Review of the Year: Grocery’s biggest moments of 2025

Rescue of the Year: Poundland

Poundland’s recent history is a lesson in how quickly a retailer’s fortunes can change when opportunity distracts from the fundamentals and a couple of bad decisions are made.

In 2023 it was acquiring scores of former Wilko stores and opening them as quickly as possible, relaunching its website as fully transactional, piloting a soon-to-launch loyalty app and reporting full-year like-for-like sales growth of 5.6%.

But at the same time, customers were being turned off by clothing sourced at group level in a new sourcing arrangement. General merchandise went the same way as the UK buying team was axed. And, as we were soon to learn, those big stores Poundland had been opening weren’t doing so well.

In the space of little more than a year, Poundland was in a spiral that would lead to the axing of online sales, the loyalty app and even the frozen food range it had spent some years rolling out.

Poundland was rescued when Pepco Group sold it in June to Gordon Brothers, which also agreed to invest £90m in turning it around, made up of an initial £60m and a further £30m following the implementation of a restructuring plan. The discount chain was days away from running out of money if the restructure plan did not receive approval, a lawyer told the High Court in August.

Happily, it was approved, avoiding the loss of another high street stalwart. It comes with the gradual closure of about 150 stores and a sensible return to pound shop basics. 

The David Bowie award for ch-ch-ch-changes: Reckitt, Kraft Heinz and Unilever split, sell and splinter

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold. It was a year of change in 2025 for the giants of fmcg, and splitting up became all the rage.

Reckitt sold off its Essential Home business for $4.8bn in the summer to focus more on health and hygiene and less on brands such as Cillit Bang and Air Wick. Kraft Heinz decided it was better off as two separate businesses, signalling a failed end to a decade-long marriage. Ella’s Kitchen and Hartley’s owner Hain Celestial drafted in Goldman Sachs to help tidy up the portfolio as its turnaround plan stalled. Nestlé is also simplifying by looking to sell non-core assets in vitamins & supplements and water to concentrate on coffee and petfood.

But of all the changes in 2025, Unilever is the group that continues to capture the attention. Fernando Fernandez grabbed the baton from outgoing CEO Hein Schumacher in March and ran with it, promising to accelerate the former boss’ new action plan. The ink on a deal to offload The Vegetarian Butcher was barely dry when Fernandez took charge. Eye-catching acquisitions of voguish personal care brands Wild and Dr Squatch set the tone, as Unilever turned toward higher-margin categories and shied away from food. Unloved snack supplier Graze was next out the door and heritage brands Marmite, Bovril and Colman’s look to be next. Unilever capped the year with its long-awaited ice cream demerger of The Magnum Ice Cream Company, with the business making its stock exchange debut in Amsterdam earlier this month.

Insane NPD of the year: Gingerbread Doritos

What’s crunchy and tastes like Christmas? Nope, not Santa’s fingernails. Leave his digits alone, you greedy little thing – the man’s got a job to do.

The answer is… Gingerbread Doritos, of course! Unveiled in October for Christmas 2025, the “totally unique” snacks promised to deliver Doritos’ classic crunch with the “warming, spiced” flavour of gingerbread.

Shoppers were quick to share their outrage online. “Gingerbread Doritos sounds illegal,” one consumer commented under an Instagram post featuring the NPD. “What in the name of all that is holy is that abomination?” quipped another, with a third admitting the concept made them “want to heave”.

It’s fair to assume Doritos hasn’t created a new bestseller – but that’s beside the point. The online hype around these unusual snacks will undoubtedly have lured curious shoppers down the crisp aisle in in their droves over recent weeks, presumably leading to incremental sales across the range. After all, who isn’t at least a little bit intrigued by the concept of gingerbread crisps? What to dip them in is a whole other conundrum… 

Scandal of the Year: Nestlé boss caught with his pants down

It’s a tale as old as time. An older man. A wife who doesn’t understand him. And a younger mistress.

But it gets slightly more complicated when you’re in the throes of turning around the world’s biggest food group.

Nestlé was already enduring one of the most challenging spells in its history – with volumes, and the share price, in freefall. A scandal at the heart of the Kit Kat and Nescafé owner that took down its CEO and chairman could not have been worse timed.

Company lifer Laurent Freixe had barely been in the top job for a year, after taking over from the sacked Mark Schneider, when he was forced to fall on his sword. Disgruntled staff within the business complained to a whistleblower hotline that Freixe was having an affair with a junior colleague. They were miffed about supposed preferential treatment.

Freixe denied it and Nestlé shut down the investigation. But the complaints refused to die down, and Nestlé opened another probe led by external advisors. The CEO was not so lucky a second time and was duly fired without an exit package.

Chairman Paul Bulcke, who had served the executive board for 20 years after first joining Nestlé in 1979, followed Friexe out the door two weeks later, following pressure from investors angry at his mishandling of the whole affair.

Nespresso boss Philipp Navratil got the nod as the new broom, with a mandate to accelerate the turnaround strategy. He immediately got investors back on side – at the expense of employee morale – with a plan to axe 16,000 jobs over the next two years.

Nestlé and Navratil will be hoping for a boring 2026.

Comeback of the year: Dave Lewis

It’s been a turbulent year for drinks giant Diageo, with former CEO Debra Crew quitting by mutual consent in July after failing to lift spirits or sales during her two-year tenure. Following Crew’s exit, most onlookers felt the Smirnoff owner needed either a safe pair of hands to steady the ship or a star name capable of injecting some impetus back into the business. After toying with the former, in interim boss Nik Jhiangiani, Diageo chair John Manzoni went all in on the latter, sensationally appointing former Tesco CEO Dave Lewis to a role he was reportedly overlooked for some 12 years prior.

