The retailer shelf test explained:
- Repeat purchase matters more than initial curiosity, with products ultimately needing to prove they can turn trial into sustained sales.
- Differentiation is critical in crowded categories, as another cookie, bread or snack must give the retailer something genuinely incremental rather than simply duplicate what is already on shelf.
- Manufacturers that protect quality, support launches and respond quickly to changing trends, formats and eating occasions have a stronger chance of turning a new listing into lasting shelf space.
Securing a supermarket listing doesn’t mean a retailer has decided a product deserves permanent shelf space. It means it has agreed to give that product an opportunity to prove itself, and what happens next depends increasingly on whether shoppers keep reaching for it.
“If a product sells, that’s what’s going to keep it on the shelves,” says Lindsey Perry, bakery sales manager at Roche Bros Supermarkets, a family-owned premium grocery chain founded in Massachusetts in 1952 that now operates 20 stores across the state. With a strong focus on fresh, high-quality and speciality foods, the retailer is constantly assessing whether products are earning their space. If they’re not attracting shoppers and generating sales, Perry says that space could perform better with something else.
Recent market data shows just how unforgiving that environment can be. NIQ reported in January that Western European FMCG innovation sales declined in both value and units during 2025, despite overall FMCG value growing 3.4%. Innovation volumes fell 5.8%, while an earlier NIQ analysis found that 31% of products launched in January 2019 had disappeared from shelves within 12 months.
But the decision about what stays involves far more than initial sales. According to Perry, repeat purchases, quality, differentiation, avoiding category duplication, marketing support and the producer’s ability to respond quickly to changes in shopper behaviour can all influence whether a launch becomes part of the permanent assortment or eventually makes way for something else.
The first sale won’t save you
A shopper putting a new product into their basket once shows the launch has generated curiosity, but Perry is far more interested in whether they come back for it.
“The biggest thing is the success of the product and its customers repeating that purchase,” she says, with the real challenge being to convert that initial purchase into something consumers buy routinely.
Bakery makes the equation particularly interesting because so much of the category is discretionary. Surprisingly, price isn’t always the main factor. Perry says Roche Bros isn’t necessarily seeing shoppers gravitate towards the cheapest products as household budgets remain under pressure, and many of its consumers are still prepared to spend when quality justifies the purchase.
“A lot of our items that are doing really well in the bakery right now are the high-quality items that we stand behind,” she says. “We have many customers who are willing to spend more because they’re still looking for that indulgence. It might not be a large cake, but quality does matter, so perhaps it’s a small, high-quality cake.”
Smaller formats can also keep indulgence within reach without forcing manufacturers to compete entirely on price, but Perry emphasises that maintaining the quality that justified the premium then become critical.
She says the retailer has seen several examples of manufacturers jeopardising a successful product by changing its ingredients when attempting to manage rising costs. She warns that shoppers will quickly notice when the product they liked isn’t quite the same anymore. “As soon as the customer notices that the item isn’t the same as what they were getting, they’re no longer going to pick it up,” she says, adding that any production saving can quickly be undermined if the change damages quality and ultimately sales.
In some cases, Roche Bros has stopped carrying products after ingredient changes affected quality and sales subsequently declined, says Perry.
Manufacturers also need to remain involved even after the listing has been secured. While Roche Bros has an inhouse team to build a compelling marketing message around a launch, Perry wants producers to provide the retailer with a strong reason to talk about the product. That can then feed into a broader marketing plan spanning sampling, promotions, advertising and social platforms including TikTok, Instagram and Facebook.
“The support behind the product launch, not just the product itself, is critical. If a customer doesn’t know about a product, they’re not going to know to come in and try it.”
Manufacturers therefore shouldn’t simply deliver the product to the retailer and assume the listing will do all the heavy lifting. Without building awareness, encouraging trial and ultimately generating repeat purchases, even a strong innovation can end up occupying valuable shelf space without proving it deserves to stay.
Does the retailer really need another one?
The harder conversation between producer and retailer may actually begin before the listing is agreed, particularly in categories already bursting with similar products.
“A brownie is a brownie; a cookie is a cookie. So, what differentiates your product?” asks Perry.
Her chocolate chip cookie example exposes a problem familiar across food and beverage innovation. A manufacturer may regard its latest launch as sufficiently different from everything already available, but the retailer is looking at the category as a whole and asking whether another SKU genuinely adds value.
Perry says too many similar choices can create shopper confusion and decision fatigue, which means she wouldn’t want five near-identical chocolate chip cookies occupying the category. Three is typically enough.
