Grupo Bimbo’s private label stance: overview
- Grupo Bimbo says it doesn’t see private label as a threat because the company manufactures store-brand bread itself and sells it to major retailers alongside its own branded lines
- Private label now holds a record 23.8% of US grocery unit market share, and it’s outperforming Bimbo’s own branded products in several bread subcategories
- Bimbo posted its best second-quarter results since 2023 and gained US market share in every category for the first time since 2020, even as it warns that cost pressures will make 2027 tougher
On its second quarter 2026 earnings call on 23 July, Barclays analyst Ben Theurer asked Bimbo USA president Greg Koehrsen how the company’s branded categories were holding up against private label.
Koehrsen was notably candid, emphasising the company doesn’t see the booming sector as a threat, but an opportunity. “We were very happy with our performance during the second quarter,” he told analysts. “We were share positive in all the categories in which we played.
“We value the offerings within our branded portfolio, but we’re also a producer of private label as well, and we use it strategically with some of our key customers. We continue to see positive momentum in both our branded business and also our private label business.”
That’s a striking admission for a branded consumer packaged goods executive to say out loud, and it sat inside an otherwise strong quarter.
Grupo Bimbo reported a 4.5% currency-neutral net sales growth and an adjusted EBITDA margin of 14.4%, its best second-quarter performance since 2023.
CEO Alejandro Rodríguez Bas singled out one figure in particular: “Perhaps the most encouraging data point this quarter is that we have gained market share across every category in the US for the first time since 2020,” he said, calling it “particularly noteworthy given that several industry categories continue to face volume pressure”.
But before delving into the financial detail, Rodríguez Bas opened by expressing “our deepest solidarity with the people of Venezuela and all those affected by the recent earthquakes, including members of our Bimbo family”. He noted that Bimbo was working with Save the Children to get humanitarian aid to affected communities and the Mexican company, the largest bakery manufacturer in the world, “will match contributions up to $1 million to help extend the reach of this support”.
It’s a detail worth holding onto for a business built on scale and distribution logistics. The earthquake response running through the same delivery network gets bread onto shelves every morning, but more tellingly, it fits an organisation that’s leaned on its humanitarian record for years.
Private label’s new scale
Typically, branded food companies treat private label as ground to defend, not territory worth embracing. So it was interesting that Koehrsen’s answer turned that on its head, especially in the current environment, where private label is evolving from some small, budget-driven corner of the US grocery market and becoming one of the industry’s main sources of growth.
Store brands reached a record 23.8% of US grocery unit market share in the first half of 2026, according to Circana data, putting the US closer to European markets such as the UK, where store brands can account for close to half of all grocery sales. Private label’s unit sales grew even as national brand units slipped, and the growth is increasingly disconnected from inflation.
Sally Lyons Wyatt, global executive VP and chief advisor for Consumer Goods and Foodservice Insights at Circana, reports that private label continues gaining share “even as inflation moderates and competitive pressure from brands intensifies”, which she reads as evidence of a lasting shift in shopper preference rather than a temporary reaction to prices.
Consumer research backs that up, too: Daymon’s Summer 2026 Private Brand Intelligence Report found that 95% of US consumers now buy private label, with 69% doing so on most or every shopping trip.
The same survey found 98% rated private brand prices and 96% rated overall value as equal to or better than name brands, while 88% said the same of quality, including in ‘better-for-you’ categories that branded manufacturers have traditionally owned.
Private label is also increasingly cast as an innovation leader rather than a follower. SPINS’ 2026 Trends & Predictions Report describes private label as positioned to lead the next wave of ‘elevated’ grocery offerings, filling a gap left by slowing branded innovation, and notes that younger and more affluent shoppers, not just budget-conscious ones, are driving that shift.
Some retailers have taken the idea further still: Marks & Spencer recently announced it will begin exporting private label lines to the Australian chain Coles, where they’re marketed as premium imports. Rama Chepala Kaki, who leads Circana’s European thought leadership, described the move as turning private label into “intellectual property with global value”.
The complication in Bimbo’s own bread aisle
Koehrsen’s confidence is easier to square with the numbers in some categories than others. Bread, Bimbo’s core business, is one of the places where private label is performing strongest relative to Bimbo itself.
According to Circana’s 52-week data to April 2026, private label either outperformed or held up better than Bimbo across several bread subcategories. In centre-store sandwich bread, Bimbo’s sales fell 2.8%, while private label in the same subcategory dipped just 0.4%, essentially flat.
In crusty and meal bread, private label led the category outright, generating $418m in sales and growing 5.5%, against Bimbo’s $68.6m, which declined 0.8%. In sweet bread, private label again led at $148.2m, and even though its sales slipped 3.4%, that was still a smaller decline than Bimbo posted in the same segment.
None of this contradicts what Bimbo told analysts. The “share gains in every category” claim referred specifically to competition against other branded rivals, and on those terms it may well hold up. But it does complicate the “opportunity, not threat” line, because in the one category where Bimbo is the biggest branded name on the shelf, private label doesn’t just have a foothold. In several subcategories, it dominates outright, and it’s losing less ground than Bimbo is.
Two ways to read it
The generous reading is that Bimbo is being pragmatic. Private label now represents roughly a quarter of the entire US grocery basket and keeps growing, and fighting that trend purely through branded marketing would be expensive and probably futile.
By manufacturing private label itself, Bimbo can capture value from the shift instead of simply losing ground to it, using its existing scale and supply chain to serve retailers directly. That’s a mature capital-allocation call that a lot of legacy branded food companies aren’t willing to make in public.
There’s also evidence Bimbo isn’t retreating from its home market while it navigates this.
The same week as the earnings call, the Mexico City-headquartered company confirmed plans for a $97m (roughly 1.76 billion peso) second manufacturing plant in the city of Puebla, alongside its existing facility in the La Resurrección industrial park, which has operated there since 1991. Puebla’s municipal government said the project would create more than 130 direct jobs in its first phase, with further indirect employment to follow.
It sits within a broader $2bn Mexico expansion plan the company announced in mid-2025, covering eight states and aimed at boosting manufacturing productivity, upgrading technology, and modernising its delivery fleet.
Coming back to private label, the more sceptical reading is the framing is convenient for a business already ceding ground to store brands in its own bakery core, at a difficult moment to be doing so.
On the Q2 call, CFO Diego Gaxiola warned that 2027 is looking harder on costs. “We do expect the inflationary environment to remain challenging,” he said. “We have seen upward pressure across several key inputs, including wheat, resins and energy, and current market conditions suggest that some of these pressures could persist into next year.”
Rising input costs have historically been exactly the kind of pressure that pushes shoppers toward private label, which raises the possibility that Bimbo’s ‘opportunity’ language is partly a hedge against its own branded business losing further ground next year.
The most accurate picture probably sits between the two readings.
Bimbo’s branded push in the US, helped by World Cup-related demand, disciplined pricing, and health-and-wellness launches such as Thomas’ high-protein bagels, is genuinely working across the value, mainstream and premium health-and-wellness tiers Koehrsen pointed to, where the company says it now reaches 83% of US households.
At the same time, private label is doing more of the work in Bimbo’s bread aisle than the quarter’s headline numbers suggest. Bimbo’s own private-label manufacturing arm may be the thing stabilising its results either way, regardless of which brand a shopper actually picks off the shelf.
