The New Rules of Store Brands

8 Key Take Aways from PLMA 2025

This year at the PLMA’s 2025 Annual Private Label Trade Show held in Chicago, I had the opportunity to spend several days immersed in conversations with retailers, manufacturers, innovators, and packaging leaders. What became clear almost immediately is that private label store brands are no longer content to just follow national brands—they’re increasingly setting the pace for the entire industry.

As I walked the show floor, listened to keynotes, and engaged with retailers and suppliers, I couldn’t help but reflect on how much the landscape has evolved from the era when private label was primarily about offering a cheaper alternative. The themes emerging this year revealed a category defined by trust, intentional brand-building, innovation through design, and a deeper understanding of the shopper mindset. Below are the 8 biggest trends I took away from PLMA 2025, and what they mean for the future of private brands.

Across conversations and presentations, a consistent theme emerged: private label is stable, expanding, and gaining momentum across almost every major category. With sales approaching $300 billion, the narrative has shifted from temporary inflation-driven behavior to long-term trust and preference.

This foundation of confidence sets the stage for many of the other shifts I observed, especially as store brands begin to stand on their own as fully realized brands.

       2. It’s No Longer Just About Price. It’s About the Brand.

Building on that growth, shoppers now see private label as a space for quality, discovery, and emotional reassurance, not just savings. Keynotes reinforced that private label buyers increasingly believe products are as good as (or better than) national brands. We see this in the increasing “tiering” that’s happening, where retailers are offering value brands, mainstream brands, and premium brands. With the greatest growth coming on the premium end in many categories, the “price only” play on private label is just no longer true.

This evolution naturally raises the bar for packaging. Design must not only communicate value but also personality, distinctiveness, and credibility. With stronger store brand identities emerging, packaging becomes a key tool for expressing those brand-led promises.

This push for efficiency sits alongside another major transformation: the rise of the premium private label. Retailers are investing in higher-tier lines spanning beauty, beverages, pet, wellness, and prepared foods to keep higher-income shoppers engaged.

Premium products require packaging that signals unmistakable quality through color, finishes, structure, and claims. The rise in premium tiers underscores how packaging aesthetics and cues are driving shopper willingness to pay more.

      4. Operational Efficiency and Display-Ready Packaging Are Key in the Value Channel

Value Channel (Club, Dollar, and ALDI / LIDL) retailers require efficiencies behind the scenes. Display-ready packaging was a recurring topic with formats that move directly from case pack to shelf, enhancing visibility while reducing labor costs. While this is a value channel priority, we see this need expanding to mainstream retailers, too.

This focus on both function and impact highlights how packaging now operates on two fronts: helping stores run smarter and helping shoppers navigate more easily. The dual role of primary and secondary packaging is becoming more important than ever.

As premium store brands grow, sustainability expectations grow with them. Retailers spoke less about abstract ESG commitments and more about practical packaging goals: reducing plastics, improving recyclability, streamlining materials, and clarifying ingredient transparency.

The challenge is balancing sustainability with strong shelf presence. Packaging must communicate eco-progress without compromising clarity or shoppability, another reminder of how sensitive shoppers are to design changes.

       6. Speed to Market Is Becoming a Competitive Weapon

Sustainability wasn't the only pressure point. Virtually every retailer I spoke with emphasized the need for speed, including faster design cycles, faster testing, and faster shelf deployment. AI-based predictive tools were a major topic of interest, especially for rapid concept screening (checking out myBehaviorally).

This urgency reflects the broader pace of private label innovation. As the category becomes more sophisticated, retailers want to move quickly while still making confident, data-driven decisions.

      7. Packaging Is Becoming the Fastest Path to Innovation

The demand for speed helps explain another major theme at the show: packaging itself is becoming the innovation. Many retailers are modernizing legacy store brands not through reformulation, but through design-led refreshes that redefine how products are perceived.

Categories like sauces, canned goods, frozen meals, and household cleaners are using packaging as the primary vehicle for elevating brand meaning. This reinforces packaging’s power to shift perceptions of quality, taste, value, and relevance almost instantly.

      8. Prepared Meal Solutions Are Reshaping How Shoppers Use Private Label

The momentum behind packaging-led innovation was perhaps most visible in the rapidly growing prepared meal solutions space. Retailers are capturing meal occasions previously owned by restaurants with offerings like H-E-B Meal Simple, Kroger’s Home Chef, Target’s Good & Gather, and Costco’s Kirkland prepared foods.

Packaging plays a central role in conveying freshness, convenience, and culinary confidence. This expansion signals a broader trend: private label’s meeting shoppers not only in the center store but across fresh, refrigerated, and ready-to-eat solutions.

The Path

PLMA 2025 underscored how private label is entering a new era—one where packaging must work harder, move faster, and communicate more meaningfully than ever before. Packaging will need to act as both a strategic and operational lever for retailers looking to differentiate, premiumize, or modernize their store brands. As design becomes a primary driver of how shoppers perceive quality, value, and relevance, the need for clear, behavioral insight into what works (and why) has never been more critical.

Behaviorally is here to help retailers navigate this landscape by combining AI-powered predictive analytics with deep behavioral science to predict packaging that sells. Whether optimizing primary packaging, evaluating display-ready solutions, refining premium-tier design cues, or supporting growth in refrigerated and prepared meal solutions, our expertise allows retailers to move faster and with greater confidence. In a marketplace where packaging decisions can shift brand perception in seconds, Behaviorally provides the clarity needed to win at shelf. Contact us today to learn how we can help your packaging win at the moment of purchase transaction.

THE AUTHOR

Peter Cloutier is Director of Growth & Commercial Strategy at Behaviorally, helping to bring marketers the solutions they need to grow conversion to purchase, both in-store and online. Peter brings decades of experience in uncovering actionable consumer and shopper insights, with prior leadership roles at firms including ChaseDesign, Epsilon’s Commerce Agency, Catapult Marketing, and Ogilvy & Mather.

Connect with him on LinkedIn!