Post Malone and Megan Trainor canceled their summer concert tours, and Boomers industry people are saying that live music is dead. One thoughtful dude by the name of @munchy_mark took this opportunity to explain to Boomers that the reason live music is hurting isn't due to a lack of interest in concerts.

It's because Gen Z has no f******g money.

My sense is that this financial squeeze that many of us are feeling is felt most acutely at the grocery store. This is a thought piece on the shifts in shopping behavior, the explosive rise of mediocre store-brand food, and what different food brands can do to meet today’s shopper.

Whether you're the CMO of Red Bull or launching your own artisanal organic hemp-derived cheese puffs brand, what's happening there right now is worth paying attention to, and has an implication for your brand.

The Big Picture: When Money Gets Tight, the Grocery Aisle Splits in Two

Food prices are up 34% over the five years to mid-2025, and with food inflation running at 2.9% through all of 2025 and another 0.5% jump in April 2026 alone, the gap keeps widening. Most people assume that means everyone's buying cheaper. The reality is more interesting than that.

Private label (more affordable, store brands) just broke records for the fifth consecutive year. Premium grocery is growing. The segment hurting the most is the mainstream, mid-priced branded tier that has defined grocery for thirty years.

Food prices up 34% over five years to mid-2025, 2.9% through 2025, 0.5% in April 2026: Circana via Globe Newswire, August 2025; USDA ERS Food Price Outlook, April 2026; BLS CPI April 2026

This split has precedent. Looking at you, 2008.

In 2008 Flo Rida dropped "Low" and our retirement accounts followed him down. Households couponed, bulk-bought, and discovered Costco's aura. Some premium products held on: fancy chocolate, single origin coffee, organic beef, small luxuries with a defensible price point (the lipstick effect).

Private label soared alongside premium. 2008 set a record for private label product introductions as retailers capitalized.

We're seeing the same pattern today. For the full year ending December 28, 2025, private label dollar sales hit a record $282.8 billion, growing at nearly three times the rate of mainstream branded products. The mainstream category saw unit sales fall 0.6% over the same period.

Put more plainly, the Circana 2025 CPG Growth Leaders report, covering 700 manufacturers across every retail channel, shows super-premium dollar sales up 7%, premium up 4%, mainstream down 1%, private label up 4%.

Both ends, growing. The middle, squeezed. Call it a K-shaped economy, or an hourglass.

Private label record $282.8B, national brand unit sales -0.6%: PLMA / Circana Unify+, January 2026

Super-premium +7%, premium +4%, mainstream -1%, private label +4%: Circana 2025 CPG Growth Leaders Report, April 2026

What's different this time: there's no bounce back

(Simon-Kucher Global Shopper Study 2026)

The 2008 recession produced a trade-down. Belts tightened, people switched… but they eventually drifted back to those more expensive middle of the pack favorite brands.

History suggested this one would follow the same arc. Nope, it’s different.

In 2024, 71% of consumers say they've noticed shrinkflation. 66% boycotted the product as a result.

Now in 2026, Simon-Kucher's Global Shopper Study of 14,000 consumers shows that this sentiment has lasted. 57% believe branded products are overpriced without offering a noticeable benefit. 39% describe branding itself as a money-making scheme. And even if prices fall, only a quarter say they would return.

The 25%. That's the number that matters. It's about trust. And trust, once restructured at this scale, doesn't reverse as quickly when the pressure lifts.

71% noticed shrinkflation, 66% boycotted: LendingTree via Packaging Digest, 2024

57% overpriced, 39% money-making scheme, 25% would return: Simon-Kucher Global Shopper Study 2026

Your path to rebuilding trust and winning in 2026 as a food brand depends depends on where you fall in the hourglass. The top, middle, or bottom.

The bottom: the store brand is the new default

Private label used to be where you went when you couldn't afford the real thing. You would hide private brand olive oil in unbranded glass bottles, or serve store-brand chips in bowls to avoid being called a cheapo at parties.

