Private label food makers rise to today’s challenges
From current macroeconomic conditions to the pandemic to dealing with change, two private label food manufacturers open up about how their companies thrive.
According to the consulting firm McKinsey & Company, which conducted several U.S. consumer surveys during the height of the pandemic to gauge buying behavior, nearly 40 percent tried new products or brands with the onset of the COVID-19 outbreak. Availability issues attribute to a good amount of the switching behavior—some branded products were out of stock for weeks as CPG manufacturers struggled to meet sudden spikes in demand.
Private labels are a beneficiary of this switching trend. In the firm’s survey of more than 2,000 US grocery shoppers last year in September, nearly one in five said they bought more private-label products during the COVID-19 crisis than they did before it. McKinsey & Company reports that leaders at North American grocers and mass retailers say they have seen heightened demand for private-label goods.