2026 PackPower Awards: Private Label Edition

Celebrating 10 Store Brand Designs

Private label used to be shorthand for the cheaper option, not anymore. Store brands are now among the fastest-growing brands at retail, trusted by shoppers on par with national CPG names and, increasingly, chosen on purpose rather than out of compromise. Retailers are no longer just selling brands, they are building them.

Packaging is where that shift becomes visible. When a store brand pack earns two seconds of attention next to a national brand, it has to do everything the national brand does: signal quality, communicate clearly, and give the shopper a reason to believe. The best private label packs today are doing exactly that, and the data proves it.

For this edition of PackPower Awards, we evaluated hundreds of store brand packages across five everyday categories: baby care, dairy, frozen food, packaged food, and pet care. Each pack was analyzed through myBehaviorally, an AI-led packaging performance platform and ranked by PackPower Score, our one-number measure of how well a pack performs in the real world of the shelf. The 10 winners below show how far private label design has come, and where it is headed.

What are the PackPower Awards

PackPower Awards recognize packaging that combines creative excellence with measurable business impact. Powered by PackPower Score, the awards spotlight designs that do more than look good. Ones that are built to perform at shelf.

PackPower Score is a single-number prediction of packaging effectiveness, designed to quantify a pack’s likelihood to drive sales in market. Behind that one number is a deeper diagnostic system grounded in 23 detailed KPIs and Behaviorally’s 4S Framework (Seen, Shoppable, Seductive, and Selected).

What Winning Private Label Packs Have
in Common

Across five categories, the same patterns kept surfacing. Together they define how store brands are competing today.

Quality leads, value follows. None of the winning packs play the value card first. They compete on quality cues, with price value sitting in the background as the quiet reward for a smart choice. Shoppers increasingly expect store brands to deliver national brand quality while still justifying their value advantage, and the highest-performing packages succeed because they never force shoppers to choose between those two ideas. They deliver both.

Two routes to the top. Some winners break through with bold color and simplicity, maximizing visibility and reducing friction. Others take a restrained route, leaning on refined design and retailer trust to signal a quieter, more established premium. Both strategies work. What fails is the middle: packs that are neither visible nor credible.

Being Seen and Being Seductive do the heavy lifting. Across every category, these two signals drive the strongest performance. The winning packs use color, clarity, premium cues, and simple design to make the packaging easy to notice, easy to understand, and worth choosing in a two-second shelf moment.

Speed of understanding drives selection. Shoppers evaluate many things at once: Is it healthy? Indulgent? Premium? Worth the price? Winning designs answer all of those questions in seconds through appetite appeal, clear navigational cues, and credible, well-organized design systems. They communicate quality, reinforce value, and help shoppers understand what they are buying without asking them to work for it.

Winning design systems travel. The same store brands keep appearing across categories. Kirkland Signature, Wellsley Farms, Bowl & Basket, and Meijer each earned recognition in more than one category in our analyses. When a retailer builds a disciplined, trusted design system, that equity compounds across the entire store.

Ten Top Winners

Baby Care 1. Target’s Up&Up Absorbent & Soft Diapers PackPower Score - 68 Up&Up came out on top of the diaper set: clean, credible, and premium-feeling without the national brand price tag. The simple hierarchy and confident visual language earn parent trust in a purchase that carries real emotional weight, proving a store brand can lead a category where parents historically defaulted to national names on instinct.
2. Meijer’s Baby Diapers PackPower Score - 62 Meijer earns parent trust through a different design language, one built on warmth. The pack pairs approachable, relatable design with the quality signals parents demand, reinforcing that choosing the store brand is the smart decision, not the budget one.

Dairy 3. Meijer Greek Whole Milk Yogurt Plain  PackPower Score - 68 Meijer's advantage came from particularly strong performance on Taste and For Someone Like Me, two dimensions that matter enormously in yogurt. The pack builds taste expectation visually through appetite appeal, ingredient cues, and a credible, well-organized design system, while communicating clear personal relevance: a yogurt that fits shoppers' needs, values, and everyday routines.
4. BJ's Wholesale Wellsley Farms Greek Nonfat Yogurt Plain  PackPower Score - 68 Wellsley Farms matched Meijer at the top on the same critical dimensions. The design makes the shopping decision feel easy, communicating quality and reinforcing value without asking shoppers to work for it. It signals national brand quality while preserving the value advantage shoppers expect from a club store brand.

