Walk into a grocery store this week, and you’ll see it. The aisles are glitching. Inflation has gutted brand loyalty, and private label is no longer a budget alternative—it’s the baseline.
In the U.K., a £56.2 billion grocery market is recalibrating, and in the U.S., the $2.5 trillion CPG industry is tilting as 53% of grocery executives cite private label as their primary growth driver. Nearly 88% of U.S. consumers have changed their shopping habits, with 44% opting for private label over legacy brands.
Yet despite economic pressures, innovation hasn’t slowed—it’s become sharper. The juice box is dead; kids are sipping RTD sparkling water spiked with prebiotic benefits. Food isn’t just sustenance—it’s capital, status, and an ideological flex. And as Pepsi’s acquisition of Poppi and Graza’s Frizzle Oil moment have proven, icon status isn’t just discovered—it’s engineered.
But who’s really steering grocery’s future—consumers or investors?
At IFE and Expo West, grocery’s next era was on full display. In this exclusive conversation with THE GOODS, CPG expert Fred Hart unpacks what’s happening on the ground—where retail power is shifting, whether private label is becoming the new luxury tier, and what the next wave of grocery branding will look like. Post-Soviet brutalism meets ‘90s Vietnamese gradient maximalism?
Or is this all just the same old cycle of reinvention, dressed up in new aesthetics?
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Kelcie - IFE or Expo? Was there a clear differentiation?
Fred Hart - The way I would almost reframe it is that IFE feels more sustainable, whereas Expo West feels like a hype machine. I don’t know if one is necessarily more forward-thinking than the other. The United States is certainly more progressive and aggressive in terms of chasing and even building trends, forcing them into the consumer world. IFE, on the other hand, feels more like a dose of reality—both in terms of where the UK market is at and in its overall approach, which isn’t as hyperbolic.
Do you think Expo West is still useful?
I do. The whole show is really meant to connect brands with retailers, and that’s still happening a ton. This year, I know a handful of brands—somewhere between $50M and $100M in revenue—that decided not to have a booth but instead bought a pass and walked the show, taking meetings with retailers. The community still gathers around Expo West every year, but how people spend their money is starting to shift.
For early-stage brands, there’s no substitute for the exposure and retailer attention they can get if they’re primed and ready. But once you reach a certain level of distribution, you don’t need to show up and play the game the same way. You can maintain a presence without spending on a booth. In general, though, the ecosystem remains strong, and retailers are still showing up—which is the whole point of the show.
Once you get to, and more importantly can afford the main halls—C through E, or especially Hall E—you’ve made it you don’t need to be there anymore. Related, neither Poppi nor Olipop were at this year’s show. In fact, I don’t believe Olipop has ever exhibited at Expo West. Poppi was there last year but skipped this year—probably because, in hindsight, they were in the middle of getting their Pepsi deal done.
The Investor vs. Consumer Debate
Who is food actually being built for? Consumers or investors? How much of this, in your opinion, is driven by real demand versus the need to attract VC and acquisitions?
In the U.S., a lot of it is investor-led, which can be dangerous—it can easily turn into a money chase or a cash grab. The investment market is constantly changing. Ten years ago, it was easy to raise money, and all that mattered was growth.
Today, the focus is on profitability. Companies that were in a high-growth mindset are either going bankrupt, failing to meet valuations, or devaluing themselves. Cap tables are a mess, founders are unhappy, and in many cases, investors will get paid before the founders do. There are plenty of horror stories out there.
Andrea Hernández from Snaxshot does a great job of calling out what capitalism has done to the CPG space. But at the same time, some of the strongest brands are the ones flying under the radar—long-standing, profitable businesses that private equity would love to invest in but can’t because these brands have been around for 10 to 20 years, are already making money, and don’t want just anyone’s capital.
Take Poppi, for example. Big Soda had already trained generations of consumers to love soft drinks, even as we learned more about sugar’s negative health impacts. The demand never went away—private equity just found a way to tap into it.
Even before Poppi, there were kombucha brands trying to do something similar, like Live Kombucha out of Texas, which made Dr. Pepper- and cola-flavored kombucha. The problem? The format was holding them back. Kombucha wasn’t the right vehicle to scale that idea.
