The food, beverage, and wellness industries are undergoing a profound transformation driven by shifting consumer values, technological acceleration, and economic volatility. In this edition of our newsletter, we identify and explore the most critical trend areas shaping the 2026 landscape, with a special focus on the “new” market environment.
An emerging (and disruptive) set of realities is accelerating some priorities, bringing new ones to the table, and fundamentally transforming the tradition of how, why, and where people shop for food.
Top 5 Highlights:
Takeaway:
Conscious Consumption
Conscious consumption is a values-driven approach to health, sustainability, and transparency. Sustainability and ingredient avoidance are core themes for conscious consumers and brands that reflect these ideals will be positioned for growth.
As consumers become even more conscious of what they buy, companies are focusing their innovation pipelines on bringing shoppers more health- and wellness-focused products.
Companies are also making big bets, prioritizing category disruption and new category entry over less risky line extensions.
Anywhere Commerce highlights the rise of frictionless, omnichannel, and ambient shopping experiences. E-commerce and purchasing through social channels will continue to gain market share, driven by wide social media adoption and increased ad spend.
Agentic AI will gain in adoption in 2026. The growing influence of AI, automation, and synthetic agents in shaping consumer decisions and product development. 46% of CPG executives believe agentic commerce will be highly disruptive in 2026. The need for brands to seamlessly position themselves for AI shopping agents and the consumers who purchase their goods will become increasingly important.
Consumer Prices: Tariffs & Inflation
Consumer prices are likely to continue rising due to broader tariff costs than we saw last year. This will be driven by consistent tariffs for the entire calendar year. Despite rising tariff rates, consumer prices have so far remained muted. Price increases have decelerated in categories with greater exposure to rising tariffs, including products with steel or aluminum packaging, such as soda and beer, suggesting prices may rise further in 2026. While core commodity prices have increased significantly.
To make our tariff prediction, we looked at many commodity-driven categories that have seen significant cost increases to see how it eventually plays out. Those higher costs do eventually make their way to consumers; it can sometimes just take a while.
SPINS then drilled into a few specific categories to learn more about the timing of consumer price increases relative to higher manufacturing costs. What we want to call out is that there’s always a delay, usually between 12 and 18 months, between when costs start to rise and when higher prices reach consumers. If the same holds for the tariffs announced in April last year, it means 2026 is when we’ll start to see higher prices reach consumers, even though we didn’t see widespread inflation in 2025.
Shelf price is sticky; the grocery supply chain takes a conservative approach to price changes, which is why we haven’t seen prices rise en masse. The grocery supply chain (manufacturers, distributors, retailers) isn’t reactive; they are thoughtful about how consumers will respond to rising prices on the shelf.
Analyzing other ways manufacturers will react to the tariff costs they’ve already incurred; we anticipate two: reduced promo activity and spreading cost increases across the rest of their portfolio, even to products less impacted by tariffs. These levers allow manufacturers and retailers to spread the impact of increased costs while avoiding significant price hikes.
Key Takeaways
Conscious Consumption continues to shape both product innovation and shopper decision-making, reflecting a more deliberate balance between personal health, values, and affordability. Shoppers are increasingly scanning for cleaner ingredient decks, reduced sugar, functional benefits, and transparency around sourcing and processing. At the same time, sustainability and ethics remain important but are now often filtered through a “value-for-money” lens—meaning brands that can credibly deliver health and purpose without a premium price are best positioned to win. This is driving growth in claims such as high-protein, gut health, low/no sugar, and regenerative or responsibly sourced, while also creating pressure on brands to avoid greenwashing and back up messaging with tangible proof points.
Anywhere Commerce is accelerating how and where shoppers discover and buy food and beverage products, blurring the lines between grocery, foodservice, and digital retail. Consumers increasingly move across channels—traditional grocery, club, mass, convenience, and direct-to-consumer—depending on mission (weekly stock-up vs immediate consumption), price sensitivity, and fulfillment needs. Online grocery is more normalized, but growth is also coming from omnichannel behaviors such as click-and-collect, subscription replenishment, and shoppable social content that compresses the path from discovery to purchase.
For brands, this means winning requires both strong physical shelf execution and digital readiness: optimized product content, high-quality images, search visibility, ratings and reviews, and retailer media strategies that convert interest into basket adds.
Finally, Non-human Participation—driven by AI, automation, and machine-enabled decision-making—is increasingly shaping what is produced, promoted, and purchased across the food and beverage ecosystem. Retailers are using algorithms to optimize pricing, promotions, assortment, and personalization at scale, while brands are deploying predictive analytics to improve demand forecasting, distribution decisions, and marketing efficiency.
At the consumer level, recommendation engines and AI-driven shopping assistants are beginning to shape discovery by suggesting products based on preferences, dietary goals, or past behavior, potentially shifting brand competition from shelf-only to “algorithmic shelf” presence. Over time, non-human decision-makers will play a larger role in determining winners and losers in the market, making data quality, digital product metadata, and measurable performance signals just as important as packaging, taste, and in-store visibility.
Sources:
Attribute Ticker
Data Ticker
Below we break out total MULO with Natural Products, Total MULO Base, Total Natural Expanded with Natural Products, and Total Natural Expanded Base.
Looking for more information? Please contact the SPINS Account Manager for PRESENCE, Hans De Schaaf, hdeschaaf@spins.com.
(847) 277-9500