Jewel’s Kroger Lawsuit: McMullen Resignation and Nepotism Claims

Singer Jewel Kilcher and her business partner Trevor Drinkwater sued The Kroger Co. in December 2023, claiming the grocery chain hijacked their Wellness Your Way Festival once it started making money. The Kroger and Jewel lawsuit, filed in Ohio’s Hamilton County Common Pleas Court, alleges breach of contract, breach of fiduciary duty, misrepresentation, and unjust enrichment, and seeks roughly $7 million in lost costs and profits.¹ A trial is scheduled for May 2026.²

What Jewel and Her Partner Say Kroger Did

The dispute traces back to 2017, when Drinkwater, CEO of Inclusion Cos., pitched a health and wellness festival featuring Jewel to a Kroger executive. Jewel and Drinkwater had co-developed the concept and chose Kroger to anchor it. Inclusion set up a new entity, Wellness Your Way Festival LLC, and Jewel took an ownership stake in exchange for supporting the event and waiving her performance and promotional fees.¹ Drinkwater’s company carried the financial risk of staging the festival; Kroger used its supplier network to recruit sponsors.³

The first Kroger Wellness Festival launched in Cincinnati in October 2018, with follow-up events in 2019 and 2021.⁴ According to the complaint, the festival lost money the first two years, accumulating a $2.5 million deficit, then turned a $500,000 profit in 2021. Drinkwater says festivals of this kind typically need a five-year runway to become profitable.³

Then, in spring 2022, Kroger executives told Drinkwater and Jewel the company wanted ownership of the festival, the plaintiffs say. Under Kroger’s plan, a Kroger entity would control the event, Advantage Sales would take over as producer, and Inclusion would be demoted to a vendor role.⁵ Kroger formally terminated its arrangement with Wellness Your Way Festival LLC on April 1, 2022, and staged festivals in 2022 and 2023 with Advantage.¹ Jewel and Drinkwater allege Kroger and Advantage “secretly” conspired to move forward without them, using the marketing materials, contracts, and sponsor lists the original team had built.

The plaintiffs claim they lost $2 million of their own money and at least $5 million in profits.⁴ Named defendants include Kroger, Advantage Solutions, Advantage Sales & Marketing, Kroger Health president Colleen Lindholz, and Lisa Haubner.⁶ The case was originally filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court in April 2022 and refiled in Ohio in late 2023.³

Was There Actually a Contract?

There is no formal signed agreement between the parties. The plaintiffs argue a binding five-year partnership was created through a June 2018 email exchange in which a Kroger executive asked whether Kroger was “committing to an event every year for the next 5 years” and Inclusion responded in writing that a five-year commitment was a prerequisite to the deal.³ Kroger disputes that account and has argued in court filings that no enforceable contract exists under Ohio law.⁷

Whether those emails add up to a five-year partnership is the central legal question the trial will decide.

The Nepotism and “Legacy” Claims

Beyond the contract dispute, the suit accuses Kroger of steering the festival business to insiders. Lindholz, the plaintiffs allege, directed festival sponsorship work to Advantage Sales, where the primary contact handling those sales was Lisa Haubner, Lindholz’s sister. Haubner had spent 17 years as a paralegal and, according to the complaint, had “virtually no experience with sponsorship sales.”⁵ The producers say they were pressured into using Advantage over another firm they preferred, and that the arrangement violated Kroger’s own anti-nepotism policy.⁴ Kroger has not publicly addressed the nepotism allegations in its legal filings.

The complaint also alleges Lindholz told Drinkwater that Kroger needed ownership and control of the festival because then-CEO Rodney McMullen wanted it to be “a part of his legacy.”⁸

Kroger’s Defense

Kroger denies the allegations. It has filed a motion to dismiss arguing no valid partnership agreement ever existed, with a hearing on that motion scheduled for April 28, 2025.⁷⁶ On the underlying business, Kroger says it cut ties because Drinkwater’s company failed to pay vendors on time.³

The McMullen Resignation and Why It’s Sealed

On March 3, 2025, Kroger announced McMullen had resigned as chairman and CEO, effective immediately. The board said it learned of “certain personal conduct” on February 21, retained outside counsel, and found the conduct “inconsistent with Kroger’s Policy on Business Ethics.” Kroger stated the conduct was unrelated to company operations, financial performance, or any Kroger employees.⁹ SEC filings showed McMullen forfeited $11.2 million in bonus and stock payments on his way out.⁷

McMullen is not a defendant in the Jewel case, but the plaintiffs listed him as a key trial witness. When he was deposed in spring 2025, his attorneys instructed him not to answer questions about his resignation, citing embarrassment.² The plaintiffs pushed back, arguing the resignation went to McMullen’s credibility and to what they called a “corrupt corporate culture at Kroger.”⁷

On August 1, 2025, Hamilton County Common Pleas Court Judge Christian Jenkins denied McMullen’s request for a protective order and instead ordered him to submit a private written explanation of the resignation, including the identities of those involved, hand-delivered to chambers by August 8. The judge reasoned that because Kroger’s own announcement tied the resignation to an ethics investigation, it was “plausible that this evidence could reflect on Mr. McMullen’s credibility or Kroger’s corporate culture.”⁷

McMullen filed his written response on the deadline. After reading it, Judge Jenkins reversed himself: on August 21, 2025, he granted the protective order, finding that questioning McMullen about the resignation would be embarrassing and was not relevant to the breach-of-contract claims. The written response was placed under seal.¹⁰ Plaintiff attorney Brian O’Connor had said the court should not give the former CEO “a free pass to avoid testifying.”² The ruling walls the resignation off from the trial.

What Happens Next

Trial is set for May 2026 in Hamilton County Common Pleas Court.² With the McMullen resignation off the table, the case narrows to two questions: whether the 2018 email exchange created a binding five-year partnership, and, if so, whether Kroger breached it by moving the festival in-house with Advantage. Jewel and Drinkwater say they built a profitable event and then had it taken from them and handed to insiders. Kroger says there was no partnership to break, and that vendor payment problems justified the split. Much of the trial will come down to how a jury reads those emails.

1
Progressive Grocer. Singer Jewel Sues Kroger Over Wellness Festival
2
CNN. Kroger Jewel Lawsuit CEO Resignation
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Fortune. Jewel Kroger Lawsuit Rodney McMullen Wellness
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WISH-TV. Jewel Wellness Festival Kroger Lawsuit
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RALI Online. How the Singer Jewel and the Kroger Supermarket Giant Got Entangled in a Legal Battle Over a Wellness Festival Gone Wrong
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Supermarket News. McMullen To Be Deposed in Jewel Health Festival Lawsuit
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Business Insider. Kroger Former CEO Rodney McMullen Reveal Reason Resigned Singer Jewel
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WRAL. A Lawsuit Involving Kroger and Singer Jewel Could Shed Light on Why the Former Supermarket CEO Mysteriously Resigned
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Kroger Investor Relations. Kroger Announces Resignation of CEO Rodney McMullen
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Business Insider. Ex-Kroger CEO Rodney McMullen Judge Order Questioning Resignation Jewel