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At the end of the day, there has to be real consumer demand. Otherwise, things eventually burst. A lot of millennial life has been subsidized by big tech—cheap Ubers, rentable scooters—but as those companies shift toward profitability, prices go up. Some of this consumer behavior was fabricated, with the hope that enough critical mass would build around it. But ultimately, fundamentals still apply: consumer demand drives innovation, and no amount of money can completely manufacture that.
Design as a Market Differentiator
In terms of design and the brands that you saw at both expos, did you see any sort of differentiation in terms of design, or is that aesthetic bubble still there? What did you actually see?
Yeah, it's a great question. I think it's important to remember that when you show up at Expo West, it's an artificial environment. Every brand is crammed into a space, all shouting for attention, which creates this overly competitive drive to be louder, bigger, more energetic. But from a consumer lens, they don't see all these brands in one place like we do.
What might feel like a room full of "me too" brands across different categories isn’t the consumer reality when they walk into a Tesco, Sainsbury’s, or Safeway. Some of the brands that seem loud and disruptive actually work within their categories because grocery stores are largely filled with incumbents—brands that have been around for decades and can’t always pivot to the latest design trends. So, in a lot of ways, design is differentiating within categories, which is what matters most.
Once you start comparing aesthetics from an industry perspective, it’s easy to say, “Oh, this feels like that.” But that’s not how consumers see it. Funny enough, a friend reached out to me recently about a rebrand for a company called Halfday, a better-for-you iced tea brand in the U.S. They had just gone through a refresh, and someone said their new design looked like Olipop.
My friend was debating with his team about the value of leveraging trends to gain market share versus carving out true differentiation. He said, “I could see this being a good tactic for a generic store brand to look trendy, but if you’re trying to carve out your own market, it feels like a temporary solution.”
I told him—most consumers don’t see design the way we do, much less care if a brand is mimicking another. The business demands growth, not just distinctiveness. That said, having both is ideal. At the end of the day, you will always get copycat brands trying to grow and unlock potential. But if they succeed, they'll eventually need something that’s truly ownable. Whether they get there or not is another question, but I do think design still plays a role in differentiation.
Are we heading back towards specialisation? Or is this a smart move? What’s the domino effect of this, say, in 2030?
Yeah. So I've got a friend named Omrit Richmond, who first kind of pointed this out to me. I actually think it’s kind of a smart tactic on the brand side. I’ll give you an insight into what investors and people who acquire brands think about it.
From the brand side, so many companies get pigeonholed into being one thing because they don’t innovate at the right point in their brand arc to gain permission. If you wait too long and have been so consistent for so long, people start questioning—"What are you doing? That doesn’t make sense."
Take Good Pops in the U.S.—a brand we worked on known for frozen popsicles, fudge bars, and creamsicles. They launched a kids’ ready-to-drink sparkling water with real juice. At first glance, you might think, That doesn’t make sense. They’re a popsicle company. But really, the brand is trying to say, We’re not just a popsicle company. We’re a company about making clean products. Their RTD sparkling water for kids is essentially their version of Spindrift, but aimed at families.
The other day, I was at Costco and saw Boom Chicka Pop—which in the U.S. is owned by General Mills—in the frozen dessert section. It was Boom Chicka Pop Strawberry Ice Cream Bars. And I thought, Whoa, this is the same brand? But then I realized—they're not a popcorn company, they’re an indulgence company.
So many brands get stuck in product equals brand, and that can be detrimental. Kind Bar is a great example—they’ve made 50 different types of bars. Breakfast bars, thin bars, nut bars, fruit bars. But eventually, you run out of ideas, and it starts to feel stale. I think brands need to challenge themselves—What are we really? Are we a popcorn company? An indulgence company? A popsicle company? Or a clean-ingredient company? If you open up the aperture early enough, you can do more interesting things.
Chobani is another example. Everyone thought they were a dairy company. Then they launched coffee products. Then plant-based yogurts. Over time, they built permissibility to enter new categories because they trained the consumer to expect that flexibility.
