Strategic efficiency: The new consumer goods real estate playbook

We are all consumers. We feel the pressure every time we walk into a grocery store or decide whether a purchase is worth the price.

That pressure and indecision have shown up at the register. In the first half of 2026, U.S. grocery unit sales fell for five straight months. Recent surveys found that 80% of Americans are trying to spend less, 28% are cutting back on groceries, and of those, 56% are trading down to lower-priced brands.

The squeeze isn’t limited to groceries. Consumer goods companies across categories are watching costs, geopolitical uncertainty and supply chain disruption erode margins even as customers pull back. Protecting margins now means more deliberate choices about products, brands, operations and resources.

So, what happens when a company puts its supply chain under the microscope? For many consumer goods organizations, the answer reaches well beyond sourcing and manufacturing.

JLL’s latest pulse survey of corporate real estate leaders, which included 48 consumer goods industry responses, found that 47.9% of consumer goods organizations are examining their supply chains — a notable 10 percentage points above the all-industry rate of 37.9% and the sharpest gap among priorities tracked in the survey.

Justin Sandherr, Managing Director of Consumer Goods and Services at JLL, says his clients are getting more strategic. “They’re thinking more holistically about the entire end-to-end process,” he says.

Consider a company weighing whether to move manufacturing closer to its customers. Where could production happen? What facilities already exist, and how much capacity do they offer? Real estate is now central to that conversation, and it raises a harder question: Do leaders have a clear picture of what they already own?

Portfolios are growing more complex by the quarter, partly because of M&A activity. PwC’s 2026 outlook notes that global consumer markets deal value jumped 41% in 2025 even as deal volume slipped 1%, pointing to continued concentration around strategically important assets and more portfolio reviews. An acquisition can bring a new brand, manufacturing footprint, distribution network, leadership structure and technology stack. Companies must quickly figure out how those pieces fit with what’s already in the portfolio.

Real estate, financial and operational information often sits scattered across teams, systems and sites — which makes even basic portfolio questions hard to answer quickly.

“The biggest opportunity, and also the biggest liability, is the data,” Sandherr says. “Knowing what you have is the most important piece in determining what you need to do next.”

Whether a company is weighing a manufacturing move or integrating an acquisition, the same three questions apply:

• What do we own?
• Where is it
• What capacity does it give us?
   

AI is changing how fast those questions get answered. Sandherr says teams can now process in minutes or hours what once took days or weeks, freeing capacity for decisions rather than data-gathering.

Yet investment hasn’t caught up. Just 16.7% of consumer goods respondents expect their CRE technology budgets to grow over the next three years, compared with 30.6% across industries. That gap makes sense in a margin-conscious environment, where brand development, products and M&A tend to command attention because they connect directly to growth — but it's also the opening for CRE leaders to tie technology investment to those same priorities.

Better data can guide decisions on where to build, consolidate, integrate or invest.

The same pressure is reshaping the workforce. 39.6% of consumer goods organizations report downsizing headcount, compared with 31.6% across industries, while 37.5% expect office utilization rates to rise over the next 12 months — a sharper focus on using the resources companies keep.

Office attendance illustrates the shift: Sandherr says one client saw average daily attendance climb from about 400 employees in January 2025 to roughly 650–675 by July 2026, with workplace investment tied partly to brand identity and culture.

Overall, 31.3% of consumer goods organizations expect their CRE budgets to grow over the next 12 months, compared with 24% across industries. Where those dollars go matters: upgrades for higher production, space for more employees, or better utilization data that reveals opportunities to consolidate or redirect investment.

For consumer goods leaders, efficiency comes down to making those calls with a full view of the business they support.

Consumer goods companies can use this period of pressure to sharpen how they manage their portfolios:

• Connect supply chain and real estate decisions. Bring manufacturing, distribution, workplace and facility decisions into the same conversation.
• Build a reliable data foundation. Centralize portfolio, asset and financial information so leaders can evaluate options from a common set of facts.
• Use technology to create capacity. Apply AI where it can cut the time teams spend gathering and analyzing information.
• Keep the portfolio adaptable. M&A, changing production needs and shifting utilization can alter the footprint quickly, so strategies need room to respond.
   

A shopper can put one product back on the shelf. A consumer goods company has to decide what happens to the factory, warehouse, office or brand behind it — and that decision starts with knowing what you have.

Learn more about advancing your supply chain and real estate strategy here.