Lewis was already a respected figure in fmcg after a near-three-decade stint at Unilever. However, it was turning around Tesco’s fortunes that made him a household name in grocery. After guiding Britain’s biggest retailer through a slew of profit warnings, spiralling debt and a major accounting scandal, Lewis stepped down in 2020 and appeared to have little appetite to return to frontline duty after five years away from the limelight.

Exactly what motivated the 60-year-old to pull his big old CEO boots on again remains unclear. But Diageo has pulled off an almighty coup in persuading him to do so.  

Marketing stunt of the year: the sweet sandwich trend

Marks & Spencer launching a strawberries and creme sandwich was truly the viral WTF moment UK grocery didn’t know it needed. Inspired by Japanese ‘sweet sandos’ and timed to coincide with Wimbledon, the £2.80 M&S Red Diamond Strawberry & Creme Sandwich was the first in what became a surprisingly long list of dessert-inspired sandwich SKUs.

While journalists, influencers and grocery marketers were falling over themselves to liveblog their first taste of the “best sandwich ever” (these people really need to get out more), the R&D teams at Tesco and Aldi were busy cooking up plans of their own.

Just a few weeks later, a birthday cake sandwich was listed as a main course in Tesco’s lunchtime meal deal, while Aldi’s take was made with sponge slices as the ‘bread’ rather than brioche (apparently in response to consumer criticism of the brioche-style bread offered by the others).

All three were, thankfully, limited edition only. The Grocer’s verdict? Let them eat (real) cake.

Early exit of the year: Liquid Death pulls out of the UK

Liquid Death went big when it launched into the UK market in August 2023. Wild marketing campaigns and festival tie-ups led many onlookers to predict the trendy US water brand would make a big splash on this side of the pond. And it did, initially.

But by February this year, the festival-sponsoring, zombie-referencing, pedal-to-the-metal challenger was quietly exiting the UK after sales dripped in at just £2.0m in the 52 weeks to 7 September 2024, according to NIQ data – not enough for it to rank among even the top 30 largest water brands in the UK.

Liquid Death remains a huge deal in its domestic US market, but over here it wasn’t long before its famously eye-catching cans were being sold in Home Bargains for 39p each and on a 3-for-£1 offer. What a way to go.

Edgelord of the year: Ricky Gervais

It’s easy to criticise Ricky Gervais. It’s fun, too. The boorish not-funnyman was certainly deserving of opprobrium in November, when he claimed posters for his Dutch Barn Orchard Vodka had been banned from London Underground. They hadn’t – because they existed only on social media. It was a PR stunt! So far, so boring.

Here’s the edgelordy bit: in typical fashion for the 64-year-old Gervais, the fake ads were juvenile, tasteless and as funny as stepping on the third rail. One featured the strapline ‘Welcome to London. Don’t forget your stab vest.’ Another read, ‘Don’t jump, you’ll make everyone late for work, you selfish prick!’. In an online video, Gervais faked outrage about the non-existent ad ban. “F**k censors,” he ranted. No, Ricky: f**k you.

Honourable mention goes to the equally odious Jeremy Clarkson, for also lying about an ‘edgy’ booze ad being barred. In July, he posted an Instagram video for his Hawkstone Lager brand. It featured a group of farmers singing “Hawkstone. F*** me, it’s good”. The clip had been banned by the – yawn – “fun police”, Clarkson claimed. It hadn’t. Not a single industry watchdog was even aware of it. What a loser he is.

Sugar crash of the year: Urban Legend doughnuts go under

It turns out that people don’t want healthy doughnuts. Well, not enough people, anyway. When Urban Legend went under in September it prompted a great deal of navel gazing – and it wasn’t to check whether said navel had shrunk after switching to the brand’s products.

So, what went wrong exactly? There are many answers to that – and The Grocer examined it at length in both long and shorter form pieces – but as ever when healthier takes on treat foods fail, it seems to have come down to taste.

The tech was ingenious, the mission was admirable, but as one consultant told The Grocer at the time, unlike with Krispy Kreme, shoppers rarely found themselves wanting to scoff the lot. Urban Legend ultimately fell into a snacking no-man’s land: not genuinely healthy, but not tasty enough to satisfy the craving for a treat. Its failure has shown once again that reformulation may end up playing a smaller part than expected in tackling the obesity crisis. Subsidised fruit & veg, anyone?

PR shocker of the year: Waitrose sacks autistic shop worker (who was later employed by Asda)

“Being a partner means more than just having a job – it means having a voice, a stake, and a shared responsibility in how the business is run,” says the John Lewis Partnership on its website. That is, of course, until you don’t have a job any more because you’re autistic and ask to be paid for the work you do.

Tom Boyd, 28, had clocked up more than 600 hours as a “volunteer” at Waitrose’s Cheadle Hulme Store in Greater Manchester, but that arrangement was ended by the retailer in July when his mother, charity worker Frances Boyd, asked for him to be offered “just a few paid hours” of work.

Unfortunately for Tom, volunteers do not have the same rights as employees, but that didn’t stop the inevitable media storm that followed. And quite rightly. Whoever decided this was an acceptable way to treat a loyal worker would be advised to look up ‘compassion’ in the dictionary (and check out ‘optics’ while they’re there, too). Thankfully, the sorry saga did have a happy ending: a few days later, Boyd was offered a paid role by Asda. “When we heard about Tom and his desire to find meaningful work, we knew he’d be a fantastic fit and we are delighted to offer him a role at his local store,” said an Asda spokesperson.