Private Label Keeps Taking Share From National Brands

For the first eight months of 2026, private label unit sales grew 0.3 percent while national brand unit sales fell 0.7 percent over the same stretch, pushing store brand unit share to a record 23.5 percent, according to retail industry tracking reported by Store Brands and FoodNavigator.

A five year trend, not a blip

The 2026 numbers extend a run that has been building for years. Between 2021 and 2025, store brand dollar revenue grew by about 64.8 billion dollars, a 30 percent increase, pushing dollar share from 19.1 percent to 21.3 percent and unit share from 21.6 percent to 23.5 percent. National brand dollar sales are still growing in 2026, up about 2 percent so far this year, but that growth is coming mostly from pricing rather than from selling more units, which is a weaker position than it looks on a headline sales chart.

Why shoppers stopped treating it as a downgrade

The shift tracks a change in how shoppers talk about store brands. About 55 percent of grocery shoppers now say they buy more private label products than they used to, compared with 28 percent who favor national brands, and about 80 percent of US consumers say private label quality is now on par with, or better than, national brands. Retailers have leaned into that shift by investing in private label packaging, formulation and marketing that looks and reads like a national brand rather than a discount alternative.

For retailers, the appeal is straightforward: private label typically carries a wider margin than a comparable national brand item, and it is a lever retailers control directly rather than one they negotiate with a supplier. As long as shoppers keep treating the quality gap as closed, that margin advantage gives retailers a reason to keep expanding store brand assortments even in categories where they historically deferred to national brands.