CPGFacts tracks where spice and seasoning products are stocked, what they cost, and how that changes — store by store, daily, from retailers' own store-level data.
Built by 📝Jim Goodman, the service observes 2,716 products across 64 shelf categories and 516 brands in 2,647 stores spanning 41 states, drawing on two retailers, Kroger and Wegmans. Data refreshes daily over a rolling 72-hour window, and coverage is partial by declaration — the store list is not presented as any retailer's complete footprint. McCormick is the largest tracked brand at 203 products, followed by Kroger's house label at 151.
Three measurements sit under every store: distribution, meaning which banners and states carry a product; price, meaning shelf price and promotional detail comparable across retailers and regions; and availability, meaning carried but out of stock versus gone. From those it surfaces regular price moves, promotions entering and exiting, products newly on shelf or no longer on shelf, and thin distribution — a SKU present in a quarter or fewer of the stores where it was observed. Views are organized by product, price, brand, shelf type, and geography.
The methodology is stated as plainly as the data. Absence is not a delisting: a product missing from the window was not observed, not confirmed gone, and a SKU never checked at a store reads as unchecked rather than thin. Carried and in stock are treated as different facts, because a replenishment failure and a distribution loss are different business conversations.
I have a hard time explaining what this is, and that is exactly what makes it good. Shelf-level spice data is the kind of boring nobody else wants to do, which is why it can make money without a crowd in it.