Gen Z's Trade-Down Is Real — But Picky About Where

Name Brand vs. Private Label Store brands just had a banner year with young shoppers. Roughly three in five Gen Z say they grew their private-brand buying over the past year, and more than half expect to buy even more — and strikingly, the overwhelming majority of shoppers say they'd keep buying store brands even if grocery prices dropped. The easy takeaway is "Gen Z loves private label, full stop." ECGO's June panel says the truth is pickier than that. The trade-down isn't spread evenly across the basket — it's clustered exactly where prices actually bit. Dairy and related products rose +1.2% in June (eggs +4.3%), and Dairy & Deli is a striking 93% private label in the panel. Meanwhile, the categories that got cheaper — nonalcoholic beverages fell 1.5% — are where name brands hold essentially all the shelf, with carbonated soft drinks sitting at 0% private label. One important caveat, and it's the honest one: this lines up where price pressure and store-brand share coincide. It's a snapshot, not proof that June's prices caused the split. It also puts a pin in any "beverage loyalty beat inflation" story — drinks got cheaper this month, so that loyalty simply wasn't inflation-tested. So what does a category team do with it? The sharper question isn't whether Gen Z trades down — it's where. If your category is seeing prices climb and a store-brand version is already "good enough," you're standing in the zone of maximum switching risk. If you're insulated from inflation, your name-brand loyalty may be less battle-tested than the shelf makes it look. The full Trade Up/Trade Down table lines up every grocery group's June CPI move against how the panel actually buys it.