Growth in Flux: Insights from CAGNY 2025

The Consumer Analyst Group of New York (CAGNY) 2025 conference brought energy to the crowd with new product launches, brand splash videos and samples, but the word of the week was undoubtedly “uncertainty.”

Companies are steering toward the low end of their long-term growth guidance, but analysts/investors seemed skeptical of those conservative outlooks, asking pointed questions during Q&A sessions. To address these concerns, executives responded with an agenda focused on protecting cash flow and maintaining balance sheet resiliency.

Further, absent or unspoken, is a longer-term vision/transformation to address the broader market headwinds of consumer spending and changing behaviors, unknowns relating to US tariff policy, potential food regulation changes, proliferation of GLP-1s, retailer private label strategies and others. These topics received very few direct comments despite being a focus of hallway talk.

Growth opportunities are uncertain in this environment. Most companies focused on opportunities to outperform the category by gaining share through brand renovation, personalizing consumer experiences, launching adjacent product innovation and increasing total distribution points. A handful of companies are working to create bolder step-changes in category growth by bringing disruptive innovation to market, which can increase use occasions and address unmet consumer needs.

Regardless of the approach, analysts appeared unconvinced about any material pick-up in organic sales for 2025. However, this industry has weathered disruption and external threats before, and the opportunity exists to disprove the skeptics.

Here are our perspectives after hearing from more than 50 industry CPG executives at CAGNY

Market dynamics may continue to be challenging with a few bright spots (e.g., away from home) in the near term. Companies that embrace emerging trends and use this opportunity to disrupt themselves — such as by taking a clean sheet approach to reimagine parts of their value chain with an ‘AI first’ mindset — will set a far better foundation for the future, while companies that focus only on incrementalist strategies around deeper brand penetration and maintaining strong balance sheets will find themselves even further behind. The long-term opportunity is to embrace evolving consumer behaviors, while navigating the uncertainty, as a spark for reinvention. The old playbook cannot be applied to this current environment. Winners should invest in building a sustainable set of capabilities to grow, fail fast and bet on new business models, markets and platforms that produce privileged consumer insights and a long-term competitive advantage.