Inflation Cooled. Gen Z's Aisles Went Opposite Directions.

Name Brand vs. Private Label When the latest inflation numbers came out, food prices barely moved — up a fraction of a percent for the month, with annual grocery inflation actually easing from where it sat in April. The logical read: if price pressure is letting up, shoppers should be drifting back toward name brands, and private label's recent run should be losing steam. That's not what ECGO's panel shows — and the surprise isn't the same in every aisle. In Beverage, private-label share among Gen Z didn't just soften as inflation cooled. It fell off a cliff, dropping double digits in a single month as shoppers moved hard toward name brands. Meanwhile, another tracked category went the other way entirely, sliding toward private label even though there was no fresh price shock to push it there. So you've got one flat inflation month and two categories reacting in completely opposite directions. That split is the whole point — and it's exactly what a pricing plan built around CPI alone will never see coming. For a brand or category team, the takeaway isn't "Gen Z likes name brands." They mostly do, across most aisles. It's that private-label pressure doesn't rise and fall in lockstep with inflation the way category plans tend to assume — and the aisle breaking that assumption this month isn't the one you'd bet on. If CPI is the only dial you're watching to predict private-label movement, you're missing at least half the story. This edition's Trade Up/Trade Down table lines up every category's monthly private-label shift right against the CPI print, side by side. One month is a signal. The report is where you find out whether it's a trend.