Walk into an El Super, an H-E-B, an ALDI, a Costco, or a 99 Ranch Market this week, and you're not just looking at a grocery run. You're looking at a demographic story playing out in real time, and foot traffic data is one of the clearest ways to watch it happen.For years, the retail industry treated Gen Z as a segment to react to. New loyalty tier here, a TikTok campaign there. But the location data tells a different story: Gen Z isn't adapting to retail. Retail is adapting to Gen Z.That's not a marketing footnote. It's the whole shift.For decades, grocery growth was built on a simple formula:Mass marketingNational brand dominanceBroad demographic targetingOne-size-fits-all merchandisingThe underlying assumption: consumers will adapt to us.Gen Z flipped that assumption on its head. The expectation today is that brands and retailers adapt to the customer, their culture, their budget, their neighborhood, their values. It sounds like a subtle rewording. In foot traffic data, it shows up as a full-blown market realignment.