Consumers are fundamentally changing how they shop for groceries — and it could reshape the future of supermarket merchandising. Increasingly, households are becoming “ingredient households” instead of “brand households,” building baskets around flexible meal components, affordability and versatility rather than rigid loyalty to national packaged-food brands. Fueled by inflation, private label growth, decision fatigue, and changing meal-planning behavior, the trend is shifting competitive advantage away from traditional brand power and toward meal solutions, perimeter execution, retailer trust, and simplified shopping experiences.
Brands have loomed large in American family grocery-shopping behavior since “God save the King” was a buzzphrase around here. Caswell-Massey, founded in 1752, is America’s oldest brand. (Fragrances, if you’re wondering; George Washington was a fan of their Number Six formula.) Baker’s Chocolate goes back to the 1760s. King Arthur flour dates to the 1790s.
The rest, as they say, is history. Households bought the same cereal, the same pasta sauce, the same yogurt, the same frozen pizza, and the same snacks week after week after. National brands dominated the traditional center store, generally because of product quality, but also because they represented familiarity, routine, and trust.
After centuries, that model is just beginning to fracture.
Increasingly, consumers are becoming “ingredient households” instead of “brand households.” What does that mean? Well, shoppers are building grocery baskets around flexibility, meal utility, and – increasingly – affordability. Rigid loyalty to specific packaged food brands, no matter how catchy the commercials, is falling by the wayside.
I realize that might sound a bit alarmist, maybe even hysterical. After all, according to Global Retail, the collective worth of the top 500 U.S. national brands is around $6.44 trillion – against annual sales of $472 billion.
But the model is fracturing and the shift, however subtle, is well underway. It’s one of the most important structural changes happening in grocery retail right now.
Out in the aisles, the modern shopper increasingly asks, “What can I make with this?” as opposed to, “What brand is this?”
This is changing how baskets are built, how retailers merchandise stores, and – importantly – where long-term loyalty ultimately sits.
The strongest evidence may be the continued explosion of private label.
You Can’t Overstate the Importance of Store Brands
According to new Circana data released by the Private Label Manufacturers Association, U.S. private label sales reached a record $282.8 billion in 2025, rising by more than $9 billion year over year. Store brands grew 3.3% last year — nearly three times the growth rate of national brands, which rose just 1.2%.
Look at unit trends and the story is even more dramatic.
Private label unit sales rose 0.6% in 2025 while national brand unit sales actually declined 0.6%, according to that PLMA and Circana data.
That suggests shoppers are not simply “trading down” temporarily because of inflation. Many consumers are fundamentally becoming more comfortable substituting brands entirely.
The behavior increasingly revolves around ingredients and meal-building versatility.
A shopper buying eggs, tortillas, spinach, rice, chicken, and frozen vegetables today might not have a highly structured seven-day meal plan. In fact, it’s likely they don’t. Instead, they are building optionality into the basket.
Those six ingredients can become:
- tacos
- omelets
- wraps
- salads
- rice bowls
- pasta dishes
- backup dinners
It’s in this way that the basket becomes utility-driven rather than logo-driven. Inflation certainly accelerated this transition, but it’s likely to outlast any one bout of inflation itself.
Research from Kroger-owned data analytics firm 84.51° found that rising prices and supply-chain disruptions pushed consumers to try lower-priced alternatives and unfamiliar products… and many shoppers became comfortable doing so. After the novel coronavirus and the upheavals of the past six years, the “new normal” – whatever that is – isn’t so hard to get used to.
Meanwhile, shoppers’ behavior is itself becoming more fragmented and tactical.
Shoppers Have Been Pushed to This Inflection Point
Axios has reported that consumers increasingly shop multiple grocery stores rather than relying on one primary weekly destination, a trend tied heavily to value-seeking and private label purchasing. The average number of retailers visited annually by grocery shoppers has steadily risen since 2019.
Fragmented shopping naturally weakens traditional brand attachment. It can’t help but do that. If you’re not buying Coke during every trip but on every third or fourth trip… you get used to not buying Coke.
Consumers increasingly follow value, meal utility, ingredient availability, promotions, and even retailer convenience rather than legacy packaged-goods loyalty.
Decision fatigue is also becoming a major factor.
Despite moves toward smart rationalization, modern grocery stores contain tens of thousands of SKUs competing for attention through digital coupons, loyalty programs, retail media, flavor extensions, and promotional signage.
With the new normal being what it is – occasionally exhausting – many shoppers want fewer decisions, not more. Ingredion research found that 75% of consumers say they are becoming more deliberate when assessing food purchases and are trying to make “better choices” while grocery shopping.
That shift is pushing consumers toward simpler, more versatile purchasing behavior.
Many households are increasingly prioritizing staple proteins, produce, flexible carbohydrates, frozen vegetables, and other multi-use ingredients that can stretch across several meal occasions.
Food waste concerns are playing a role here, too. Consumers increasingly want ingredients that can support multiple meals instead of highly specific items that risk expiring unused in the refrigerator. In many ways, flexibility itself is becoming a form of value.
For Retailers, the Implications Are Enormous
If consumers are becoming less emotionally tied to national brands, competitive advantage shifts elsewhere: toward perimeter execution, meal-solution merchandising, affordable proteins, private label quality, produce freshness, convenience, and vastly simplified shopping experiences that build retailer trust.
This also helps explain why so many retailers are investing aggressively in prepared foods, cross-merchandising, recipe inspiration, meal bundles, perimeter departments, and private label innovation.
In this atmosphere, I think it makes sense for category management to share the stage with “meal management.”
That is particularly important because younger shoppers often show weaker attachment to legacy packaged food brands than previous generations, especially after years of inflation and pandemic-era supply disruptions forced widespread experimentation with substitutes and store brands.
In many households today, loyalty increasingly belongs to the retailer, the ingredient system, or the meal solution and not necessarily the logo on the package.
I think that when the grocery history of the 2020s is written, that’ll prove to be one of the defining shifts of this decade.
