Brand-led vs product-led growth: which strategy wins for food & drink brands?

One of the most important strategic choices a food or drink business faces is whether to take a brand-led or product-led approach to grow.

Should you focus solely on developing more products, or should you invest in building a stronger brand? In practice, most successful businesses will do both.

Brand-led and product-led growth are not mutually exclusive, but they are different in their approach, as well as their risks and rewards. In my experience working across a variety of food and drink brands, the businesses that build something lasting tend to be the ones that lead with brand.

Here is what I think based on my experience, and why I think Bonne Maman is a great example to bring it to life.

The limitations of a product-led growth strategy

A product-led approach to growth starts with looking at opportunities within the category you currently operate in, or in categories adjacent to it. The question driving decisions is: what else can we make in our current categories or categories adjacent to it? This usually means new flavours, new formats, new pack sizes, and line extensions that sit close to the original product. Or looking at what adjacent categories use some of what you currently make.

The logic is straightforward: if our current product is good and selling, more variants of it should mean more sales. There is nothing inherently wrong with this. Product innovation in current or adjacent categories can work when it responds to changing consumer tastes or behaviours, creates new occasions, or attracts new buyers. Also, short-term commercial opportunities, such as a retailer asking for an exclusive, a better alternative to something already existing, or a trend to capitalise on, even if it might be something that doesn't stick long-term, are real and sometimes worth pursuing.

But product-led growth has limits. When a brand is defined primarily by its product category, it is trapped by that category or those closely related to it in some way. If the category declines, matures, or gets disrupted, the brand has very little room to manoeuvre. A proliferation of product variants without a clear brand logic behind them often leads to confused ranges, poor margins if they are easy to copy, product cannibalisation, and bloated ranges that retailers are happy to rationalise.

What is a brand-led approach to business growth?

A brand-led approach starts with a different question: what does our brand stand for, and where else does that take us?

Rather than looking at what you make currently or what you can make, you ask where your brand has permission to go based on the values, emotions, and associations it carries in the minds of consumers.

This requires doing the foundational work first. It means understanding who your audience is and what they genuinely care about. It requires defining what makes your brand distinctive, credible, and meaningful, then building that into a clear positioning that guides every decision. This positioning dictates your products, but it also guides your pricing, distribution, communications, and how you show up in the market.

When that foundation is solid, the brand earns the permission to travel into categories other than the ones they currently operate in, growing in ways that feel natural rather than forced. Consumers follow the brand, not just the product.

Case study: the Bonne Maman brand-led growth strategy

Bonne Maman is one of my favourite examples of brand-led growth done well. As someone who grew up with it in France, I may be slightly biased, but it genuinely makes a great case study.

Founded in 1971, Bonne Maman started in the jam and preserves category. This is a category that has shrunk and therefore become much more competitive, turning into a true case of survival of the fittest. It has come under increasing pressure from health-conscious consumers, new breakfast trends, and supermarket own-label alternatives. A purely product-led approach would have kept them trapped there: reformulating for lower sugar, launching line extensions with new flavours that did not exist to differentiate but might remain niche, trying to innovate in new breakfast products containing jam or fighting price wars against private label.

Instead, they built their brand around something far more powerful than jam. Bonne Maman means 'Good Mother' in French. The brand stands for the warmth, care, and homemade quality associated with a mother's kitchen. That emotional territory has remained consistent for over fifty years. It is expressed through the iconic red and white gingham lid, the elegant glass jars, and the handwritten-style label that has barely changed since launch.

Because the brand was never anchored to a product category, and because it stood for something different than just jam, it has managed to venture into other categories fairly effortlessly. Yoghurts, chilled desserts, cakes, biscuits, madeleines, and hazelnut spread: each extension feels completely at home with the brand values and right at home under the gingham lid. Consumers don't ask why a jam brand is selling chocolate mousse. They think: I trust Bonne Maman's commitment to traditional French family values and quality cues, so of course I will try their desserts.

