Branded Food & Beverage · Better-for-You & Functional · Co-Manufacturers
Turn food and beverage growth into margin.
Smaller brands and store brands are taking a growing share of US food and beverage category growth, and mid-market brand owners and co-manufacturers sit in the middle of that shift. Converting it into margin depends on where trade dollars go, whether demand and supply plans agree, how much good product each line delivers, and how quickly a claim moves from formula to label to retailer. Ometz works with leadership teams and sponsors to improve those results against your own baseline, redesigning the work and building the data, automation and AI behind it.
Health & Wellness · Value Chain
The landscape
Growth is moving to smaller brands and store brands. Converting it to margin is the hard part.
Volume growth in US food and beverage remains hard to find, but where it lands has changed. Small, independent brands, those under $100M in sales, accounted for 35% of category growth by 2025 (McKinsey), and store brands reached a record $283B in sales in 2025 (PLMA, on Circana data). That is the opening for mid-market brand owners and for the co-manufacturers who produce for brands and retailers alike. It is also the strain: growth arrives through new doors, new pack sizes and deeper promotion, and each one adds trade spend, forecast error and changeovers before it adds margin.
Demand is shifting underneath. Households that start a GLP-1 medication cut grocery spending by an average of 5.3% within six months (Cornell, Journal of Marketing Research), with the sharpest declines in snacks and sweets. Better-for-you, protein-forward and functional portfolios are positioned to benefit, provided innovation, claims and supply keep pace. Plants are not getting easier to staff either: as many as 1.9M US manufacturing jobs could go unfilled through 2033 (Deloitte and The Manufacturing Institute), so capacity has to come from better line performance rather than extra shifts.
The P&L levers are familiar. CPG companies invest about 20% of revenue in trade promotion, and in Nielsen data cited by McKinsey, 59% of promotions lost money. McKinsey estimates that AI-driven forecasting can reduce supply chain forecast error by 20–50%. FDA will not enforce its Food Traceability Rule before July 2028, which leaves time to capture Critical Tracking Events and Key Data Elements for foods on the Food Traceability List on the same data foundation as planning and quality. Input costs are the other side of the margin: ingredient, packaging and commodity prices move faster than list prices, and the gap between the price increase planned and the increase realized comes straight out of gross margin. None of these move unless commercial, procurement, planning, quality and plant teams change how they decide together. The work is to diagnose against your own data, redesign the decisions, then build the data, automation and AI that make them stick.
The market problem, in published numbers
35%
of US food and beverage category growth came from small, independent brands (under $100 million in sales) by 2025, up from 15 percent over 2021 to 2023
McKinsey, State of Food and Beverage: The choices CPG leaders can make to renew growth (2026)
$283B
record US store-brand sales in 2025 ($282.8 billion across all outlets), with store-brand dollar sales growing nearly three times as fast as national brands
Private Label Manufacturers Association (PLMA), on Circana Unify+ data (2026)
5.3%
average drop in household grocery spending within six months of starting a GLP-1 medication, with savory snacks down about 10% and similarly large declines in sweets, baked goods and cookies
Cornell University (Hristakeva, Liaukonyte et al.), Journal of Marketing Research (2025)
1.9M
US manufacturing jobs that could go unfilled through 2033 if skills and applicant gaps are not addressed, out of a net need of as many as 3.8 million
~20%
of revenue invested in trade promotions each year by consumer-packaged-goods companies worldwide
McKinsey, How analytics can drive growth in consumer-packaged-goods trade promotions (2019)
59%
of CPG trade promotions lost money in Nielsen data cited by McKinsey; in the United States the share was 72%
20–50%
potential reduction in forecasting errors from applying AI-driven forecasting to supply chain management
2028
the earliest year FDA will enforce its Food Traceability Rule (FSMA Section 204): Congress directed no enforcement before July 20, 2028, and FDA has proposed moving the compliance date there from January 20, 2026
Figures are third-party market benchmarks from the cited sources, not Ometz Partners client results. We share them so you can size the problem before we ever talk.
Where performance is lost
Trade spend without a return line
Trade is one of the largest lines in the P&L, planned in spreadsheets and settled through deductions few teams fully reconcile. Events repeat because they ran last year, not because they paid back.
Forecasts the plant does not trust
Sales, marketing and supply each carry their own number. Plants protect themselves with inventory, and service still slips on the items retailers score you on.
Growth that adds complexity before margin
New items, pack sizes, channels and co-man partners each add changeovers, minimum runs and write-offs that rarely appear in the launch case.
Claims and product data on manual rails
Better-for-you positioning depends on claims that match the evidence, the label, the retailer listing and the marketing, and that change when a formula or a rule does.
The Food & Beverage program
Programs built around how your business runs.
REVENUE
Revenue Growth Management and Trade Effectiveness
Price, pack, mix and trade decisions made on evidence, with price increases realized against ingredient, packaging and commodity inflation, so trade dollars go to the events and customers that pay back and retailer plans are built on numbers both sides trust.