But here’s the thing—acquirers don’t like it when brands exist in multiple categories. I learned this from talking with a private equity group at a show once. When Nestlé, ConAgra, General Mills, Pepsi, Frito-Lay look at acquisitions, they’re looking for efficiency. They have economies of scale and do one thing really well. If your brand spans multiple categories, that’s a headache for them.
For example, say you make popcorn. Frito-Lay knows how to put snacks in bags all day long. But if you also have a frozen product line, that’s a totally different buyer, supply chain, and distribution model. They don’t do frozen. It’s not efficient for them.
So when they look at acquiring brands, they have to figure out how to leverage what you’ve built. They might buy part of your business and leave you with the other. Or they’ll acquire the whole thing but shut part of it down. Or they’ll devalue a section of your business because it doesn’t fit within their operational model.
So while expansion can be smart for building a brand, it can also create complications when it comes time to sell.
Who in CPG is being most authentic?
Well, with Poppi being in the news, everyone was commenting about how Target also had a Poppi clothing line in stores. And so, that's a pretty unique marker. If people actually want to wear your brand, it means you stand for more than just a product. It becomes a symbol of some sort of cool essence, a vibe, or a lifestyle.
With beverages in particular, you're seen out in the world with them. They become a form of external identity—they say just as much about you as the shoes on your feet, the watch on your wrist, or the purse on your arm. If you can get into clothing and people actually want it, it says you’ve struck some kind of cultural moment.
I think, ultimately, though, it's more clever marketing than anything. Gary Vaynerchuk has this great book called Day Trading Attention—highly recommend it. We live in an attention-based economy, particularly with social media, and that happens online. People crave real-life moments, and I think clothing is a great extension of that. It does have some cachet, but it's not necessarily long-lasting. Ultimately, though, it’s more about clever marketing than anything else.
Which brands read the room correctly at IFE and EXPO West?
At Expo West, Dude Wipes continues to activate their brand really, really well. They had a giant inflatable ass, and a little Mini Cooper with a poop emoji on top that they called a mini pooper. They had all these silly things, and it’s just them leaning into the cultural reference around the bathroom and having fun with it. It’s something Cottonelle or any of these other big brands would never think of doing. So, to me, they really captured the moment and buzz at the show.
You have to be careful though because there are gimmicks. Like Belgian Boys—they went viral during the show for their pink puffy bag. There was security and they were handing these bags out, and it became a thing. People were clamoring for them because most everyone gives out tote bags. But these were like luxury, fashionable, cool things. They had lines at the booth waiting for hours.
That to me isn’t a signal that the brand itself is super relevant, but that they captured the attention moment of the show with something interesting and viral. Has nothing to do with how good their refrigerated pancakes are.
Also, Fly by Jing—they’re a big company in the States that does chili crisp oil, and they’re launching noodles and other things. In general, I think Asian foods, at least in the U.S., are having a really big moment. MìLà was another dumpling brand.
Designs coming out, like packaging—super cool work, really authentic stories that I think are refreshing for the American market. And, above all, really great products. When you can do all three things, that’s when I think you have real staying power as a brand.
Shelf Space
There’s only limited shelf space in any given grocery store. Do you think it’s possible that we might see an industry reset when retailers start cutting aggressively? Which category would be the first to go?
Retailers will always prioritize their profit margins. Real estate is so finite in a grocery store, so on a price-per-square-inch basis, they’re going to continue to cut laggards. I walked the show with a buyer from Target, and she was telling me that a lot of these RTD protein coffee drinks are going to get cut in the future because they’re just not performing at the velocities and speeds that they need to.
Target is simultaneously making way for new modern sodas. So, shelf space is going to go to wherever there’s the greatest traction. Ultimately, it’s not about categories suddenly losing space, but if you're a laggard in your category—whether that's salty-sweet snacks or beverages—you’re at risk. Look at what’s happening to juice, for example. I know for a fact that Tropicana is struggling, Naked is struggling. These companies are getting less and less shelf space, and it’s being allocated more to RTD coffee and protein products.
