Toilet Paper Is Out of Stock Again, Online Orders Face Uncertainty, & Food Prices Rising | Beige Book Highlights Oct. 21, 2020

How is the American economy doing? According to the Federal Reserve’s latest Beige Book, optimism and positivity across districts is balanced against degrees of uncertainty, but what about the CPG industry specifically? The Beige Book is a Federal Reserve System publication that collects mostly qualitative information, gathered directly from District sources. This consumer data creates an opportunity to characterize dynamics and identify emerging trends in the economy that may not be readily apparent in the available quantitative economic data. Additionally, most CPG businesses today are offered nationally through e-commerce or large brick and mortar retail chains, so it’s important to understand that America is not a one-size-fits-all economy, especially during the coronavirus. Because of that, the Beige Book can potentially help you with regional insights that can be applied to create advantages in your business. To save you time from reading the whole document that comes out every 45 days, I started a content series that takes five CPG industry related highlights that I found most insightful from the latest Beige Book and share it with you guys…along with some additional commentary on how it could potentially impact you. On this episode, I also wanted to share some additional quantitative government data on September 2020 Retail Sales from the Census Bureau.