CPG, Food & Retail Sector: Trends and Upcoming Deals (October 7, 2026)

The CPG, food and retail consolidation story is being told about the wrong companies. The headlines belong to food: McCormick taking Unilever's food business for $44.8 billion, Keurig Dr Pepper absorbing JDE Peet's, Kraft Heinz splitting itself in two, Intersnack paying a 91% premium for Utz. But in the middle market, where Fintent tracks 36,200 CPG, food and retail companies with 26 to 1,000 employees, the sub-sectors actually preparing to sell are apparel manufacturers, apparel retailers, custom furniture makers, bakeries and general-merchandise stores. Food processing, beverage production and personal care manufacturing sit at the bottom of the table.

That gap is the point of this post. The sector as a whole is running an M&A Propensity of 1.20x the all-company baseline, heating up 1.8 points versus last quarter, with the index touching 1.23 — 23% above market. Underneath, the spread runs from 1.63x in outdoor apparel manufacturing to 0.70x in agricultural food processing. A dealmaker covering this sector on the strength of the food headlines is spending time where the mid-market pipeline is thinnest.

Where is CPG, food and retail deal activity actually heading in 2026?

Deal value in consumer markets is being carried by a handful of portfolio-reshaping mega-deals while the number of transactions keeps falling, and the mid-market preparation signal says the next wave comes from discretionary categories, not food. KPMG counted 554 consumer, retail and hospitality deals in Q1 2026, down 23.7% year over year, while value jumped 130.8% to $101.4 billion on McCormick-Unilever Foods and a few peers (kpmg.com). PwC puts CPG deal value up 119% in Q1 versus a year earlier on three transactions worth close to $120 billion combined, and notes that volume has now fallen for four straight years (pwc.com). RSM's October update has consumer products deal volume down roughly 15% in the first half (rsmus.com). Fewer, bigger deals is the shape of the tape.

Fintent's index reads the other end of the market, and it says the cohort is heating up rather than cooling. The 36,200-company CPG, food and retail cohort carries an M&A Propensity of 1.20x the all-company baseline, up 1.8 points on the quarter, with the peak reading still the 1.23 set against 2024-Q4. The 30-day change is a modest -1.0 point, so this is a plateau at an elevated level rather than a spike. Because the index measures pre-announcement behaviour — engagement with investment banks, valuation work, exit and earn-out research — it leads the deal count the trade press reports.

The macro backdrop explains why the preparation is showing up in apparel, furniture and specialty retail first. The Fed raised its target range 25 basis points to 3.75%–4.00% on September 16, 2026, in a unanimous vote, citing inflation that "remains elevated" (federalreserve.gov); RSM notes officials signalled one more increase this year and that PE sponsors are extending hold periods and turning to continuation funds as planned exits slip (rsmus.com). Apparel faced a near-record 24.6% average effective tariff rate in 2025 (aafaglobal.org), and 46% of fashion executives expect conditions to worsen in 2026, with tariffs the number-one hurdle (mckinsey.com). PwC's observation that leveraged transactions in the $100 million to $1 billion range "remain difficult to finance" is the mechanism: owners of tariff-exposed, discretionary mid-market businesses are preparing to sell into a market where strategic buyers, not sponsors, set the pace (pwc.com).

So what: the dealmaker's job in this sector right now is coverage reallocation. The food headlines are real but they are large-cap, strategic, and already announced. The mid-market opportunity is in founder- and family-owned apparel, furniture, bakery and specialty-retail businesses whose owners have started the work of a sale and have not yet hired a banker — or have, and have not yet gone to market.

Which five CPG, food and retail sub-sectors are pulling ahead?

Outdoor Apparel Manufacturing leads the eligible table at 1.63x, and the external record says these are tariff-era sellers rather than growth stories. Apparel makers absorbed a near-record 24.6% effective tariff rate in 2025 (aafaglobal.org), and the deals getting done look like Lever Style's $13 million asset purchase of Active Apparel Group's activewear and outerwear operations — a buyer citing "tariff-related pressure on US sales" and summarising the moment as "bad times are the best times to buy" (finance.yahoo.com). The momentum reading is a mild +0.03, so this is sustained preparation, not a new surge. So what: lead with M&A, not financing. Owners here are weighing exits while margins are compressed; the buyers are strategics and vertically integrated producers consolidating capacity, and the window is before the January 2027 tariff resets listed by the AAFA land.

