By: Doug Baker, Vice President, Industry Relations - Private Brands, Technology, FMI

If you want to measure performance in food retail, you look at the sales data. When it comes down to it, the scan of that product at the register is the ultimate gut check on how your strategy is performing. That’s why, for the third year, we’ve teamed up with IRI to look at the register data for private brands and truly determine the power of the category.

The 2019 Power of Private Brands: From the Register report finds private brands continue to lead momentum for food retailers across channels. The solid growth of private brands reflects the success of retailers treating private brands as brands, rather than just following the lead of national brand trends. Here are some key multi-year trends we found in the report:

Results Reflect Turnaround for Private Brands

Private brands led manufacturer brands in dollar sales growth across multiple retail outlets for the second consecutive year, up 5.4%. Private brands posted U.S. sales of $153 billion in calendar year 2018 across multiple retail outlets and convenience, according to IRI, which spearheads the data analysis for the FMI Private Brands Leadership Council. The private brands dollar figure represents edible and non-edible segments.

Positive momentum is reflected across many private brand categories, geographic regions, consumer generations and income levels. Momentum for private brands is being driven by a range of factors, including increased shopper trips, higher dollars per trip, increased velocity, shoppers adding more items to carts, and expanded distribution.

Impact of Ecommerce on Private Brands

While it’s still early days for ecommerce, it’s already possible to recognize opportunities for private brands, based on data that includes a wide range of categories. The report finds the fastest growing private brand categories in ecommerce are:

• Paper Towels.
• Salty Snacks.
• Meat-RFG.

Private Brands Success Factor for Grocery

Power of Private Brands: From the Register offers useful insights at a time when retailers outside of the grocery channel have been building momentum in private brands. IRI data points to areas of increased opportunities for grocery retailers to boost performance in coming years. This includes enhancing investments to attract younger generations, such as Millennials, Gen X, and younger Boomers.