In a press release, Kroger announced that Mary Ellen Adcock is the company's new Chief Merchandising and Marketing Officer. Adcock will be succeeding Stuart Aitken who will remain in his role through December 31, 2024. 

Mary Ellen Adcock joined Kroger in 1999 in the company's manufacturing division, where she held a variety of leadership positions. In 2009, she was promoted to vice president of deli/bakery manufacturing, and in 2012, Adcock became vice president of natural foods. In 2014, she led merchandising and operations for the Columbus division.

Mary Ellen Adcock named Kroger's chief merchandising and operating officer

Adcock was promoted to group vice president of retail operations in 2016 and named senior vice president of retail operations in 2019. In 2022, Adcock was a Top Women in Grocery Trailblazer.

Adcock served as Kroger's senior vice president of operations since 2019. In this role, she leads strategic operations for the company's more than 2,700 stores across 35 states supporting more than 416,000 associates and serving 11 million customers every day.

Adcock oversees customer experience, associate experience, asset protection, process change, and productivity improvement initiatives and is responsible for maintaining the highest food safety and regulatory standards.

The organization added that "as senior vice president of operations, Adcock has delivered more than $1 billion in annual operations savings for six consecutive years," which provided Kroger the ability to einvest those savings to consistently lower prices for customers and increase wages for associates. 

Adcock achieved this efficiency goal while also improving the customer and associate experience by developing Kroger's Full, Fresh & Friendly: Every Customer Every Time program.