Shopper spending is polarizing. As Nestlé’s David Rennie put it, “purchasing polarizes, the bit in the middle always gets squeezed.” Buyers are moving to big value packs at one end and smaller single formats at the other, and McKinsey attributes the shift to two forces at once: affordability and demand for higher-benefit products. Mid-sized formats lose on both counts.

A premium tier and a value multipack are different designs with different finishes, structures, and economics, not one pack resized. Each requires its own prototypes and its own validation, so one product now carries two pack programs while the calendar usually stays the same.

Run them as two projects with two fidelity standards, and validate each where it has to win: the premium by feel in the hand and presence on the shelf, the value by cost and structure. Validating both like a mid-tier pack is how both ends end up underbuilt.

Both ends are moving. Private label set a record at $282.8 billion in US sales in 2025 (PLMA and Circana), and Costco’s Kirkland Signature reached about $90 billion, growing at roughly three times the rate of national brands. The premium end holds the margin. The mid-size middle is the part that’s thinning.