Fashion and Apparel Retail sits at 1.42x on nearly 2,000 tracked companies, and the sell-side preparation is happening against the worst store-closure backdrop of any retail category. Apparel accounted for 1,090 of the 3,321 US store closures Coresight tracked by midyear 2026 — 32.8% of the total (retailtouchpoints.com) — and Cato alone is closing roughly 120 stores this fiscal year from a 1,057-store base as quarterly sales fell 6% (chainstoreage.com). The brand-level deals are already printing: G-III signed for Marc Jacobs on May 14, 2026, with WHP Global taking the IP into a 50/50 venture and G-III running wholesale, retail and e-commerce (whp-global.com). The -0.03 momentum says the hottest point has passed. So what: this is a sell-side and restructuring-advisory pocket. Cover the 1,989 names for carve-outs, brand sales and owner exits, and expect PwC's "take-privates are accelerating" dynamic to reach regional chains, since it describes retail as "broadly mispriced, not broadly impaired" (pwc.com).

Custom Furniture Manufacturing at 1.19x is the quiet one — building momentum (+0.08) on a structural tariff shelter rather than demand. A 25% Section 232 tariff has applied to imported upholstered wooden furniture, kitchen cabinets and vanities since September 29, 2025, and the scheduled increase to 50% was pushed back one year, to January 1, 2027 (thompsonhinesmartrade.com). Demand itself is flat: January new orders were flat year over year, shipments down 7%, inventories up 9%, with new home sales down 11.3% (interiordaily.com). RSM separately notes that valuations for home and durable goods were up in the first half (rsmus.com). The combination — protected domestic capacity, soft volumes, firm multiples — is exactly what pushes a family-owned shop to take a strategic buyer's call. So what: work the 1,901 names for strategic roll-ups of domestic capacity before the 2027 tariff step-up re-prices the category; the evidence here is regulatory and valuation-based rather than deal-count-based, and we say so.

Bakery & Confectionery Production is heating up fastest among the top five (+0.13 momentum) at 1.14x, and this is the one top-five read the announced-deal record already confirms. Industry coverage calls M&A "the defining feature of the sector in H1 2026" as buyers build platforms spanning premium, health and value (millingmea.com). The two deals that matter for the middle market are both European family-owned bakers buying US family-owned bakers: Europastry agreed in June to acquire Highland Baking, a premium foodservice bread maker with plants in Illinois and South Carolina (theshelbyreport.com), and Griesson-de Beukelaer bought the Pirouline maker DeBeukelaer Corporation in July, a Mississippi business with more than $40 million in 2025 revenue (foodbev.com). So what: inbound cross-border strategics are the buyer class to map here, and succession is the seller motive. The 1,520 tracked names skew toward founder-run businesses; the ones researching valuation and seller financing are the ones to call.

General Retail Stores round out the top five at 1.10x on the largest cohort in the report (4,020 companies), and the read is selective rather than hot. Momentum is flat (+0.01). The relevant transaction is small and telling: PlanetArt's $45 million purchase of Things Remembered and PersonalizationMall.com from 1-800-Flowers, a seller "sharpening its portfolio focus" after a fiscal-2026 net loss (asicentral.com). Coresight's full-year estimate of roughly 6,428 closures is well below 2025's pace (retailtouchpoints.com), which argues the forced-seller wave has crested and what remains is orderly portfolio pruning. So what: cover for non-core divestitures and specialty-chain carve-outs rather than distress; Bain's finding that divestitures are approaching half of consumer products M&A applies with full force to multi-banner retail groups (bain.com).

Sub-sector	Companies	M&A Propensity	CapRaise Propensity	4Q Momentum	Read
Outdoor Apparel Manufacturing	1,793	1.63x	1.47x	+0.03	Hot — tariff-era sellers
Fashion and Apparel Retail	1,989	1.42x	1.56x	-0.03	Hot, cooling at the edge
Custom Furniture Manufacturing	1,901	1.19x	1.11x	+0.08	Quietly building
Bakery & Confectionery Production	1,520	1.14x	1.21x	+0.13	Heating up
General Retail Stores	4,020	1.10x	1.23x	+0.01	Selective

Top 5 sub-sectors by M&A Propensity, October 2026 Sector Trends Report (most recent complete quarter, Q3 2026). Each sub-sector is indexed against the rest of the CPG, Food & Retail cohort, so 1.00 = the cohort rate. Sub-sectors with fewer than 1,000 tracked companies are excluded as low-signal. CapRaise Propensity is shown for completeness.