What we measure
- Net revenue per unit
- Price realization against input-cost inflation
- Trade return by event and customer
- Gross-to-net leakage and deduction recovery
01
Post-event promotion analysis
Every event read for incremental volume, margin and payback using shipments, retailer point-of-sale and syndicated data. Events that lose money are redesigned or dropped from next year's calendar.
02
Price-pack architecture and mix
Pack sizes, price points and channel roles reset so each item has a clear job, informed by elasticity and by the retailer's own category goals.
03
Joint business planning and deductions
Retailer plans built from the same numbers your team uses internally, and deductions matched to events automatically so invalid claims are disputed while they can still be recovered.
MARGIN
Integrated S&OP and Plant Performance
One demand plan the plant believes, a supply plan that protects service on the items that matter, and more good product from every line hour.
What we measure
- Forecast accuracy and bias
- OTIF, fill rate and retailer penalties
- Line efficiency, yield and cost per case
01
S&OP cycle and forecasting
A monthly S&OP cycle with one consensus number, statistical and AI-driven forecasts as the starting point, and planners spending their time on exceptions instead of spreadsheets.
02
Line performance
Loss analysis by line on changeover, speed, yield and downtime, then sequencing, crewing and standard-work changes that recover capacity before capital is spent.
03
Co-manufacturing and item rationalization
Co-man capacity, minimums and costs managed against a clear make-or-buy logic, and tail items reviewed for the margin they earn against the complexity they add.
TECHNOLOGY
Claims-Governed Content and Product Data
A governed system for claims, specifications and product content, so better-for-you positioning reaches the label, the retailer listing and marketing quickly and stays within what the evidence and the rules allow.
What we measure
- Time from approved formula to live retailer listing
- Share of claims and assets traceable to evidence
- Content rework and retailer item-setup errors
01
Claims library with substantiation
Every approved claim stored with its evidence, conditions of use and approving owner, so content teams draw only on what regulatory and quality teams have signed off.
02
Content and item setup under human sign-off
Automated drafting of listings, sell sheets and retailer item data from the governed library, with every draft routed to a named reviewer and logged before release.
03
Change control and traceability records
A formula, supplier or rule change triggers review of every affected claim and asset, and traceability lot codes, Critical Tracking Events and Key Data Elements are recorded for the Food Traceability Rule on the same data foundation.
The diagnosis
What we look for in your business.
A Performance Diagnostic measures these in your own systems first, so every later result is judged against the same baseline.
Trade spend by customer, event and item, and the share of events that paid back after lift, cannibalization and forward-buy
Open deductions by age and reason, and how much of the invalid share is actually recovered
Forecast error and bias at item and customer level, and how many demand numbers the business runs on
Ingredient, packaging and commodity spend by supplier and contract, and the price increases realized against the input-cost increases absorbed
OTIF, fill rate and retailer penalties by customer, traced to their root cause in the plan, the plant or the warehouse
Changeover time, yield loss and downtime on the highest-volume lines, including co-manufactured volume
How a claim moves from formula to label to retailer listing to marketing, and who signs off at each step
How an engagement runs
01
Weeks 1 to 4: Performance Diagnostic
Fixed fee, 2 to 4 weeks. We baseline trade returns, forecast accuracy, service and line performance from your own shipment, trade, retailer and plant data, then price three improvement plays and set a 90-day plan your leadership team and sponsor can hold us to.
02
First 90 days: The lead play in production
Usually promotion effectiveness on the largest customers, or an S&OP cycle that commercial and plant teams both sign. The redesigned process runs on live decisions from its first cycle, with the analysis, automation and AI built around it.
03
Month 4 onward: Scale, measure, hand over
Further plays extend across customers, categories and plants, each reported against the diagnostic baseline. Your teams own the process and the tools; we stay as long as the results justify it, including interim leadership where a role is open.
Food & Beverage FAQ
Most TPM systems record what was planned and paid. We work on the decisions: which events to run, at what depth, with which customer, based on post-event results. Where your TPM, ERP or planning tools can carry the new process, we configure around them; where they cannot, we build the analysis and automation alongside. Existing systems stay in place unless the business case says otherwise.
Yes, with a different emphasis. For co-manufacturers the levers are usually line performance, scheduling across customer brands, quoting new business at the right margin, and service to brand and retailer customers. The diagnostic shows which of these matter most in your network.
We build the workflow and the governed library; your regulatory and quality owners decide what can be said. Nothing is published without a named human approver, and every claim carries its substantiation. We do not make, approve or substantiate claims ourselves.
A baseline built from the company's own data, three improvement plays each with a priced business case, and a 90-day plan. It is designed to feed the value-creation plan and to be measured against later, by management and by the deal team.
Inside the work: forecasting, promotion analysis, deduction matching, content drafting under review, and line loss analysis. Each use is chosen because it improves a decision or removes manual effort measured in the diagnostic, not as a separate initiative.
Next step
Start with a Performance Diagnostic.
The Performance Diagnostic runs for two to four weeks at a fixed fee and ends with a baseline, three priced improvement plays and a 90-day plan. The findings are yours whether or not we continue.