New Private Label Landscape Could Benefit Pricing, Improve Rationality in Select Food Categories. Event Recap

By Jonathan Feeney and David Schick and David Katzman and Jack Hermann Published on November 19, 2025 PDF

We recently hosted a client virtual event with Scott Monette, former CFO of Ralcorp to explore sector implications of last week’s announcement of a proposed go private transaction for private label food & beverage consolidator Treehouse. Ralcorp and its assets in successor companies, including Treehouse, drove U.S. private label consolidation from 1995-2025.

Key Takeaways include:

Deal Will Likely Drive Rationality, Better Structure in Some Food Categories. A private company structure brings several advantages to a private label/store brand manufacturer including lower margin transparency, greater strategic freedom, and the ability to more easily rationalize less profitable volume. This will likely contribute to more rationality in Treehouse categories- especially crackers, bakery items, cookies, coffee, powdered beverages, broth and hot cereal where there are strong branded competitors. This could be a minor challenge for store brand centric retailers, but a more material positive for branded players in those categories like KHC, KDP, GIS and CPB.
Consolidation Will Continue. We think InvestIndustrial’s 2022 acquisition of Treehouse’s meal preparation businesses, operated as Winland Foods, including pasta, sauces, syrups, dressings, jams and jellies, dry dinners & baking ingredients gives a successful likely roadmap. It recently merged with European pasta leader La Doria to create a $4 billion+ company. At closing, InvestIndustrial will likely operate the largest U.S. independent center store private label food business ever — with more than twice the scale of Treehouse ($3.3 billion in 2024 sales). We’d expect more of the same ahead.
Store Brands Will Keep Gaining Share. Private label has consistently gained share of consumer-packaged goods over the past 2 years, rising to 25% dollar share in 2025 from 22% in 2021. U.S. CPG private label shares remain far below those of Western Europe — the home markets of InvestIndustrial. Decades of U.S. retailer consolidation, especially the growth of hard discounters & limited assortment retail formats, augur more private label share gain. This proposed deal is one more informed endorsement of that thesis.
More Motivation to Settle Coffee Litigation. Under the terms announced last week, shareholders have the opportunity to receive 85% of net proceeds, if any are recovered, from the 10+ year old TreeHouse Foods, Inc. et al. v. Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, Inc. et al. litigation. We think this direct incentive, clearly endorsed by key selling parties, marginally increases motivation to pursue a near-term settlement.

Last week, private label leader Treehouse announced an agreement with PE firm Investindustrial to be acquired in all-cash transaction for an equity value of $1.2B. This follows a lengthy period of exploring strategic options and surprisingly poor operating performance for the U.S. private label foods leader despite a backdrop of private label share gains at retail.

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