The session brought together NielsenIQ’s Francis Parisien and Cedric Bélanger with founders Suzie Yorke (The Little Cacao Co., Love Good Fats) and Chris Magnone (Temple Lifestyle Brands / Thirsty Buddha, Rise Kombucha). Together, they broke down how Canadian food and beverage SMEs can use data to launch smarter, grow faster, and avoid expensive missteps—and why having NIQ category snapshots included in a CFIN+ membership gives smaller brands a level of insight they normally wouldn’t have access to.
Both Cedric and Suzie hammered at a similar point: before you chase distribution, promotions, or innovation, you need tight positioning, a great-tasting product, and a price/value the category can sustain. NIQ data—especially the CFIN+ category snapshots—lets you check if your category is growing, whether private label is squeezing the middle, and what’s driving dollar vs. unit growth. It’s a fast, low-cost way to sanity-check your “3Ps” before you spend real money.
2. Retailers respond to category math, not founder passion.
The panel showed how NIQ data lets SMEs speak the retailer’s language: defining the right competitor set, proving your subsegment is where the growth sits, and showing how your product brings in new shoppers or lifts basket size. You’ll hear concrete examples, from using flavour performance to win shelf space to using basket analysis to prevent a delist. The shift is simple but powerful: don’t argue for your brand—argue for the category outcome you create.
Early-stage brands rarely have the budget for full NIQ subscriptions, but now they don’t need one. The new CFIN+ offering gives members access to 30+ NIQ category snapshots that answer the early, essential questions founders struggle with: Is this category worth entering? What’s growing? What’s stalling? Where’s the whitespace? Both Chris and Suzie described how data like this prevented wrong turns, helped them pick winning products, and kept them focused on profitable growth.