The signature dish is the next frontier of private label
Last week, I said that private brands are becoming one of grocery’s most important strategic assets – if not the most important asset.
We dived into FMI-The Food Industry Association’’s latest Power of Private Brands 2026 report, where we saw 56% of shoppers indicate that a retailer’s private brand is very or extremely important in choosing where they shop. We found out that 92% of shoppers report having store-brand products in their homes, and that awareness of private brands has climbed to 93%.
Those are remarkable numbers, any way you slice it. But they raise some interesting questions.
What exactly makes a private brand valuable? If it’s up there with my most important assets, what form does that asset take?
That’s what we’ll look at today, because if you can convincingly answer that question, you’re in a great position to leverage your private brand to its fullest potential.
Let’s Set Aside Scale for Now
Since the pandemic and the advent of the Great Trade-Down, a lot of the industry’s conversation around private label has focused on scale: How many products… What percentage of sales… How much share…
I think those are still important questions, but as the current private label trend advances and matures, it’s worth looking beyond questions of scale to see where we can shore up our position and get the advantage needed to go further.
After all, shoppers don’t connect emotionally with assortments, or get fired up about how much share you’re taking from a national brand.
Because the simple, powerful truth is this: Customers develop emotional connections with products. They don’t wake up excited about a private label program; they go mad for the one product they can’t get anywhere else!
The FMI research offers a fascinating glimpse into this reality.
When shoppers were asked about their favorite private-brand products, they didn’t talk about “store brands” in the abstract. Rather, they named specific products associated with specific retailers. Among the examples highlighted were Market Basket English muffins, Publix cola, Trader Joe’s olive oil, Private Selection bread and Simply Select vodka sauce.
The report notes that shoppers frequently described favorite products using really emotional language, including words such as “love” and “craving” – two incredibly powerful words.
It takes time and careful effort to develop a connection like that.
Costco’s Kirkland rotisserie chicken is one of the more famous examples. It has become… more than a prepared-food item. It’s a destination product. Millions of shoppers associate Costco with that chicken in much the same way diners associate a restaurant with a signature dish.
Trader Joe’s has created virtually an entire culture out of whole cloth around a similar idea. Shoppers routinely make trips specifically for their frozen meals, snacks, seasonal items, even their shopping bags; they’ve developed devoted followings.
Aldi’s Kirkwood breaded chicken breast fillets – better known as “the red bag chicken” – dominates the conversation online.
(Interestingly, while it’s overwhelmingly popular, a very small minority of posters seem to hate the red bag chicken. Then again, as any good advertising spin-meister will tell you: the opposite of love isn’t hate but indifference. Clearly, the breast fillets occupy premium mental “shelf space,” gratis.)
In all cases, the product becomes the reason for the trip. The great restaurants discovered the power of the signature dish long ago; I think grocery ought to do likewise.
Katz’s pastrami… Aldi’s red bag fillets… Peter Luger’s porterhouse… Trader Joe’s kimbap… Pat’s cheesesteak… Kirkland Signature rotisserie chicken…
Private Label’s Next Destination
The FMI report suggests that shoppers are increasingly choosing private brands for reasons that go far beyond mere price.
While value remains the leading factor, 39% of shoppers cite quality as a reason for purchasing more private-label products; 37% point to taste. Appealing packaging has also gained importance, rising from 8% of respondents in 2023 to 13% in 2026.
The numbers prove what a lot of industry folks have intuitively understood: shoppers are no longer simply trading down. And, in fact, many of them are trading over.
Creating products that shoppers actively prefer seems to be the way to carve out a competitive advantage in this market.
That’s easier said than done, what with competition from Walmart, club stores, dollar stores, and of course Amazon.com.
Your competitors can match your prices, launch their own apps, and shadow your promotions, but they can’t necessarily replicate a beloved product that has become part of a shopper’s routine.
Like red bag chicken.
There Are Incredible Opportunities Here
This dovetails beautifully with another huge trend shaping the industry; that of fresh-department-as-competitive-moat. National brands reign here, but they’re not invincible; fresh bakery, milk and dairy alternatives, and prepared meals all offer opportunities to pull ahead. These are also tough categories for pure e-commerce players and nontraditional competitors to replicate at scale.
(Between us, I can’t envision buying a kid’s birthday cake from Amazon, and I can’t be certain our weekly gallon of 2% is going to arrive promptly – and ice-cold.)
The private label “engine” is already built; it’s up and running. The secret to turbocharging it most likely lies in identifying and creating a handful of products so distinctive that shoppers build trips around them.
After all, I’m not going out of my way for Kirkwood or Happy Farms, but I will brake for red bag chicken.