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"I don't think we're gonna have a non-alc and alc industry that's separate 3-5 years from now," RBC Managing Director Nik Modi declared at the tail end of NBWA's BREW (Building Relationships and Empowering Women) Conference earlier today. "The consolidation is already happening at the supply chain level. It's gonna drive manufacturer consolidation. It's inevitable," and "I think we're just at the beginning." But that wasn't the last of Nik's bold predictions. "Pepsi cannot compete with Coke until they refranchise. Bottom line," he said. "The folks at Pepsi will fight me on this. But so far I've been right for 10 years and they've been wrong," Nik noted, calling that "inevitable" as well. While Nik ain't the first person to posit those prospects, these were among the most full-throated proclamations to date. Taken together, they paint a picture of an utterly transformed industry.We're entering a phase of consolidation that "we've already been in for a while" when it comes to distribution, but "it's gonna accelerate short-term," advisory services provider (and longtime analyst) Caroline Levy agreed during a panel moderated by BBD's Jenn Litz-Kirk. "The power has moved into the hands of the distributors," Caroline commented to a room full of 'em, and we're "seeing it increasingly as you" expand into other categories that "you control the shelf space just as much as the retailer does." Distributors are "sitting in a very, very powerful position," she underscored. But "the hard job, again, is to back the winning brands.""Agentic Commerce" Will be "The Most Disruptive Thing" That Ever Happened in CPG Yet "there's gonna be a lot less product assortment in the future," Nik believes, because "agentic commerce is gonna literally be the most disruptive thing that has ever happened to this industry. To the consumer industry. Ever." And it's "gonna come like a freight train." How fast? Within the "next couple of years" Nik predicted "we're all gonna be shopping with prompts" (e.g., "I'm having a Super Bowl party for 30 people") and your basket will populate automatically based on past purchases and/or how you've trained it. That's a fearless forecast (especially for "all" shoppers). Time will tell."Every Company" is Built Around "A Path to Purchase That Will No Longer Exist" If you're "the 5th brand in the category, for instance, how on earth are you going to end up in the basket if we're not shopping for brands or categories, we're shopping for an occasion?" asked Nik. "Every company" is built around "a path to purchase that will no longer exist in the future," in his view. And "if you're not ready&hellip;it's gonna be ugly." A lot of CPG cos "are still trying to figure out how to do omnichannel. That was a long time ago," he said. "We're now moving onto the next thing.""I Believe You Can Grow This Business" Still, count Nik among the optimists when it comes to the structural vs cyclical debate. "If you think it's more structural than it is, you start pivoting your investment allocation. And that actually makes the problem worse," he cautioned. In other words: "Your business won't grow if you don't think it's a growth business." But "I believe you can grow this business, and we're seeing plenty of scale brands that are doing just fine."

Nik's Inevitabilities: Alc & Non-Alc Industries Will Merge Within 3-5 Yrs, Pepsi Will Refranchise and Agentic Commerce Will Upend Everything

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