Snackable #1 - Fresh food data & insights, served monthly

Claire Brunaud
6 days ago
4 min read

Welcome to this new edition of Snackable, KaryonFood’s newsletter dedicated to international food, retail and data trends.

Every month, we review the signals shaping food markets worldwide: retailer and distributor strategies, shifts in shopper and consumer behavior, product innovations, commercial activations, retail & foodservice dynamics, and new ways of using data.

The goal: to help you better understand market movements, identify opportunities, and turn the right signals into concrete decisions.

On the menu this month:

Top Story : Safeway brings grocery shopping into ChatGPT
By the Numbers : 40%
Data Decode : sell-in vs sell-out
KaryonFood Picks : The 10 Essential Analyses of a Retail Category Manager
Innovation Shelf : TOP selection of innovations

Enjoy the read 😊

Top Story

Safeway brings grocery shopping into ChatGPT

What if grocery shopping became as simple as having a conversation?

On August 5, Albertsons Companies launched a Safeway plugin in ChatGPT, allowing U.S. shoppers to search for products, find past purchases, spot promotions, or even build a cart from a recipe, a photo, or a simple natural-language request.

For example, a shopper can ask for help preparing a quick dinner for four: the tool can suggest relevant Safeway products and help add them to the cart. Shoppers can then review or adjust their selection before being redirected to Safeway to complete the purchase.

The initiative is part of Albertsons’ broader AI strategy, which already includes shopping assistants and Ask AI features designed to simplify product discovery and trip planning.

👉 What we take away

AI is no longer just being used to analyze shopper behavior: it is gradually becoming a new gateway to purchase. For retailers and brands alike, tomorrow, being visible may also mean being recommended at the right moment in a conversation.

📍 Source : BusinessWire

This is the value share of private-label brands in European grocery sales in 2025, across the 11 markets studied.

Private labels are no longer gaining ground on price alone: premium, health, local and organic ranges are turning them into brands in their own right — and into real drivers of innovation.

Key takeaway: for national brands, standing out and accurately measuring the performance of each SKU is becoming more strategic than ever.

📍 Source : McKinsey

Data Decode

Sell-in vs sell-out

Two terms that come up all the time in Sales teams… but they don’t tell quite the same story.

Sell-in measures the sales made by the manufacturer to the distributor.

Sell-out, on the other hand, tracks the sales made by that distributor to end customers: SKUs sold, volumes, warehouses, customer types, and more.

Why does the difference matter?

Because a product delivered to a distributor is not necessarily sold from the same location. In Foodservice in particular, stock transfers between warehouses can create a gap between what sell-in data suggests and what is actually happening in the market. Relying on sell-in alone can therefore lead to a distorted view of performance: you may think you are measuring demand, when in reality you are mainly measuring delivery flows.

Combining sell-in and sell-out data gives you a much more accurate view of the value chain, from the manufacturer all the way to the end customer.

In short:Sell-in = what you send into the network.Sell-out = what the network actually sells.

KaryonFood Picks

The 10 Essential Analyses of a Retail Category Manager

Which SKUs are truly performing? Where are the biggest growth opportunities? Are your promotions actually generating incremental sales?

In this new ebook, KaryonFood explores 10 key analyses based on sell-out and POS data to help Category Managers better manage their categories: product performance, assortment, distribution, promotions, sales trends, regional potential, innovation tracking, and more.

👉 Discover the right KPIs to track and the concrete actions you can take from them.

Download the ebook

Innovation Shelve

One of Karyon’s passions is, of course, innovation.

Not just because the words sound good together, but because we’re both food lovers and endlessly curious.

Here’s our TOP selection of innovations that caught our attention:

🇪🇺 KFC x Doritos: When a snack becomes a meal

KFC and PepsiCo have launched KFC x Doritos Loaded across 27 European markets. The concept combines KFC Crispy Tenders with Doritos, guacamole, pico de gallo, jalapeños and Mexican-inspired sauces — all served directly in a specially designed Doritos bag that turns into a tray.

👉 Why we like it: a great example of meal snackification and collaboration between an FMCG brand and a foodservice player.

🇬🇧 Lindt: Chocolate goes 100% cocoa

Lindt is taking the dark chocolate trend to the extreme with its new Excellence 100% Cocoa bar, launched in the UK in August. It expands a range that previously went from 70% to 99% cocoa.

👉 Why we like it: a launch that perfectly illustrates the premiumisation of chocolate and the growing demand for more intense, differentiated products, despite a context of high cocoa price inflation.

🇧🇷 Prat’s Pro+: Orange juice gets a protein boost

In Brazil, Prat’s has launched Pro+, an enriched orange juice delivering 15g of protein per 300ml bottle. The product is made with 94.9% orange juice and contains hydrolyzed collagen protein, with no added sugar.

👉 Why it’s interesting: the high-protein trend is moving beyond shakes, yogurts and bars into much more unexpected categories.