That dynamic feels different now. Private label is now the rational starting point that everything else has to justify departing from. The burden of proof has flipped.

This shift is generational and accelerating. Gen Z's share of private label spending is projected to surpass Baby Boomers by mid-2026.

Over 80% of US households earning $100k or more have increased their private label purchases.

Walmart's Bettergoods line approached $500 million in its first year. Trader Joe's built an entire brand identity around its own label.

TikTok has accelerated this to Large Hadron Collider speeds. Finding the store brand equivalent of a cult product, filming the comparison, sharing the verdict, that's the content people love. The stigma around private label didn't just fade. It inverted. Being smart about where you spend has become part of how people present themselves.

Price got you here. But brand is what makes someone reach for you twice. How do you make the smart choice feel like their choice?

Gen Z private label share projections, 82% of $100k+ households: Numerator via Empower, 2025

Private label $330B, 24% unit share: Circana, March 2026

The middle: the same brand levers face a harder climb

Two signals for the middle of the pack branded tier:

Around half of the world's largest food companies saw volumes decline in the final quarter of 2025, with almost two thirds reporting a drop in earnings compared to pre-Covid levels.
EPS shrank across the mainstream tier in 2025, down 25% for Conagra, 20% for General Mills, 18% for J.M. Smucker, 17% for Kraft Heinz, and 10% for Campbell's. McCormick was the only major food company to post EPS growth.

The mainstream middle isn't losing because the products got worse. It's losing because people have been forced to make a more rational calculation in the grocery aisle. Is this actually worth more than the store brand.

Cultural presence, emotional heritage, an unhinged mascot… these still matter. But they're working against a greater headwind. A consumer who is more price aware, more label literate, and carrying a low-grade skepticism about whether the premium is real.

Half of the world's largest food companies saw volumes decline : Dairy Reporter / Food Navigator analysis, April 2026
EPS shrank across the mainstream tier : TD Cowen via Baking Business, February 2026

The top: premium without contradiction

Three different price points. Which are you picking?

Look at who Circana ranked as its growth leaders in 2025. Chomps ranked second among $500M-$1B brands. Olipop ranked eighth. Pete and Gerry's ranked tenth. Chobani ranked first in the $2.5-$8B tier.

What they share isn't category, price point, or marketing budget. Chomps is a meat stick. Olipop is a soda. Pete and Gerry's is eggs. Chobani is yogurt.

The ingredient list on Chomps. The nine grams of fiber on Olipop. The pasture-raised, Certified Humane seal on Pete and Gerry's. Chobani doesn't gesture at protein. It tells you how much, in what format, for which occasion.

The branding on these products is connected to something verifiable and visible in the product itself. Great design, clear language, specific positioning, all of it in service of something real. Which is why it lands so differently with a consumer who arrives at the aisle already skeptical.

Now contrast that with the middle. The gap between what a brand promises and what the product delivers is what's killing the mainstream tier. And the brands winning at the top aren't winning because they're spending more. They're winning because they have the least distance between what they say and what they are.

Chomps #2, Olipop #8, Pete and Gerry's #10, Chobani #1 in tier: Circana 2025 CPG Growth Leaders Report, April 2026

The questions every brand needs to answer

So, how do you respond? It depends on where your brand sits.

If you're at the bottom: Price got you here. But brand is what makes someone reach for you twice. How do you make the smart choice feel like their choice?

If you're in the middle: Is your advertising building on something real in the product, or is it being asked to do too much heavy lifting? How can you make the upgrade in price be more felt, seen, and tasted?

If you're at the top: Is the gap between you and the store brand felt in the product, visible in the brand, and impossible to ignore at the shelf?

The market is splitting. It has split before. But this time the consumer isn't just asking whether your product is worth the extra dollar. They're asking whether you're the kind of company that deserves to charge it.

That's a harder question. And the brands with the clearest answers, and the advertising brave enough to ask it out loud, are the ones pulling away.

Nobody's Loyal in Aisle Five Anymore