The shelf, measured.Not estimated.
MMC keeps an independent record of what is stocked, faced, and priced across grocery, digital and physical. Coverage runs where the panels do not: the independent and specialty grocers where new brands break first.
Evidence before conviction
Assortment, pricing, and share-of-shelf facts for diligence and thesis monitoring, measured from the shelf itself rather than inferred from surveys or scraped summaries.
The shelf as it actually is
Where you are stocked, how deep, at what price, and beside whom. Distribution truth and retail execution, without waiting for a distributor report.
A method you can audit
In-store capture, systematic reading, catalog reconciliation, and independent audit, with provenance on every fact we publish.
Nobody syndicates observed shelf state: what was stocked, faced, positioned, and priced in the store. We do.
of the $920 billion US food retail market is sold by independent grocers, per the National Grocers Association's 2026 economic analysis. The national panels observe the chains that report and project the rest.
the annual sales floor below which stores never enter the major panels at all. The long tail of specialty, ethnic, and single-store grocery lives under that line, and so do most emerging brands' first hundred doors.
syndicated datasets of observed shelf state. Even inside fully reported chains, point-of-sale records what sold, never what the shelf held, at what price, in what position. That record exists only if someone stands in front of it.
Decisions about the shelf deserve evidence from the shelf. Syndicated panels lag, surveys flatter, and the storefront tells only half the story. We measure both halves: the shelf as shown online, and the shelf as stocked in the store.
McGovern Measurement Company operates a continuous shelf-measurement program, digital storefronts and physical fixtures alike, spanning national banners and the independent and specialty grocers where new brands actually break. Coverage geography is named under license. The full measurement layer is available to clients as data.
Where the next wave of grocery brands breaks in first
293 brands in our footprint qualify as emerging, and 58% have not reached a single conventional chain: emerging brands fill 5.4% of the specialty shelf against 2.3% of the mass shelf, and the independent aisle is where the next wave shows up months before the panels see it.
At eye level, one kombucha brand triples its shelf share
Measured in-store, eye level is distributed nothing like the shelf overall: some brands hold three times their footprint there, and some of the biggest assortments sit below it.
Put the shelf record to work.
A thirty-minute briefing with our team: coverage, method, and the data itself against your category or thesis.