Having already teased out costs through greater automation, shrinking inventory, and tighter logistics, manufacturers are now looking for new ways to improve, or just preserve, profit margins. Although they have no choice but to pass on higher costs to customers, they are now able to do it in smarter ways—by raising prices on only the least price-sensitive items instead of whole product lines or tailoring prices to various levels of demand in local markets, for example. Foodmakers are also tweaking product presentation and packaging in an effort to boost sales volumes.

A rise in consumer buying of ingredients as opposed to prepared foods is a real opportunity for retailers and manufacturers to work together to bring that consumer back to the kitchen or back to the pantry, and get that consumer's confidence up again for preparing a multicourse dinner.

Based on feedback from its more frequent consumer research studies, Campbell Soup is creating recipes that include 5 to 10 high-quality ingredients for easy-to-make, nutritional, and low-cost meals. Campbell is also doing more to educate consumers about the nutritional value of its V-8 and V-8 V-Fusion fruit-and-vegetable juices. And by working with retailers to reorganize store shelves so shoppers can easily distinguish 100% juices from those with less nutritional value, Campbell is seeing sales rise where they were flat in prior years.

"When…[consumers] are shown how to do things, understand more, and have value added they tend to purchase more.