The CPG Shakeup Is On

Bankruptcies. Breakups. Buyouts. The CPG shakeup is on.

Ownership is quietly determining who wins.

Del Monte Foods filed for bankruptcy. Kellanova is being acquired by Mars. Conagra is shedding Chef Boyardee. Ferrero is buying WK Kellogg. Kraft Heinz announced it will split into two standalone businesses.

What looks like portfolio reshuffling is really a shift in how scale gets built and sustained in CPG.

The brands many of us grew up with, the ones still sitting in pantries today, are being passed around. Not disappearing. Not dying. Just changing hands. Some will get modernized. Some will fade. Most will still be on shelf.

This is not a collapse. It is a refocus.

Legacy CPG is tightening its focus, cutting what no longer works, and reinvesting in brands with actual consumer pull. Smucker buying Hostess says a lot. They are not chasing disruption. They are betting on comfort, nostalgia, and center store brands that still move units.

And it makes sense. Center store grocery is not collapsing. It is evolving. Competition is sharper. Shelf space is still valuable. But getting there now takesclearer positioning and a real reason to exist.

Some are breaking up to create focus. Some are doubling down on comfort. Some are simply getting out of the way.

This is not the open lane it might seem like. It is more like trying to merge while a semi truck is still doing 75 in the slow lane.

The average grocery store carries more than 30,000 SKUs. Most of them are still owned by fewer than 20 companies. The revolution we see on LinkedIn is still a rounding error at Kroger.

This is where the next wave of value gets created or lost.

What if the next big move in CPG is not a startup, but a legacy brand rebuilt from the inside out?

What if Chef Boyardee comes back with regenerative beef and branding that speaks to elder millennials?

What if consumers do not actually want something new, just something familiar made better?

That kind of brief looks nothing like what most startups are pitching. And it looks even less like the old CPG playbook.

Ownership structure is now a key signal. PE, public, and private players all operate with different incentives and timelines.

This moment is not just about balance sheets. It is about brand vision.The winners, legacy or challenger, will be the ones who take relevance seriously, not just as a trend but as a strategy.

This is the kind of work we are doing every day: helping brands, new and old, stay relevant while the ground moves beneath them.

And more and more, the brands that last will be built by teams who understand both culture and scale.