Keene, New Hampshire, U.S.A.-based grocery store supplier and operator C&S Wholesale Grocers is relaunching its premiere brand Best Yet, which it calls a “curated assortment of familiar household staples.”
The revamp includes a wide array of new products, including canned albacore tuna. While the company has always included regular canned tuna in its Best Yet lineup, it added a canned albacore tuna and is looking to expand its current Our Brands seafood assortment, C&S Senior Director of Our Brands Mark Gilliand told SeafoodSource.
The company also wants to scale up its fresh, frozen, and shelf-stable seafood assortment, Gilliand said.
C&S did not reveal the other products included in the relaunch, but it said that the premium brand has a “fresh look, trusted quality, and affordability shoppers love.” The extensive assortment of products are “eye-catching, high-quality, and budget-friendly,” C&S CEO Eric Winn said.
The move to grow its own-brand product comes as the company has been dealing with the fallout of the failed merger between grocery chains Kroger and Albertsons. C&S was slated to purchase as many as 600 stores if the merger came to pass, but after its failure, the company laid off at least 76 employees at sites in Hawaii, Vermont, New Jersey, Texas, and New York and later laid off 490 more employees from one of its distribution centers.
C&S sued Kroger in mid-March, alleging that the grocery chain owes it a USD 125 million (EUR 110 million) termination fee over the failed merger.
C&S is just one of many U.S. and global retailers and suppliers that are recognizing the value that private label can produce.
Private-label sales increased for the 13th straight month in March, according to new Circana data from the Private-Label Manufacturers Association (PLMA). Store-brand dollar sales surged 5 percent in March compared to March 2024, while unit sales increased 0.9 percent, per Supermarket News.
At the same time, national-brand dollar sales inclined slightly by 0.8 compared to last March, while unit sales declined by 1.1 percent.