Which five sub-sectors are cooling, and why?

Agricultural Food Processing is the coldest eligible sub-sector at 0.70x, and the mechanism is a margin squeeze that leaves mid-market processors unable to sell on their own terms. Fed cattle hit a record $2.65 live weight on May 15, 2026, off the smallest January herd since 1951; packer spreads compressed from roughly $0.40 per pound of carcass weight to about $0.16 by June, and JBS, Tyson and Cargill have each closed or idled plants this year (provisioneronline.com). The deals that are printing are large strategics buying scale: Hormel's $1.055 billion agreement for family-owned Brakebush, a value-added chicken processor with about $1.2 billion in sales (fooddive.com). So what: deprioritise orderly sell-side coverage here. The mid-market opportunity, if any, is distressed-asset and plant-level, and it belongs to restructuring and special-situations teams rather than growth-oriented M&A.

Food Processing & Packaging reads 0.76x on nearly 4,000 companies, and it is the clearest case in the report of headlines running ahead of the mid-market pipeline. Intersnack's $2.9 billion take-private of Utz at a 91% premium (frozenfoodeurope.com) and Butterfly Equity's purchase of founder-led Sabert, a 3,000-employee food-packaging maker (packagingdive.com), are both scale assets well above the 1,000-employee cohort this index measures. Below that line, the data points the other way: US food and beverage transactions held at 81 in Q1 2026 while global volume fell about 14% (pmcf.com), and North American mid-market F&B deal value fell 27% and volume 24% in 2025 (consultancy.uk). RSM attributes the constraint to volume weakness, consumer trade-down and input-cost uncertainty (rsmus.com). So what: this is where coverage time is most over-allocated relative to signal. Keep a watchlist for the handful of mid-market processors that do start preparing — momentum is faintly positive at +0.03 — but do not staff it like a hot sector.

Home Furnishing Retail sits at 0.84x because its deal flow is distress-led, which is a different behaviour from orderly sale preparation. Sleep Number filed Chapter 11 in June 2026 with Sleep Country Canada as the $415 million stalking-horse bidder, its CEO stating that "our capital structure remains unsustainable" (wsbtv.com). Store-level demand is flat to down, with new home sales off 11.3% year over year in January (interiordaily.com). An owner facing that picture rarely runs a banker-led process; the signal shows up as restructuring research instead. So what: cover selectively for Section 363 sales and lender-driven transactions, and expect the buyers to be category consolidators with balance sheets, not sponsors.

Beverage Production at 0.87x is cooling (-0.05 momentum) because closures are outrunning sales. The Brewers Association estimates craft volume fell 4% in the first half of 2026 and counts 9,344 breweries operating in June, down 1.8% year over year (brewersassociation.org). The consolidation that is happening sits at the very top — Keurig Dr Pepper's JDE Peet's acquisition and planned separation (bain.com) — not in the mid-market. So what: treat beverage as a selective, brand-by-brand market. Functional and better-for-you brands with distribution still clear; the long tail of regional producers is more likely to close than to sell.

Personal Care Product Manufacturing is the read we hold with the least confidence, because the tape disagrees with it. The index says 0.89x and cooling (-0.04). The market says the opposite: BeautyMatter tracked 83 beauty and wellness transactions in Q1 2026, up 40.7% year over year (beautymatter.com), RSM calls beauty and personal care "a clear bright spot" (rsmus.com), and Regent agreed in August to buy Avon North America from LG H&H (globalcosmeticsnews.com). Our reconciliation is that the deal flow is brand-led and often asset-light, while this sub-sector is the manufacturing base — contract and private-label producers whose owners are not the ones running processes. That is a hypothesis, not a finding. So what: keep covering the brands through whatever channel you already use, and watch this 1,055-company manufacturing cohort for a turn; if the brand deals need capacity, the manufacturers are the next call.

