What's In-Store: May Update
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Hello, and welcome to our May newsletter.
This month: a >$1bn acquisition, municipal grocery stores, me trying to talk about THC without sounding like a nark, and the BIGGEST Celebrity CPG launch of all time.
We also feature a run-down of our What’s In-Store event hosted last week and the shopper trends covered.
As always, hit reply - we’d love to hear what category challenges you’re navigating.
April’s Interesting Things
- Gruns Acquired by Unilever for $1.2bn - VMS Gummies brand, Gruns, has been acquired by Unilever. Unilever is deploying its capital raised from selling off sections of the food business into more premium health care lines. With a youth focus, slick D2C operations, GLP-1 future-proofing, this seems a strong match whilst Unilever will be able to support better distribution and growth. Sidepoint - Gruns launched in 2023, which makes it one of the fastest (non-tech) billion-dollar growth stories. Very impressive.
- NYC Municipal Grocery Store - We wrote about this last year, but plans are starting to take shape for NYC’s first ever municipal grocery stores. Social media extraordinaire / NYC’s new mayor, Zohran Mamdani announced the plans for 5 stores to go live during his tenure to tackle the affordability crisis. It’s a philosophical alternative to reliance on SNAP benefits. Will it work? Well, if you’re reading this, you know running stores is hard. Managing costs, having an effective supply chain, and at a volume of just 5 stores is going to be really difficult. But it’s often the people running this that will make it work - will the best retail team be recruited? And most importantly for me, who’s building their planograms?
- 4/20 Celebrations - For those of us not based in the US, we may have missed the rapid growth in the THC-holiday special known as 4/20, or “weed day” (and already I sound like a nark). But it has knock-on effects on CPG globally. The legality of THC, whether purchased from legal sites, brick-and-mortar stores, or even now retailers like Target (in Minnesota, anyway) and Total Wine, the industry is now worth an estimated $28bn, and has grown up a lot in recent years. So much so it’s impacting other areas of retail (notably - alcohol). This is a case study closely monitored in Europe - will legalisation happen? Will the same trends occur? Not soon, by any proposed legislation. If anything, there’s more risk of a reversal in the US than legalisation in Europe. Last November’s spending bill to end the government shutdown included a provision that would outlaw 95% of existing hemp products with drastic reductions in dosage needed - with timelines looking at months, not years. There are further “opt-out” proposals state by state that offer hope, but wow - this is a complicated category further complicated by political dealings. We stand on and watch with interest, whilst the brands in the middle do their best to stay compliant and keep serving their very-loyal customers.
- Instacart Going Global, Acquires Instaleap - Instacart are making moves outside of North America, acquiring fulfillment services platform, Instaleap. The acquisition immediately gives them presence in 30 new countries across Europe, Latin America and the Middle East. Even as a retail media play, this feels like a smart move, and quite possibly a quick $$ win (without knowing the exact financial terms of the deal).
- The Biggest Celebrity CPG Launch Yet - And possibly the worst? Widely considered “the-biggest-band-in-the-world-right-now”, K-Pop boyband BTS launched their CPG brand last month. The brand, ARIH, has launched straight into Walmart with 28 SKUs across packet and cup Noodles, Postbiotic Sodas (what?), and Dual Biotic Soda (what?). BTS have gone big, but this feels closer to a private label launch, with limited-to-no connection to the b(r)and. It’s probably still going to do really well, isn’t it? I feel old.
VST “What’s In-Store” Event Summary
Last week we hosted the second What's In-Store at the People's History Museum in Manchester - a great venue, even if it did make us feel slightly guilty talking about shelf-simplicity surrounded by labour movement history.
60+ category, shopper insight and commercial leaders from across CPG and retail came together to talk about how shoppers are really behaving, and what that means at-shelf.
We covered GLP-1s (less scary than the headlines suggest), functions over features, the beauty of shelf-simplicity, and much more.
You can see a full summary here.
If you’d like to attend the next event, please let us know, either by messaging me here or contacting any of the team. We’ll be running these bi-annually in the UK (I mean twice a year), with the next event in October in London (and our first US-based event coming soon!).
What Does Your Category Look Like On-Shelf?
Most planogram decisions are still being made on gut feel and outdated and limited assortment data. VST's planogram and shelf test data lets you see exactly how your category performs in the real world and make the case for change with evidence, not opinion.
If you're heading into a range review, or just tired of guessing, we'd love to show you what we're seeing in your category.
Hit reply and we can show what the data tells us for your category.
And if there’s a category challenge on your mind that didn’t make this newsletter, please hit reply. I read everything!
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