The data: Private food and beverage labels from Walmart and Amazon have the highest mention rates on ChatGPT, according to the most recent edition of our AI Visibility Index: Food and Beverage Leaderboard.

• Walmart’s Great Value brand tops the ranking, with a mention rate of around 5.5%.
• Whole Foods Market is close behind at 4.3%.

Despite being more prominent overall, the gap between Amazon’s and Walmart’s private labels and name brands like Quaker, Annie’s, and Kind is narrow. No one company has a significant ChatGPT search advantage, leaving plenty of white space for both private and national labels.

That is evident when looking at the category breakdown. Only one of the nine segments tracked contained a private label (Whole Foods) in the top five. Name brands have an edge where consumers have a specific product type in mind, which could be useful as they try to keep retailers’ owned brands from taking share.

Zoom out: While a minority of shoppers currently use AI assistants or chatbots to research food and beverage products—14.8%, per our Pulse of the Consumer: Food and Beverage survey—that is fast approaching the share who turn to brand or retailer-owned websites and apps.

Brands and retailers that cede ground early to Walmart and Amazon may find it difficult to recover, especially as both companies try to use AI platforms like ChatGPT to drive traffic and sales to their own sites.

Brands also have to consider how to work with grocers’ own AI assistants, given the obvious incentives for retailers to promote their private labels in conversational results. For example, Kroger’s newly-launched AI assistant tends to recommend items from its owned brands, which could create fewer opportunities for discovery should adoption rise.

This tendency could eventually lessen as retailers try to monetize their own AI search capabilities and maintain friendly relations with important brand partners. However, the underlying tension will remain, pushing brands to prioritize third-party AI platforms like ChatGPT, deepen retail media investments, or lean on other avenues for discovery like physical stores, YouTube, or social media.

Recommendations for food and beverage brands: Brands need to ensure their product pages and sites are fully optimized for LLMs as well as human shoppers. That could mean increasing content production—including FAQs, care instructions, user guides, and other content structured around common prompts—to increase the chances of surfacing in AI search, as Stanley 1913 and Unilever are doing.

Companies also need to look beyond their own properties to boost their AI rankings. Partnerships with major retailers like Walmart and Target can help brands gain prominence on AI platforms, as can content from traditional publishers and industry experts.

Dive deeper: EMARKETER PRO subscribers can access in-depth AI Visibility Index reports featuring category breakouts, data cuts, and analysis, while PRO+ subscribers can access the complete data set, including monthly updates across every category cut in the live dashboard.

To learn more about how the AI Visibility Index can help your brand, including advisory insights that pinpoint what’s shaping your visibility, visit our AI Visibility Index hub.