Two notable sub-sectors are too thin to call. Audio Equipment Manufacturing prints the highest raw reading in the report at 1.81x but on only 517 tracked companies, and Food and Beverage Retail reads 1.35x with the strongest momentum in the report (+0.19) on 626 companies. Both fall under the 1,000-company signal floor and are excluded from the rankings. Kroger's $1.65 billion agreement for family-owned Giant Eagle — 197 supermarkets and about $9 billion in sales (supermarketnews.com) — sits in that second pocket, and we flagged it 23 months early; it is evidence for the direction, not the magnitude.

Sub-sector	Companies	M&A Propensity	CapRaise Propensity	4Q Momentum	Read
Agricultural Food Processing	2,488	0.70x	0.77x	-0.03	Cold — margin-squeezed
Food Processing & Packaging	3,999	0.76x	0.57x	+0.03	Cold — headlines, not pipeline
Home Furnishing Retail	2,044	0.84x	0.71x	-0.02	Distress-led
Beverage Production	2,944	0.87x	0.95x	-0.05	Cooling
Personal Care Product Manufacturing	1,055	0.89x	0.91x	-0.04	Divergent

Bottom 5 sub-sectors by M&A Propensity, October 2026 Sector Trends Report (Q3 2026). Same basis as the table above; sub-sectors under 1,000 tracked companies excluded.

How big is the middle-market CPG, food and retail universe Fintent tracks?

Across the five focus sub-sectors, Fintent tracks 11,138 middle-market companies with 25 to 1,000 employees: 3,137 in Fashion and Apparel Retail, 2,406 in Custom Furniture Manufacturing, 2,196 in Outdoor Apparel Manufacturing, 1,925 in General Retail Stores and 1,474 in Bakery & Confectionery Production. These counts come from Fintent's firmographic database, mapped to each sub-sector by business-type classification, and they are the universe the scores below are drawn from. Across the broader CPG, food and retail universe — every tracked consumer-goods, food, beverage, apparel, furniture, personal-care and retail business in the same size band — the count is roughly 69,000.

What are we tracking right now in CPG, food and retail?

In the last month, 51 companies across the five focus sub-sectors scored 50 or higher on Fintent's M&A score — the sector's upcoming deals, visible before any announcement. Custom Furniture Manufacturing contributes 14, Bakery & Confectionery Production 12, Outdoor Apparel Manufacturing 10, Fashion and Apparel Retail 9 and General Retail Stores 6. A score of 50 means a company's observed financial-intent behaviour — investment-bank engagement, valuation research, exit and succession topics — is running at a level that, in our back-tests, precedes an announced transaction far more often than the base rate. The announced deals in this sector's prediction record carried that signal a median of 23 months before the press release. These 51 are the names a sector banker, sponsor or corporate development team should be meeting now.

What does 'M&A Propensity' actually measure?

M&A Propensity is the rate at which companies in a cohort exhibit pre-transaction behaviour, indexed to a fixed baseline where 1.00 equals the rate for all US companies with 26 to 1,000 employees. A sector reading of 1.20x means CPG, food and retail companies are showing 20% more deal-preparation behaviour than the market. Inside the report, each sub-sector is indexed against the rest of the sector's sub-sectors, so 1.63x for outdoor apparel manufacturing means 63% more preparation than the typical CPG sub-sector, not 63% more than the whole market. The index blends Fintent's Deal-Maker (M&A) score, which captures engagement with advisors, and its M&A score, which captures the research topics that precede a sale. CapRaise Propensity is the financing analogue — the sector currently reads 1.16x — and it is shown in the tables for completeness only; this post ranks and argues on M&A.

How are these trends built from financial-intent data?

Fintent reads company-level financial-intent signals, scores and dates them, aggregates them to the sub-sector, and benchmarks against the peer baseline. The signals are observed behaviours — which advisors a company is engaging, whether it is researching valuation, seller financing, earn-outs, leveraged buyouts or succession — captured weekly across the 36,200-company cohort. Quarterly aggregation produces the propensity index; the momentum figure is the four-quarter slope of that index relative to the rest of the sector, so +0.13 for bakery means it has been gaining on its peers for a year. Because the inputs are early behaviours rather than announcements, the trend leads reported deal flow — in this sector's own prediction record, by a median of 23 months. Sub-sectors with fewer than 1,000 tracked companies are excluded from the rankings because a high multiple on a few hundred companies is noise; the app flags them the same way.

Frequently asked questions

Which CPG, food and retail sub-sectors have the highest M&A propensity in 2026?