Importantly, they never abandoned their core. They stayed strong in the jam category where they started, continuing to innovate within it through lower sugar recipes, more intense flavours, and new varieties, all while using the brand equity they had built to expand. That is the discipline that product-led thinking often lacks.

What if Bonne Maman had followed a purely product-led strategy?

It is worth imagining the alternative. A product-led Bonne Maman would have stayed focused on the jam category and tried to defend its position there. It might have launched squeezable pouches, low-calorie variants, jam-filled biscuits, or other jam-filled breakfast products. It would have been fighting on price and format against supermarket own-label that tastes nearly as good for a fraction of the cost.

There would have been no permission to stretch into yoghurts, no crème brûlée in the chilled aisle, and no palm-oil-free hazelnut spread taking on Nutella with a genuine values proposition.

The brand would still exist, probably. But it would be fighting a very different, much harder battle.

How to execute brand-led growth successfully

One of the hardest things for any established business is evolving with the times without abandoning what made them great in the first place. The secret is knowing how to respond to new consumer trends and market opportunities, but only ever doing it in a way that is completely consistent with your brand positioning and core values.

Bonne Maman manages this very well. They do not chase after every passing trend. Instead, they filter opportunities through their brand positioning, only launching new products that make sense for them.

Take their palm-oil-free hazelnut spread as a clear example. This was a smart piece of brand-led innovation. They didn't just launch a chocolate spread to chase easy revenue in a category dominated by one brand. Instead, they used their existing reputation for homemade, clean-label quality to take on Nutella's dominance with a genuine values proposition that consumers already trusted them to deliver.

But executing this properly requires more than just smart product variations; it also requires the right level of branding consistency. Bonne Maman has kept their iconic gingham lid, glass jar, and handwritten script virtually unchanged for over fifty years. That specific look has built an extraordinary level of trust. That visual consistency is exactly what gives them the authority to move into new aisles or respond to new consumer behaviours.

It also requires keeping an eye on consumer-led trends and behaviours, and leaning into those that fit with the brand narrative. For instance, when consumers organically started reusing empty jars for things completely unrelated to jam-making, the brand leaned into it because it perfectly fit their values of timeless, traditional household care. Bonne Maman never ran a corporate campaign telling people to repurpose their glass packaging. Consumers did it entirely on their own because the design is so beautiful that throwing it away feels wrong.

That is the ultimate reward of design consistency. When you build a brand-led identity properly, your visual assets continue to drive a deep consumer connection long after the product inside is gone.

Key takeaways: building a sustainable food and drink growth strategy

So what does this mean in practice for food and drink businesses thinking about growth?

Lead with brand, not product: Invest in understanding what your brand stands for and who it is really for. That emotional territory is your most valuable long-term asset, more valuable than any single product line. This is about building your brand equity for long-term success.

Don't ignore product-led opportunities entirely: Short-term commercial opportunities are real and sometimes worth taking. A new format, a trend to capitalise on, or an opportunity with a key retailer can add incremental value. The key is making sure they are compatible with your brand positioning, not a distraction from it, so your product is most likely to succeed whilst building rather than eroding your brand equity.

Stay strong from the core: Never walk away from the anchor product that built your business. Range extension only works when the core foundations are solid. Build depth before you try to build breadth.

Consistency is a strategic superpower: Decades of virtually unchanged packaging or other brand assets builds priceless recognition. Resist the urge to change things just because you are bored of looking at them. Your consumers are not.

Evolve to stay relevant, but stay true to your roots: The best brands adapt to changing consumer values without losing what made them special. Aim for evolution, not revolution.

Be clear about what your brand stands for first, and everything else becomes easier.

Looking for a food and drink strategic growth roadmap?

If you are working on brand or product growth strategy for a food, drink or hospitality business and are not sure whether to lead with brand or product, I can help you work that out. Get in touch if you would like to talk it through, or take a look at my Strategic Growth Roadmap service for more detail on how I can help.