2024 March Board Book

CMAB is currently identifying retailers for this year’s tours of California cheesemakers. With a successful internal model developed, we are targeting retailers who are ready to buy and would equal significant volume for successful new product launches. Conversations have already begun with Giant Foods (one of five Ahold divisions), Kroger (specifically the nationwide corporate cheese buyer), Harris Teeter (who is under Kroger but holds a vast amount of autonomy), Albertsons/Vons/Pavilions (SoCal), Central Market, and Harmons. Last year, Cacique abruptly exited California and now processes Hispanic-style dairy solely out of their Texas plant. They have since been met with a number of challenges at their plant leading to a “temporary” outage cheese that has gone on since at least mid-November. CMAB’s retail team has been working closely with our other California processors to fill Cacique’s space on shelves and provide incentives to keep them there once Cacique is back online. Last, CMAB’s retail team attended the Winter Fancy Food Show in Las Vegas in January and spent three days meeting with retailers, distributors, brokers, and processors. The quality of conversations and follow-ups from the show continues to warrant investment in this key touchpoint with our stakeholders. E-commerce: With 2023 now behind us, we can look back and see how last year compared to 2022 for e-commerce. In total, e-commerce sales dipped just -1% versus year prior. Digging in further though, we can see ship-to-home continued its retreat (expected for a number of reasons), while delivery and pickup remained mostly flat. Shopper behavior help us understand this a bit more – order frequency has contracted while the average order value increased. Shoppers also increased their e-commerce spend with mass and hard discount retailers versus traditional supermarkets. Looking to 2024 and beyond, e commerce will remain a relevant channel. CMAB will continue to work with Instacart – the largest third-party provider/reach within the US in which we can promote RCM products in a retailer-agnostic format. CMAB will also be working with Retail Media Networks (RMNs) like Walmart Connect and Kroger’s 84.51 to build awareness and drive sales for RCM dairy products.

Source: Brick Meets Click/Mercatus