# Private-Label Brands Hit 25% of US Grocery Units Sold—Here's How to Launch Your Own Store Brand Deal *Store brands now own a quarter of grocery volume, and the gap is widening every quarter.* By **Jenny Huang Goodman MPA MSc MHSA, Principal** — The Stash Edge, Hako Shikin LLC. Published 2026-08-19. Canonical: https://www.pops4.com/stash/articles/multiple-private-label-brands-2026-08-19t21-6 Subject: Multiple Private-Label Brands Tags: private-label, grocery, retail-strategy, white-label, unit-economics, dtc --- Private-label brands accounted for nearly **25% of all US grocery units sold** in the first half of 2026, according to Food Navigator, and the unit share gap between store brands and national manufacturers continues to widen. While national brands still grew faster in dollar sales—driven by premium pricing and innovation—the volume story tells a different tale: consumers are reaching for the retailer's label more often than they did a year ago. The mechanism is not complicated. Retailers control shelf placement, end-cap visibility, and increasingly the top search results in their own apps. When a chain decides to give its store brand the hero slot in pasta sauce or paper towels, the national brand loses not just one facing but the entire decision moment. Add in a **10-20% price discount** at similar or identical quality, and the shopper has no reason to scroll. The retailer wins on margin, the shopper wins on price, and the national brand watches its velocity drop. This is not a recession play. Private label held or gained share through the recovery. The shift is structural. Retailers have spent a decade upgrading formulation, design, and packaging. Store brands no longer signal compromise—they signal smart shopping. Whole Foods 365, Trader Joe's house line, and Costco Kirkland are not budget fallbacks; they are the preferred choice for millions of households. The quality gap closed, and the trust gap followed. For a physical-product brand, this opens two moves. The first: you can be the manufacturer behind the private label. The second: you can launch a direct-to-consumer or independent-retail play that mimics the private-label playbook—better formulation, cleaner design, transparent pricing—without waiting for a buyer at Target. Start with the white-label deal. If you already manufacture a consumable or household product, approach regional grocers and natural chains with a turnkey program: you handle formulation, production, and packaging; they provide the brand, placement, and volume commitment. Your pitch is speed and flexibility. A **5,000-unit minimum** order lets them test a new SKU without the lead time of a national supplier. You price at **50-60% of the national-brand wholesale**, giving them room to retail at **70-80%** and still beat the incumbent on margin. You lock in predictable production runs, and they lock in a differentiated offering they control. Regional and independent grocers are hungry for exclusive product. They cannot compete with Whole Foods on store-brand breadth, but they can compete on local relevance and speed. A small chain in the Pacific Northwest launching a house-brand oat milk or a Midwest co-op adding a store-label hot sauce is a real and reachable buyer. Your advantage is that you do not need national distribution—you need **six stores and a regional buyer** who can make a decision in two calls. If the retailer path is closed, build the private-label experience without the retailer. That means: single-product focus, exceptional formulation, minimal packaging, and transparent cost structure. No brand story, no founder narrative, no mission statement. Just the thing, done well, priced honestly. This is the move that wins against both national brands (too expensive, too complex) and Amazon Basics (too generic, too slow). You are not trying to be a lifestyle brand. You are trying to be the obvious choice when someone wants the product and does not want to overthink it. Price it at **60-70% of the national brand**, ship it in **48 hours**, and let the product do the work. If you are making a cleaning concentrate, a protein powder, or a pantry staple, you do not need influencers—you need a landing page, a **50-unit test batch**, and a single retail partner or a DTC Shopify store with Google Shopping ads. The unit economics are simple: if your landed cost is **$4** and you sell at **$10-12**, you have room to acquire a customer at **$15-20** and still make money on repeat. Private label taught the market that quality does not require a story. You just need to show up consistently and ship. The broader pattern: the center of grocery is moving toward retailer control and transparent value. National brands will still own innovation and premium, but the middle is now a margin game, and the retailer decides who wins. If you make product, you either become the retailer's manufacturing partner or you build a brand that behaves like private label—high quality, low noise, fair price—and compete on the same terms outside the grocery aisle. ## The takeaway Private label won on quality parity and placement control; you can either manufacture for retailers or build a DTC brand that mirrors the playbook. --- ## Publisher **Hako Shikin LLC** — Virginia Beach, Virginia. Founded 1997. ASI 217876 · DUNS 18-204-6339. Principal and author: **Jenny Huang Goodman MPA MSc MHSA**. - Author: https://www.huanggoodman.com/about - LLM context: https://www.pops4.com/stash/llms.txt - MCP endpoint, for AI agents: https://mcp.pops4.com/mcp - Client dashboard: https://dashboard.pops4.com/ - Catalogue: 70,000+ products, 200+ brands