It’s hard to say which categories are at risk, but plant-based meat in the U.S. is at risk. In the U.K., it doesn’t feel like that. There were more plant-based companies at IFE than I expected. The UK market didn’t succumb to the bubble the U.S. did. There was so much investment and hype around what Beyond Meat was going to do—its IPO, Impossible Foods and all that—and then once people realized that consumers didn’t want those products as much, the bubble popped.
Valuations dropped, other meat companies went out of business. But it seems more sustainable here in the UK.
I went to M&S, Sainsbury’s, Tesco, and Planet Organic, and each one had store brand offerings, as well as brands like Beyond Meat and Quorn. So, either the bubble hasn’t caught up yet, or these brands have had more time to figure things out. There’s also a second wave of plant-based meats coming, now backed by mushrooms in mycelium, which allows them to be less processed and more whole-food oriented.
I saw a company at IFE called Fable that does shiitake mushroom pulled pork, but they upcycle the stems from shiitake mushrooms into a sinewy, pork-like product. It was really good and convincing, and the ingredient list was surprising when compared to Beyond Meat or Impossible.
Are we going to reach a point where people just want to snack without a TED talk? Ingredient burnout?
I think protein is a little different than the superfoods and adaptogens. Protein, we’ve always known is good for us. It’s just the marketing machine behind it is getting a little crazy. In the U.S., it’s out of hand. I call it an arms race to see who can have more protein—20 grams, 22, 24, 25, 30, 80.
In the U.K., I’ve seen a bit of both at IFE and in the stores I’ve been checking. They have protein, but it’s not as in-your-face. It feels like people already understand; you can just say "protein" without shouting about how many grams or pushing the idea of getting the maximum amount in every product.
But I’ve always felt that adaptogens, ashwagandha, superfoods, mushrooms, nootropics—it’s more like the TED Talk. It’s less sustainable. You’re adapting a whole new lifestyle just because you want a pick-me-up snack on a Thursday afternoon. Marks and Spencer had several RTD and shot lines with mushrooms in them, and they explicitly called it out. It’s like they’re pushing this lifestyle agenda with every snack, but at some point, the novelty may wear thin.
Private label, packaging, and the speed of innovation. What’s your take?
The U.S. lags behind Europe when it comes to private label. In Europe, particularly in the U.K., the percentage of private label consumption is much higher than in the U.S. Right now, I also attended the Private Label Manufacturers Association (PLMA) show in November in Chicago, and the focus was really on how U.S. brands are seeing diminishing sales because private label is growing so rapidly in this economic environment.
Innovation is finally getting turned on in the U.S., and now you can find the same innovative products at Walmart and Target that you’d expect from an independent entrepreneurial brand. Target, for example, is now offering the same kind of products that you'd typically see from niche brands, which shows the growing strength of private label in the U.S.
Who's really dictating the new grocery landscape? Buyers or shoppers?
In large part, buyers are the ones dictating which brands they choose to retail and create shelf space for. It's often an advantage for some of the more progressive stores to bring in new brands. New brands act as a form of discovery, aligning with their shoppers' identities.
Traditionally, Target has always brought in more progressive brands doing exclusives, whereas Walmart has been more of a slow follower. You also have Whole Foods, which was previously a great environment for entrepreneurs, but now that's shifting to Sprouts. Buyers do drive a lot of this, but align with their brand, their ethos, and where they think they're ultimately going to make money from.
I don't think consumers know what to demand because there are so many new-age brands out there, but the ones that stick, consumers then fall in love with.
Which retail formats are shaping grocery’s new aesthetic. Are buyers curating more for cultural cache rather than just sales and velocity?
In today's influencer and creator economy, these niche brands—like Alex Cooper's Unwell, Mr. Beast's Feastables, or Emma Chamberlain's Chamberlain Coffee—drive new audiences into stores and expand category buyers in really new and interesting ways. There are velocity stories to be told, but ultimately, retail is always going to prioritize velocity over cultural cache.
The idea is that if you can do both, that’s the best scenario. But these are businesses that have to make money first and foremost. They are not trying to just be cultural creators.
Erewhon may be the exception, but even then, it's all about dollars.
