Grass-fed dairy value sales are outpacing pasture-raised by more than two-to-one at retail, and Truly Grass Fed is moving to capture more of that momentum with a packaging overhaul informed by point-of-purchase panel research. The Irish co-op brand is rolling the new look across its full butter and cheese portfolio over the coming months, with the redesign built to surface two claims that increasingly drive premium dairy purchase intent: the brand's "95% grass-fed" sourcing standard and its Non-GMO Project Verified certification.
What the Data Showed
The redesign was not a style exercise. Truly Grass Fed commissioned a shopper panel study specifically to understand how buyers engage with its products at shelf — and then used those findings to reweight the hierarchy of information on pack. The result is a label that leads with credential visibility rather than brand aesthetics, a reversal of the approach many dairy brands still use. For buyers and category managers evaluating grass-fed SKUs, that kind of claim legibility translates directly to trial lift and reduced reliance on secondary shelf signage.
The category numbers justify the investment. According to SPINS data cited by the brand, total retail volume for butters and cheeses labeled grass-fed is up 4.6% year-over-year, with value up 12.3% over the same period — a spread that signals consumers are trading up on price per unit, not just buying more units. That value-outpacing-volume pattern is a reliable indicator of premiumization in progress, and it is exactly the kind of trend that influences slotting decisions at natural and conventional grocery alike.
Whole Foods Expansion Runs Parallel
Alongside the packaging news, Truly Grass Fed is announcing that its Salted and Unsalted 8 oz Butter Blocks are now carried in more than 350 Whole Foods Market stores, a significant increase from the brand's prior footprint with the retailer. The timing is deliberate: a packaging refresh without distribution expansion is a brand maintenance move; pairing the two signals an intent to grow velocity at the same time new shelf space opens. For operators sourcing premium dairy for foodservice or retail programs, availability at Whole Foods at scale also functions as a quality-signal proxy that simplifies vendor vetting.
Jaclyn Crabbe, Marketing Director for Truly Grass Fed, framed the refresh around evolving shopper trust expectations: "As consumers increasingly seek responsibly sourced products they can trust, we want our packaging to evolve alongside shopper preferences and clearly communicate the standards and values behind our products."
What Operators Should Watch
For food and beverage buyers, procurement teams, and brand managers, the Truly Grass Fed move reflects a broader pattern playing out across the specialty dairy segment: third-party certifications are migrating from back-panel footnote to front-of-pack hero. Brands that have not audited their packaging hierarchy against current shopper engagement research risk ceding shelf attention to competitors who have. The SPINS data also reinforces that grass-fed positioning at the 95%-or-higher sourcing threshold commands a measurable price premium that retail buyers are willing to sustain.
For operators building brand launch packages or retail readiness strategies, the Truly Grass Fed playbook — panel research, credential prominence, coordinated distribution expansion — is a replicable framework worth benchmarking. And for those tracking category trends in premium dairy and specialty ingredients, the value-over-volume dynamic in grass-fed is a procurement signal, not just a marketing story.
Written by Michael Politz, Author of Guide to Restaurant Success: The Proven Process for Starting Any Restaurant Business From Scratch to Success (ISBN: 978-1-119-66896-1), Founder of Food & Beverage Magazine, the leading online magazine and resource in the industry. Designer of the Bluetooth logo and recognized in Entrepreneur Magazine's "Top 40 Under 40" for founding American Wholesale Floral, Politz is also the Co-founder of the Proof Awards and the CPG Awards and a partner in numerous consumer brands across the food and beverage sector.