As of the October 2026 report, the five highest eligible sub-sectors are Outdoor Apparel Manufacturing (1.63x), Fashion and Apparel Retail (1.42x), Custom Furniture Manufacturing (1.19x), Bakery & Confectionery Production (1.14x) and General Retail Stores (1.10x). Each is indexed against the rest of the CPG, food and retail cohort, where 1.00 equals parity.

Which CPG, food and retail sub-sectors are cooling for M&A?

The five lowest eligible readings are Agricultural Food Processing (0.70x), Food Processing & Packaging (0.76x), Home Furnishing Retail (0.84x), Beverage Production (0.87x) and Personal Care Product Manufacturing (0.89x). These are the categories where mid-market companies show less deal-preparation behaviour than the sector average, even though several carry the sector's biggest announced deals.

Why does the index disagree with the food M&A headlines?

The headline deals — Utz, Brakebush, Giant Eagle, McCormick-Unilever — involve companies above the 1,000-employee cohort the index measures. Among middle-market food processors, external data shows North American mid-market food and beverage deal volume fell 24% in 2025 and remains constrained by volume weakness and consumer trade-down, consistent with the low propensity reading.

What is financial-intent data?

Financial-intent data captures observable, company-level behaviour that precedes a transaction: engagement with investment banks and corporate law firms, research into valuation, seller financing, earn-outs, leveraged buyouts and succession. Fintent scores and dates these signals weekly for each company, then aggregates them into sector and sub-sector propensity indices benchmarked against a peer baseline.

How early does Fintent detect M&A intent in CPG, food and retail?

In the 24 CPG, food and retail acquisitions Fintent flagged over the May–October 2026 prediction files, the first M&A signal appeared a median of 23 months before the announcement, with every deal showing signals at least 18 months early. Half were already flagged at the start of the 24-month lookback window, so true lead times may be longer.

Why are some sub-sectors excluded from the rankings?

Sub-sectors with fewer than 1,000 tracked companies are excluded as low-signal. A high multiple on a few hundred companies can be noise, so Audio Equipment Manufacturing (1.81x on 517 companies) and Food and Beverage Retail (1.35x on 626) are noted but not ranked. The platform applies the same floor.

How do I get the high-scoring CPG, food and retail companies?

Book a demo with Fintent and we will share, at no charge, all 51 companies across the five focus sub-sectors that scored 50 or higher on the M&A score in the last month, with their signal profiles. The list refreshes weekly and can be filtered by sub-sector, size and geography.

