Imagine has released its latest consumer trends report, Freshness Reimagined: The New Role of Food in Everyday Life, offering grocery retailers and CPG manufacturers a data-backed framework for understanding how fresh food is reshaping store traffic, basket composition, and long-term shopper loyalty.
The report arrives at a critical inflection point for perimeter departments. Fresh categories — produce, meat, deli, and prepared foods — have consistently outpaced center-store growth in syndicated scan data tracked by Circana and Nielsen over the past several quarters. For category managers, that velocity gap underscores why planogram space and end-cap real estate are increasingly being reallocated toward fresh and fresh-adjacent segments at major conventional, mass, and natural/specialty banners alike.
What the Data Signals
Shopper traffic in grocery has remained under pressure as consumers consolidate trips and lean into club-channel and e-commerce fulfillment. Fresh food, however, continues to function as a primary destination driver — the category that pulls shoppers into the store and elevates total basket ring. Retailers executing strong fresh programs report measurable lifts in visit frequency, a metric that directly correlates with private label attachment rates and promotional redemption across HiLo and EDLP formats alike. The Freshness Reimagined report frames fresh not merely as a department but as an overarching retail strategy with downstream effects on total store ACV performance.
For CPG suppliers, the implications extend beyond the perimeter. As fresh credentials gain equity with shoppers, national brands in refrigerated, chilled, and minimally processed segments stand to benefit from stronger velocity and improved turn rates — provided their shelf positioning and in-store display programs align with how retailers are prioritizing freshness narratives in weekly ad features and digital promotions. Brands that can demonstrate a fresh or clean-label halo are also better positioned to defend shelf space against accelerating own-brand competition, as store brand programs continue to capture share in premium fresh tiers.
Retail & Category Implications
The findings are particularly relevant for operators rethinking their fresh department footprints. Expanded prepared-foods sections, butcher programs, and grab-and-go offerings have moved from differentiator to baseline expectation among primary shoppers, especially in markets where foodservice-to-retail crossover continues to blur channel boundaries. Retailers that treat fresh as a traffic loss leader rather than a margin-building category risk leaving velocity and loyalty gains on the table.
The Freshness Reimagined report is the latest in Imagine's series of consumer intelligence publications aimed at equipping grocery operators and brand teams with actionable category strategy insights. Full report access details are available through Imagine's platform. Industry coverage of consumer and shopper trends in food and beverage is also tracked across the Food & Beverage Magazine network.
Written by Michael Politz, Author of Guide to Restaurant Success: The Proven Process for Starting Any Restaurant Business From Scratch to Success (ISBN: 978-1-119-66896-1), Founder of Food & Beverage Magazine, the leading online magazine and resource in the industry. Designer of the Bluetooth logo and recognized in Entrepreneur Magazine's "Top 40 Under 40" for founding American Wholesale Floral, Politz is also the Co-founder of the Proof Awards and the CPG Awards and a partner in numerous consumer brands across the food and beverage sector.
