Tiny Food Brands Coming Out Of Nowhere To Beat Big Businesses

There has been plenty of fragmentation in the media industry in recent years, as people tune into millions of personally-customized radio stations and turn away from mass-market network television. But there’s another trend breaking up an old set of monolithic mass markets — and these ones can be found in your local supermarket.

Historically, the most significant competition in the supermarket aisle was between big packaged food companies like General Mills GIS +0.27% and Kraft KRFT -1.27%. A more recent force has been the private label and generic brands. And an even more recent trend, analysts at BMO said in a note released today, is the rise of the “flankers”: Food brands that come from nowhere and nibble away at the edges of an established category, eventually chewing away at enough to have a significant impact.

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