By Emma Weinbren (emmaweinbrenwrites@gmail.com)
Publishing: 18 October 2025
Advertising deadline: 2 October 2025
Submissions deadline: 30 September 2025
Print, digital and sponsorship opportunities
Gut health is big business. And it’s not just yoghurts and dairy players that are jumping on the health trend: soft drinks brands, snack players and everyone in between are tailoring products and marketing campaigns in a bid to grow sales. The past year has also seen an explosion in activity by retailers, who are devising new approaches to merchandising fixtures, ranging, promotions and marketing to win a bigger slice of the gut health trend. Who’s doing it best? And what other functional health trends are coming to the fore?
In-store marketing, merchandising and theatre: This feature will pay close attention to how retailers are trying to improve shopping experiences in store and online and the extent to which this is helping different retail groups win share and create points of difference.
Brands v own-label: This feature will explore how the balance between brands and own-label has changed over the past year. Which retailers have been pushing own label products the most in the past year and how are brands fighting back? How do they compare on price, product quality and the like?
Marketing: We will also be looking at how the big brands are using their marketing budgets to convince shoppers to continue putting them in their baskets. How reliant are they on celebrity endorsements, primetime TV ads and digital? And how can challengers with shallower pockets cut through the noise?
Retail share: This feature will explore how different retailers are managing the category in terms of ranging, promotions and balancing brands and own label product assortments. How are brands working with retailers to create excitement in the fixture? Which retailers are in strongest growth and why? Innovation: The past year has seen plenty of innovation in functional food and drink. This feature will explore the latest trends and how this is playing out in terms of product innovation. We will profile four of the most interesting latest launches in a separate innovation panel (please provide high res image).
Vypr: Using commentary and data from Vypr, we explain how consumers view the gut health and functional food category and how this is changing.
Innovations: We will profile four new products or ranges, ideally ones that have not appeared in The Grocer before. We need launch date, rsp, and a hi-res picture of each.
Retail approaches: We will profile how four different retailers approach the category in terms of ranging, merchandising, promotions, etc