Market fatigue
What do you think is about to overstay its welcome? What's burning out by 2026?
I’ll start with ingredients and innovation because I think that has shorter lifespans. I think mushrooms are going to die or fizzle out.
I was still surprised, actually, at how big the mushroom supplement world was, infiltrating gummies, coffees, or beverages. I think at some point, the market, kind of like CBD did, is gonna die down a little bit. You’ll have the real players and the true players that actually understand how to educate and own it, and they’ll make it through. But all these quick "me too" brands are gonna die off pretty quickly.
I think multiple functions and product lines are gonna die by 2026.
There’s a lot of companies that are stacking functions, so you’ll have multiple functions in a beverage, which I think is just too esoteric for consumers to understand. Or you’ll have brands with three product lines within the beverage portfolio: part for calm, part for energy, and part for beauty, something like that. And consumers just don’t look to one brand for all of those need states. It’s like, "We’ve got this, we’ve got that. You need that." It’s like car salesmen who don’t know what people actually want.
The more you say, the less you mean. I work with brands all the time that have what I call an "embarrassment of riches." They can talk about all these awesome things, but the consumer can only really handle three before it becomes off-putting. There are even certain things that might be important to some segments, for instance, gluten-free, but that’s really more of a certification that should live on the back panel rather than on the front. So, I hope from a design perspective, we see more simplification of attributes and product benefits for consumers. But yeah, I mean, I think mushrooms and over-functioning are two things that will die.
Did any brand feel truly category-defining, or is the industry just recycling the same formulas with different aesthetics?
Across Expo West, Asian food was really making a mark. The thing with Expo West is there’s so much noise that you can make up any narrative you want, really. But I think frozen foods are having their moment in the U.S. right now. "Pizza cupcake" is a good example. Some of these Asian brands and their frozen dumplings fit into that trend as well. Nelson's cauliflower pizza is another example. There’s this kind of movement running through frozen foods, which is the ultimate form of convenience, particularly with inflation and the rising cost of eating out and delivery fees. People are looking for those moments of convenience from the fridge.
Retail Power Shift
Are retailers actually the new gatekeepers of culture?
I don't think that retailers are the new gatekeepers of culture. I just think the pendulum has swung back that way. Think back to the '90s—Beanie Babies, Pokémon—retail was always hot and a place of discovery. That's how you got places like Sharper Image and other stores focused on discovery.
We then moved into an era obsessed with online DTC and e-commerce, and many businesses thought they could just be DTC companies. That’s not true.
The landscape shifted for multiple reasons, and retail's power has come back into vogue. My personal opinion is that as we live more digital lives, we crave real-life moments, and that’s what retail is able to satisfy. Some retailers run by tastemakers benefit from being seen as places of curation, and that will always hold clout in society, but those have always existed.
What happens when private label isn't the cheap alternative but the premium default?
When it comes to economics, there are many reasons why private label is superior to branded products, in part because the manufacturers of these foods are often the same. Trader Joe's has been in the news for years for its products actually being made by General Mills, Frito-Lay, Pepsi, etc. It's getting tougher for most brands to compete on price with private label as innovation in private label improves.
But the one thing private label will never be able to do is tell rich and interesting stories. That’s why we are simultaneously seeing a rise in authentic storytelling and cultural identities.
Brands bring us narratives that are largely ignored because food is culture, and food has stories to tell. Great brands are learning how to be great marketers, not just great producers of products. That’s why content creators are having so much success, while many middle-of-the-road companies that don’t know how to market but just know how to make great products are struggling against private label.
Branding Beyond the Aesthetic
Does branding still shape taste, or does taste now shape branding?
I’m a big believer that universal design principles make mass products highly successful, but those principles are often not embedded into these more tastemaker brands. Walk around Selfridges, and there are so many cool things, but they’re also highly specialized.
Yet these tastemaker brands are not always built to scale, because when you lead with taste, you often lead with art over design, and design is about effective communication, particularly in an arena of commerce.
What’s an overlooked factor shaping what makes it onto shelves?
