Quick Take — Aldi USA launches its own-brand ready meals

ALDI is entering the ready-meal category for the first time, with a range of seven fresh options set to hit the shelves from early October.

The range includes five single-portion meals priced at under $8, with the chain’s stylised logo featured on the packaging: this marks a sign of maturity for the company that pioneered the discount retail format and which, in Italy, has always offered own-brand products with made-up names.

Quick Take — The Italian organic label is launched

greater value for supply chains and ‘Made in Italy’ products. It will appear alongside the European Union’s organic production logo.

… “In 2025, the positive trend in domestic consumption will strengthen, rising by over 9 per cent compared with the previous year. The value of organic product consumption in Italy will reach 4.4 billion euros (a 9.2 per cent increase on 2024), the highest ever recorded, accounting for 4 per cent of the total value of national agri-food expenditure. Eight regions, together with the Autonomous Province of Bolzano, have already exceeded the European target of 25 per cent of utilised agricultural area under organic farming, which in 2025 accounts for 19.4 per cent of the total national area (2,377,749 hectares). There are, meanwhile, 95,389 organic producers, of whom 85,443 are farms.”

The sector faces many problems: are we putting obstacles in the way of organic farming, whilst encouraging the use of pesticides, and promoting wine, the excessive consumption of which is carcinogenic?

Furthermore, large-scale retailers have trivialised private-label products, stripping them of their value.

The result is that the area converted to organic farming in Italy fell (-5.4 per cent) in 2025, as highlighted by Giuseppe Coletti on LinkedIn.

Labels and advertising – I’m thinking of the pasta adverts – are of no use whatsoever if the sector is, in fact, penalised by a decree that undermines its very survival.

Quick Take — This is the worst bar of soap according to Altroconsumo: Dove, Nidra and Esselunga have also been given a failing mark

Conad and Selexsoap bars were also rated as ‘poor ’.

The survey examined25 solid soap bars(as part of a wider comparison of 65 soaps, including both solid and liquid varieties), assessing the ingredients listed on the label, their environmental impact and certain health-related aspects. The final score placed greater weight on environmental factors (70 per cent), whilst the remaining 30 per cent related to problematic ingredients, allergens and substances considered less favourable. GreenMe

(Dove is a brand of the Unilever group).

Quick Take — Carrefour revamps its own-brand range

Carrefour is building on the initiative launched with Act For Food in 2017 by offering the option to include three logos or pictograms on each pack, with an explanation on the back. The three are chosen from around fifty options covering promises regarding ingredients (no additives, no colourings, no MSG…), production conditions (no synthetic herbicides, no GMOs, access to pasture, etc.), packaging (e.g. recyclability), nutritional profile (fat and salt content, etc.) or environmental factors.

This latest addition to ‘Act For Food’ aims to highlight how Carrefour’s own-brand products differ from other private labels.

Below, on the right, is the Italian translation of Olivier Dauvers’ post, which broke the news I have summarised here.

N.B.: the Carrefour pictogram remains rather unclear.

Quick Take — Walmart expands into home delivery: partnership with three fast-food chains

Retail giantWalmart Inc.is expanding its restaurant food home-delivery service beyond its own stores for the first time. According to initial reports fromBloomberg, the retailer will begin offering delivery in 30 minutes or less for Papa John’s orders in thousands of locations across the United States, following a brief pilot scheme in selected markets this autumn.

Hungry customers will be able to order from the pizza chain, which offers home delivery and takeaway, via walmart.com or the Walmart mobile app, in the section dedicated to restaurants. Meals can be ordered individually or added to the online shopping basket alongside other items, using Walmart’sExpress deliveryservice. Deliveries will be carried out by independent couriers via the Spark Delivery app…

Other partner restaurants that have signed delivery agreements with Walmart include theSubway sandwich chainand Dunkin’, through a partnership with their parent company, Inspire Brands…

Progressive Grocer

Below: Subway is a sandwich chain that is very popular in Anglo-Saxon countries. Dunkin’ Donuts is such a strong brand that, in addition to its fast-food outlets, it also has own-brand products distributed through US supermarket chains.

Quick Take — In Altroconsumo’s value-for-money ranking, Eurospin comes out on top among discount stores, whilst Dok, Coop and Famila dominate the supermarket and superstore categories for general shopping

The table to look at is the second one.

The comparison in the first table is not very meaningful, partly because the products sold by discount stores, supermarkets and superstores are not the same.

Conad comes top in terms of value for money if you look only at own-brand products (third table).

Source

Drafted on 2 September, updated on 3 September 2026

Quick Take — The centre of the shelf is disappearing: budget and premium segments are growing. An analysis of ten years’ sales data

An analysis of NielsenIQ reports from 2017 to 2026 shows how inflation, private-label products and new consumer priorities have progressively polarised the market. The mid-range segment is not disappearing, but it is losing its central role…

In 2025, private-label brands will account for 23.3 per cent of the Hypermarket, Supermarket and Self-Service sector and 32 per cent of the total Italian omnichannel market. The most interesting finding is not merely the growth in market share, but rather who is losing ground.

Between June 2024 and June 2025, the leading industrial brands remain essentially stable, rising from 10.55 per cent to 10.68 per cent within the Omnichannel segment. The other brands also remain stable. The ‘followers’, on the other hand, fall from 23.16 per cent to 22.73 per cent, whilst private-label brands rise from 31.79 per cent to 32 per cent…