Kroger plans to eliminate about 3,000 corporate jobs over the next three years as part of a broader restructuring that includes expanded use of artificial intelligence and a push to reduce operating costs. CEO Greg Foran says some of the savings will be redirected toward lower prices and greater investment in frontline workers as the grocer tries to compete more effectively with Walmart and Aldi.

The cuts are substantial inside Kroger’s corporate operation. The company has roughly 8,200 corporate employees, meaning the planned reductions would eliminate more than a third of those positions, even though they represent a much smaller share of Kroger’s overall workforce of about 409,000 people. Foran has described technology as one factor changing how work is performed, but the company has not said that all of the eliminated positions will be directly replaced by AI.

For shoppers, the more important question is whether eliminating thousands of office jobs will actually make groceries noticeably cheaper. Retail analyst Neil Saunders told Fortune that spreading the savings broadly across Kroger’s assortment would likely reduce an average basket by only pennies. The strategy becomes more meaningful if Kroger concentrates those dollars on highly visible staples and categories where consumers are especially sensitive to price.

That puts the restructuring into a larger competitive context. Kroger is trying to convince shoppers that it can offer better value while Walmart and Aldi continue to exert pressure on grocery prices. Foran, who previously ran Walmart’s U.S. business, is now bringing some of that efficiency-focused approach to Kroger, pairing corporate cost reductions with new technology aimed at forecasting demand, personalizing discounts, improving supply-chain decisions and helping store employees manage daily work.

The emerging tradeoff is difficult to miss: Kroger is asking thousands of corporate workers to absorb the cost of becoming a leaner company so the business can invest more aggressively in customers and store employees. The eventual test will not be how many jobs disappear or how much AI Kroger deploys. It will be whether shoppers can actually see the savings on their receipts — and whether the company becomes meaningfully more efficient rather than simply smaller.