Perspectives & Industry Takes
Where the category is going and what to do about it — industry deep dives, contrarian arguments, and the trends we think are real.
US fluid milk is $17.7 billion growing 3% on flat volume. One seven-percent slice — ultrafiltered high-protein milk — grows 14.8% in dollars and 5.5% in units, and 96% of it is a single brand. Seven charts on segment and brand growth, cost per gram of protein, front-of-pack claim placement, and why Chobani is spending $1.2 billion to re-enter a business it quit after eleven weeks.
Bird flu took 151.2 million hens and pushed a dozen eggs to a record $6.23. Eighteen months later the flock is past 315 million and wholesale is under 60 cents. Eight charts on the price arc, the rebuild, the label premium ladder and why dollar growth was almost entirely price — plus the seven places margin still lives.
36 US yogurt brands mapped on two numbers each one publishes itself: what a shelf ounce costs, and what its own Nutrition Facts panel says it is. Price and function move in opposite directions at r = -0.37, private label already owns value protein, and above 50 cents an ounce nothing scores better than 36.
Sodium, potassium and magnesium are the entry fee, not a position. How WaterBoy, DripDrop and Leisure own three different moments off near-identical minerals — and an AdVault read of 3,343 live ads where 67.3% recite the formula and only 18.0% name an occasion.
Meat sticks hit $4.2B at +18.4% while jerky grew 2.1%. Why the pioneers manufactured buyers instead of taking share, how eight occasions stacked, and an AdVault teardown of 922 live ads finding only 18.7% name an occasion while 55.4% recite a spec.
The agencies where paid media is the actual job — ranked by media focus, F&B depth, in-house capability, and who really runs your account. Plus the four questions to ask before signing any media contract.
Why optimizing for efficiency often kills growth — and the counterintuitive way F&B brands should think about spend, reach, and returns at different stages of scale.
29% of U.S. commercial foodservice traffic is now on a deal — a 50-year high. Loyalty programs have become the QSR operating system for value and data. But many risk becoming better-branded discount infrastructure. 14 signals, four failure modes, and what real loyalty looks like instead.
The U.S. QSR industry hit $532B in 2025. Traffic still declined. A complete analysis of the bifurcated competitive map, the discount spiral that failed, consumer confidence collapse, and the operational playbook that won.
Why Jennifer Garner and Once Upon a Farm worked — and why most celebrity-led F&B brands don't. The win/loss pattern across 12 brands, a 10-point scorecard, and the academic framework behind all of it.
Budget, ROAS, creative volume, refresh cadence, retail media, discounting. The eleven questions food and beverage brands ask us most — each one answered with data from 156,398 live F&B ads rather than opinion.
Streaming viewers are the highest-income, most cooking-engaged grocery shoppers in our research. Who they are, what moves them to buy, and why most F&B brands can’t reach them.
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Everything in the Pantry is how we think. When you work with Schaefer, we run the full research process against your actual buyers — not a generic model.
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