Nestlé Reports People Are Once Again Buying More Things, Not Just Paying More For The Same Things

VEVEY, SWITZERLAND—Nestlé on Thursday reported third-quarter organic growth of 4 percent, with real internal growth—the industry’s term for people actually buying more stuff—positive in every region, stunning a consumer-goods sector that had spent several years assuming ‘volume’ was a button on the remote.

“For a while there, growth meant charging the same people more for the same yogurt,” said Gregory Hadfield, a fictional consumer-staples strategist at Larchmont Capital. “Now people are buying additional yogurt. Nobody on my team had ever seen it. One analyst had to be walked through it on a whiteboard.”

The results arrived the same day another household-products giant also reported higher volumes, prompting a brief wave of optimism across the sector that the American consumer might be ‘holding up,’ a phrase that has been used to describe the consumer every quarter since roughly 1958.

• ‘Pricing’
• ‘Volume’
• ‘Consumer is resilient’

The Industry Rediscovers Volume

Period	‘Pricing’	‘Volume’	‘Consumer is resilient’
Q1 ’25	88	22	50
Q2 ’25	84	25	50
Q3 ’25	80	27	50
Q4 ’25	77	30	50
Q1 ’26	74	36	50
Q2 ’26	70	44	50
Q3 ’26	61	63	50

Source: The Daily SKU; not real data

Shoppers explain themselves

Shoppers interviewed by The Daily SKU said there was no grand strategy behind their purchases. “I bought two frozen pizzas instead of one,” said Kendra Laird, 46, of Toledo, Ohio. “I didn’t realize I was a data point. I would have stood up straighter.”

Analysts cautioned that higher energy and freight costs could still weigh on margins in coming quarters, and that the industry would be closely monitoring whether people continue buying things, or return to their natural state of staring at things and putting them back.