Breez AI's white-label shopping assistant is live in more than 100 stores owned by members of Associated Wholesale Grocers — and the Tampa, Fla.-based platform has now hired the co-op's former chief executive, David Smith, as chairman of its board of directors.

Smith ran Kansas City, Kan.-based AWG, the largest retailer-owned grocery cooperative in the United States, for more than eight years as president and CEO. His grocery retail and wholesale distribution career spans almost five decades. Breez AI announced the appointment on April 29, 2026, describing the role as covering strategic growth, industry relationships and governance as the company scales.

What does the appointment change?

The move puts a veteran wholesaler operator at the head of a technology vendor that is selling directly into his former channel. For a company courting regional and independent retailers, a chairman who has, in the founder's words, "earned the trust of thousands of independent operators" functions as distribution infrastructure of its own: Smith's relationships shorten the sales cycle into a segment that large platforms typically struggle to reach store by store.

The deployment numbers give the arrangement its operational substance. Breez AI's consumer-facing assistant is already running at 100-plus AWG member stores following a wide-scale deployment, and is preparing to roll out to Harps Food Stores and other independents in the coming months. That is the measured footprint — store counts at a single co-op plus one named chain commitment — against which the company's broader scaling claims should be judged.

The platform's economics rest on a white-label model. Retailers deploy the AI assistant under their own brand, with shopper data and the loyalty relationship staying with the retailer rather than the vendor. For independents competing against chains with proprietary personalization stacks, the pitch is that the capability arrives without ceding the customer data asset that underpins basket growth and repeat-purchase economics.

Smith framed the stakes in direct terms. "Independent grocers are facing the most consequential technology shift of my career," he said. "AI is going to redefine how shoppers plan meals, build baskets and choose where to shop. What drew me to Breez AI is that it puts that capability in the hands of the independent retailer, branded as theirs, while keeping the data and loyalty relationship where they belong. That is exactly the kind of infrastructure independents need to compete, and I want to help build it."

Who is David Smith?

Smith spent more than eight years leading AWG, whose retailer-owned co-op structure makes its member stores simultaneously its shareholders. His nearly 50 years in grocery retail and wholesale distribution cover the buying, merchandising and logistics functions that an AI platform targeting this channel must integrate with — inventory, promotions, meal planning — if it is to influence basket composition rather than sit alongside it as a chat feature.

Breez AI founder and CEO Tal Zlotnitsky emphasized that Smith had already been contributing informally before the chairmanship formalized his involvement. "David has operated at every level of this industry and earned the trust of thousands of independent operators over a career most of us can only aspire to," Zlotnitsky said. "Having him as chairman is a signal to the market, to our customers and to our team about where we are headed. He has been investing his time and counsel in Breez AI for some time, and formalizing his leadership role reflects how serious this moment is for the company."

How does Breez AI plan to monetize?

The company's revenue logic extends beyond subscription-style platform fees. Its retail media network product, GroceryAIsle, pushes the platform into monetization by enabling independent grocers to capture retail media revenue — a high-margin income stream that large chains such as Walmart Connect and Albertsons Media Collective have built at scale, but which stores without national reach have largely been unable to access individually.

Breez AI is also expanding the product's scope. Version 2.0, slated for release in the second quarter of 2026, moves the platform beyond meal planning into a broader generative AI assistant designed to support shoppers across the full grocery journey — from planning through basket building.

What to watch

The measurable indicators of whether the Smith chairmanship translates into channel penetration are straightforward: the count of AWG member stores running the assistant, the completion of the Harps deployment across its grocery stores, adoption among independents outside the AWG network, and disclosed revenue from GroceryAIsle's retail media placements. To date the company has published store counts but no transaction volumes or media revenue figures, leaving the monetization claims asserted rather than measured.

Smith's mandate — strategic growth, industry relationships and governance — positions him to convert wholesale-channel credibility into distribution breadth during a year in which AI assistants from Instacart and other national players are also moving into grocery shopping interfaces. Whether independent grocers adopt white-label AI at scale, and whether they can turn it into retail media income, will become clearer as the Harps rollout and Version 2.0 land in the second quarter of 2026.