I’d say funding. Many of these companies bootstrap for so long, and it’s hard to get into retail because of distributors, brokers, and others taking cuts. Capital is often required to scale, increase velocities, and proliferate growth but at the same time you don’t want to dilute your company by taking unnecessary investment or be pushed to focus on growth when most overnight successes are 10 years in the making.
Branding and design—what’s next? Is the $7 canned fish moment about trade-up value or just smart branding?
You can find a market for anything—value tier, premium tier, mid-tier, super premium, etc. What Fishwife has done existed in many parts of Europe, particularly Italy and the Mediterranean, but in the U.S., tuna is a very bland category.
Sardines and things in olive oil have felt exotic for a long time. There’s still a large swath of middle America not eating tinned fish, but design is creating new conversations and drawing attention.
I don’t think it’s about trade-up value.
In fact, these consumers weren’t previously buying lower-tier tuna or canned fish—this is a new audience entering the category. So, it’s smart branding.
What comes after the sans-serif, pastel, minimalistic DTC era? We can be stereotypical and talk about Gen Z aesthetics—color, personality, maximalism, irreverence. But I think saying any generation has a particular look is wrong. Look at Liquid Death—they don’t meet the typical Gen Z aesthetic but still resonate. Or Supreme—stripped-back, super simple, more about cultural appropriation than anything.
Today’s landscape is wide, and we live in an era where trends don’t matter as much. Authenticity matters more.
If you were launching a CPG brand in 2024, what’s the one non-negotiable design principle you’d follow and the one outdated rule you’d break?
The outdated rule is thinking you need ultimate consistency. Some designers don’t like brands that change colors from pack to pack or lack a single brand color. But at the end of the day, people don’t read—they recognize. The most powerful brands leverage recognition, recall, and distinctiveness. What that distinctiveness looks like is more diverse than ever. Minor Figures has a stripped-back, mascot approach. Google’s logo changes colors from pack to pack. Fable owns a singular brand color and bubbly typeface.
The key is owning a visual DNA that becomes recognizable over time. Saying there’s only one way to create distinctiveness is an old-school mentality.
What’s the next grocery aisle ripe for a total revolution?
We haven’t seen confection undergo massive change yet. It’s a huge category. Gummies were the first to tip with brands like Smart Sweets and Behave, but chocolate bars haven’t had a real newcomer disrupt Snickers, Twix, or Kit Kat. With the push for sugar alternatives and added benefits like prebiotic fiber, someone is going to crack the code there. Bread is also a stale category. There are brands making carb-free, high-protein bread like Unbun in the U.S. If they gain traction, we’ll see copycats. But we haven’t seen a "Liquid Death of bread." Conventional bread is not only bad quality but also stale from a branding perspective. Those are two categories I’d watch.
Are we in the era of reverse-engineering nostalgia?
Yes. Nostalgia works in two ways: for consumers who remember a brand and for those experiencing it for the first time. Look at Stranger Things—brands that look like they’ve been around forever have appeal. There’s something captivating about history or the illusion of history.
The Real Life of a Brand
What’s your go-to footwear brand for surviving expos?
I walked this last expo in powder blue Nike Dunks. My footwear is part of my brand, so I prioritize style over outright comfort. There’s also a company out of LA called Brandblack with Vibram soles and great silhouettes.
What luggage brand do you swear by?
Rimowa. The mechanics hold up over time when rolling bags constantly. There’s also a culture around scuffing them up and the stories they tell. It’s iconic design with great engineering.
If you're not at an expo, where can people find you?
I reside in Boulder, Colorado, most of the year, but I spend three months in Hawaii every winter.
What’s the best thing you’ve eaten on the road this year?
Malasadas from Leonard’s Bakery in Hawaii and a pesto cream cheese bagel from Rainbow Joe’s in Kauai—one of the best bagels I’ve ever had.
Fred Hart is a brand consultant, creative director, and design strategist obsessed with building and studying CPG brands. Over the last decade, he's built a 30-person branding agency, transformed over 137 CPG brands, won an industry record 5 Designalytic Design Effectiveness Awards in the last four years, and been entrusted by visionary founders and Fortune 500 companies to craft strategic design that moves businesses forward.
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