The shelf, measured. Not estimated.
MMC keeps an independent record of what is stocked, faced, and priced across grocery, digital and physical. Coverage runs where the panels do not: the independent and specialty grocers where new brands break first.
Evidence before conviction
Assortment, pricing, and share-of-shelf facts for diligence and thesis monitoring, measured from the shelf itself rather than inferred from surveys or scraped summaries.
The shelf as it actually is
Where you are stocked, how deep, at what price, and beside whom. Distribution truth and retail execution, without waiting for a distributor report.
A method you can audit
In-store capture, systematic reading, catalog reconciliation, and independent audit, with provenance on every fact we publish.
The shelf is the one dataset nobody syndicates. We do.
of the $920 billion US food retail market is sold by independent grocers, per the National Grocers Association's 2026 economic analysis. The national panels observe the chains that report and project the rest.
the annual sales floor below which stores never enter the major panels at all. The long tail of specialty, ethnic, and single-store grocery lives under that line, and so do most emerging brands' first hundred doors.
syndicated datasets of observed shelf state. Even inside fully reported chains, point-of-sale records what sold, never what the shelf held, at what price, in what position. That record exists only if someone stands in front of it.
Decisions about the shelf deserve evidence from the shelf. Syndicated panels lag, surveys flatter, and the storefront tells only half the story. We measure both halves: the shelf as shown online, and the shelf as stocked in the store.
McGovern Measurement Company operates a continuous shelf-measurement program across San Francisco Bay Area grocery retail, digital storefronts and physical fixtures alike, spanning national chains and the independent and specialty grocers where new brands actually break. Our consumer subsidiary, The Aisle Co, makes a public slice of the record browsable; the full measurement layer is available to clients as data.
The shelf record is proprietary intelligence
Strategy firms argue AI advantage comes from unique data, encoded workflows, and learning loops. The grocery shelf is a textbook case, and almost nobody is measuring it.
The functional-beverage cooler is a land war
Prebiotic sodas, kombuchas, adaptogen waters: the most fragmented door in grocery is also the fastest-moving. What facing-level measurement shows that scanner data cannot.
Put the shelf record to work.
A thirty-minute briefing with our team: coverage, method, and the data itself against your category or thesis.