses the kind of end-to-end support that logistics teams can’t always build themselves - from booking and optimisation through to tracking and carrier management. Not a transactional carrier relationship, but a genuine operational partner who sits close to the data and close to your business.

The conversations at this year's conference reinforced something we feel strongly about: supply chain efficiency isn't a problem any one business solves alone. The retailers, manufacturers and suppliers who are making real progress are the ones treating it as a shared priority - collaborating across the chain rather than optimising in silos. That kind of cross-industry effort is what drives meaningful, lasting change. 

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 Interested in talking through what we heard, or how it connects to your business? Reach out to the Ofload team.