There’s data behind that instinct, too. In a case study listed on its site, Circana worked with a beverage manufacturer that wanted to simplify crowded beer shelves without inadvertently removing products that genuinely contributed to category growth. Its analysis found that up to 20% of items could be removed without negatively affecting category performance. More strikingly, removing redundant, poorly performing SKUs and reorganising the remaining range around how consumers actually shopped for beer had the potential to increase category sales by up to 5%.
The exercise wasn’t simply about stocking fewer beers, either. Circana analysed which products generated additional demand and which largely duplicated sales already being captured by other products on the shelf. By the end of the project year, almost 15,000 retailer accounts had implemented the resulting assortment strategy.
Yet the opposite mistake can be expensive, because a slower-selling product isn’t necessarily an expendable one.
In a separate Circana case study, a leading retailer was reconsidering field-grown spring-mix packaged salads after sales declined while products grown using controlled-environment agriculture – including greenhouse and other enclosed growing systems – gained momentum. Point-of-sale data suggested the older products were losing relevance and could potentially be delisted.
Frequent-shopper data, however, told a very different story. Circana found that field-grown products were attracting 40%-70% of incremental buyers into the category. In other words, despite their weaker topline sales, they were bringing shoppers to the category who might not otherwise have bought from it. Removing them could have put $10m of sales at risk in one region and another $2.5m elsewhere.
The retailer kept the products, avoiding what Circana calculated could have been $12.5m in lost sales, while the analysis also informed changes to promotional and loyalty activity.
Perry’s point about differentiation therefore goes beyond simply demanding higher sales. A product hoping to win space against an existing listing needs to be demonstrably better, have a strong local following or give the retailer something meaningfully different to market.
That requires producers to rethink the pitch they take into buyer meetings. Instead of concentrating entirely on why their product is good, they need to demonstrate why the retailer needs it.
Being late can cost the shelf
Meanwhile, says Perry, retailers embrace producers that can identify genuine opportunities before a category becomes saturated.
Bakery’s response to protein, for example, illustrates what can happen when product development moves more slowly than consumer demand. The technical difficulty of adding meaningful amounts of protein to baked products slowed the category’s uptake of the trend, while several other supermarket categories were establishing themselves around protein-led products.
When Roche Bros eventually introduced a protein muffin into its fresh bakery offer, Perry says many of its shoppers had established their purchasing habits elsewhere in the store. “Because we were so late to the party, a lot of customers were already buying Kodiak from the grocery aisle.”
Kodiak – a US brand best known for its protein-enriched pancake and waffle mixes – had expanded across oatmeal, granola bars, baking mixes and frozen breakfast products, giving shoppers plenty of ways to tap into the trend outside the fresh bakery section.
And while protein looks set to remain an important purchase driver, Perry is watching for the next nutritional opportunity. Based on conversations with manufacturers and products she’s seeing at trade shows, she expects fibre to become increasingly prominent into 2027.
There’s mounting evidence behind that expectation, too. Innova Market Insights identifies fibre among the leading in-demand nutrients among North American consumers, with its appeal expanding beyond traditional digestive health into products positioned around immunity, cognition, metabolic health and healthy ageing. Protein may still dominate the functional conversation, but fibre is rapidly acquiring a much bigger role in product development.
However, it’s unrealistic for manufacturers to anticipate and chase every emerging trend, particularly those gaining sudden momentum on social media. Perry acknowledges that producers have numerous hurdles to clear – from formulation and sourcing to processing and scale-up – that retailers themselves don’t face.
Responsiveness doesn’t always require an entire reformulation either. Perry points to bakery’s longstanding reliance on familiar four-packs of turnovers, muffins and bagels as an example. Roche Bros has worked with manufacturers to experiment with different pack sizes as household structures and eating occasions change, an approach she says has contributed to stronger results within its departments.
It’s that ability – and agility – to respond quickly to changing consumer behaviour that Perry wants from manufacturers, whether that means adjusting a pack format or recognising an emerging nutritional demand. “Be nimble and be willing to change within reason,” she advises.
That ultimately captures what a supermarket listing represents. Quality has to survive cost pressure, marketing needs to turn curiosity into repeat purchase, innovation must add something worthwhile to the category, and manufacturers have to keep responding after launch rather than assuming the job is finished.
Winning the shelf might be the manufacturer’s victory, but convincing shoppers to keep reaching for the product is what persuades the retailer to let it stay.