Frozen Food 5. ShopRite's Bowl & Basket Thin Crust Pepperoni Pizza PackPower Score - 56 Bowl & Basket took first place honors by communicating "pizza" instantly. The pack delivers high appetite appeal and easy navigational cues around flavor variant and crust, while reinforcing confidence and value. It stays emotionally accessible with shelf-fast communications, exactly what this fast-moving category demands.
6. Costco's Kirkland Signature Pepperoni Pizza  PackPower Score - 56 Kirkland Signature shared first place honors, pairing strong appetite appeal with the quiet authority of the Kirkland name. Flavor and crust communication are immediate, navigation is effortless, and the accumulated trust of the brand converts recognition directly into selection.

Packaged Food 7. ShopRite's Bowl & Basket Macaroni & Cheese  PackPower Score - 49 Wakefern takes top honors with Bowl & Basket, the brand's second win in this edition. The pack communicates "mac n' cheese" instantly, delivering high appetite appeal and easy navigational cues while reinforcing confidence and value. It triggers appetite in seconds and stays emotionally accessible with shelf-fast communications.

8. Albertsons' O Organics Organic Macaroni & Cheese PackPower Score - 46 O Organics earned top honors by owning a premium position within an everyday comfort category. The organic positioning comes through in elevated, natural design cues that lift quality perception, while the pack remains instantly recognizable and easy to shop. It is proof that private label can segment upward, not just compete on price.

Pet Care 9. Walmart Ol' Roy Dog Food Bacon Flavor  PackPower Score - 66 Top honors go to Ol' Roy, one of the best-selling dog food brands in the U.S. The pack uses bold color and simplicity to maximize visibility and reduce friction. The bacon flavor cue is unmissable, the branding is unambiguous, and the design converts attention into selection with zero wasted effort.
10. Costco Kirkland Signature Adult DogChicken, Rice & Vegetable Formula  PackPower Score - 62 Kirkland Signature takes a more restrained route, leaning on brand trust and refined design to signal a quieter, more established premium. Clear ingredient communication and the accumulated equity of the Kirkland name give pet parents confidence that quality comes standard, with value built in.

The Takeaway  

The story is consistent across all five categories. Store brand packaging is no longer designed to look acceptable next to national brands. It is designed to beat them.

The winners lead with quality and let value follow. They win on Being Seen and Being Seductive, earning the two-second shelf moment through color, clarity, and premium cues. They make the decision easy, answering taste, quality, and relevance in seconds. They commit to one of two routes: bold visibility or quiet premium. And the strongest design systems win across categories, compounding trust across the store.

Private label now has a new role at retail: credible, premium, and built to compete, while still delivering the value shoppers expect.

Why Testing Private Label Packaging Matters

National brands spent decades refining their packs. Store brands are closing that gap in a fraction of the time, and the fastest are not relying on instinct. They are measuring.

The PackPower Score evaluates packaging under real-world shopping conditions, identifying what drives attention, what creates friction, and where quality perception can be strengthened. For retailers managing private label lines across hundreds of SKUs, AI-led testing through myBehaviorally makes that measurement faster, more affordable, and more precise.

The winners in this edition prove that insight-led design drives performance. Testing before launch is what separates packs that occupy shelf space from packs that convert it.

Read More

Learn more about the Category Analysis. 
Baby Care: Top Performing Diaper Packs
Dairy: Top Performing Yogurt Packs
Frozen Food: Top Performing Pizza Packs
Packaged Food: Top Performing Mac and Cheese Packs 
Pet Care: Top Performing Dog Food Packs

Learn more about PackPower Score and myBehaviorally 

Contact us now to start testing today!

THE AUTHOR

Peter Cloutier is a senior marketing leader at Behaviorally, specializing in packaging design research and shopper behavior. He helps CPG brands and retailers optimize packaging to win at shelf using behavioral science and AI-driven insights. Peter’s previous experience includes leadership roles at ChaseDesign, Catapult, Ryan Partnership, and Ogilvy & Mather. His work sits at the intersection of branding and buying, with a focus on driving measurable in-store impact. Peter is a frequent industry speaker and contributor to leading marketing publications. 

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