Sources

• M&A trends in consumer, retail & hospitality: Q1 2026 — KPMG, May 14, 2026 — Q1 2026 deal volume 554 (-23.7% YoY), value $101.4B (+130.8% YoY); tighter private credit.
• CPG & Retail: US Deals 2026 midyear outlook — PwC, June 17, 2026 — CPG deal value +119% Q1 2026 vs Q1 2025 on three mega-deals; four years of falling volume; take-privates accelerating; $100M–$1B leveraged deals hard to finance.
• Consumer products M&A update: Recovery pauses amid renewed uncertainty — RSM US, October 6, 2026 — H1 2026 consumer products deal volume down ~15%; F&B constrained by volume weakness and trade-down; beauty/personal care a bright spot; sponsors extending holds.
• M&A in Consumer Products: Searching for the Parenting Advantage — Bain & Company, January 27, 2026 — Divestitures ~50% of consumer products M&A; 42% of M&A executives prepping an asset for sale in the next three years.
• Mid-market food and beverage M&A on a stable path as buyers remain selective (Baker Tilly / Mergermarket) — Consultancy.uk, June 15, 2026 — 2025 global mid-market F&B: 187 deals; North America value -27%, volume -24%.
• U.S. Food & Beverage M&A Demonstrates Stability To Start 2026 — PMCF, June 17, 2026 — 81 US F&B transactions in Q1 2026; global volume down ~14% YoY.
• FOMC statement, September 16, 2026 — Federal Reserve, September 16, 2026 — Target range raised 25bp to 3.75%–4.00%, unanimous.
• The State of Fashion 2026: When the rules change — McKinsey & Company / BoF, November 17, 2025 — 46% of fashion executives expect conditions to worsen in 2026; tariffs the number-one hurdle.
• Fashion Tariffs 101 — American Apparel & Footwear Association, 2026 — Apparel faced a near-record 24.6% average effective tariff rate in 2025; footwear 23.6%.
• Lever Style builds global activewear capabilities with Active Apparel Group — Just Style (via Yahoo Finance), December 19, 2025 — Apparel manufacturer asset sale under tariff pressure; buyer: 'Bad times are the best times to buy.'
• Store Openings and Closures Slow in 2026 as Retailers Take Stock (Coresight data) — Retail TouchPoints, September 8, 2026 — 3,321 US closures by midyear 2026; apparel led with 1,090 (32.8%); full-year estimate 6,428 closures.
• Cato ups store closings, citing current economic environment — Chain Store Age, September 18, 2026 — ~120 fiscal-2026 closures from a 1,057-store base; quarterly sales -6%.
• WHP Global and G-III Apparel Group Complete Acquisition of Marc Jacobs — WHP Global, September 1, 2026 — G-III definitive agreement dated May 14, 2026; 50/50 IP JV, G-III runs the operating business.
• President Trump Delays Section 232 Tariff Increase on Wood Furniture, Cabinets and Vanities — Thompson Hine SmarTrade, January 2026 — 25% Section 232 tariff on upholstered wooden furniture, kitchen cabinets and vanities since Sept 29, 2025; increase to 50% delayed to Jan 1, 2027.
• US furniture market opens 2026 with flat demand and rising cost pressure — Interior Daily, May 1, 2026 — January orders flat YoY, shipments -7% YoY, inventories +9% YoY; new home sales -11.3% YoY.
• H1 2026 in Review: Baking & Snacks Sector — Trends, M&A, Investments — Milling Middle East & Africa, July 2026 — M&A 'the defining feature of the sector in H1 2026'; platform-building across premium, health and value.
• Europastry acquires Highland Baking Co., expanding U.S. foodservice footprint — The Shelby Report, June 28, 2026 — Family-owned premium bread maker, two US plants; combined revenue above $2.3B.
• Griesson-de Beukelaer acquires Pirouline maker and plans new US bakery — FoodBev Media, July 30, 2026 — DeBeukelaer Corporation (Madison, MS; >$40M 2025 revenue) sold to German family-owned baker.
• PlanetArt to buy PersonalizationMall.com, Things Remembered from 1-800-Flowers.com — ASI Central, October 1, 2026 — $45M cash; seller simplifying its portfolio after a fiscal-2026 net loss.
• Mid-year 2026: Record cattle, a July break, and packer spreads starting to re-widen — The National Provisioner, July 28, 2026 — Record $2.65 live cattle (May 15); smallest January herd since 1951; JBS, Tyson and Cargill plant closures/idling.
• Hormel expands deeper into protein with purchase of chicken company Brakebush Brothers — Food Dive, September 30, 2026 — $1.055B; family-owned Wisconsin value-added chicken processor, ~$1.2B net sales.
• Intersnack to Acquire Utz in USD2.9bn Deal, Taking US Snack Maker Private — Frozen Food Europe, July 23, 2026 — $14.25/share cash, ~91% premium; close expected Q4 2026.
• Butterfly Equity to acquire Sabert — Packaging Dive, September 22, 2026 — Founder-led food packaging maker, ~3,000 employees, 13 plants; founder stays as minority investor.
• Sleep Number files bankruptcy, will combine with Sleep Country Canada — WSB-TV (CNHI), June 15, 2026 — Chapter 11 with Sleep Country as $415M stalking-horse bidder; 'capital structure remains unsustainable.'
• 2026 Midyear Report: Pressure Persists as Signs of Stability Emerge — Brewers Association, July 22, 2026 — Craft volume -4% in H1 2026; 9,344 breweries operating, down 1.8% YoY.
• Beauty Deals: Investment + M&A Transactions Q1 2026 — BeautyMatter, May 11, 2026 — 83 beauty and wellness transactions in Q1 2026, up 40.7% YoY.
• Regent to Acquire Avon North America, Reuniting Avon Businesses Under Common Ownership — Global Cosmetics News, August 25, 2026 — LG H&H sells Avon North America to Regent; close expected September 1, 2026.
• Kroger to acquire Giant Eagle for $1.65B — Supermarket News, July 1, 2026 — 197 supermarkets, 11 pharmacies, ~$9B sales; family-owned since 1931.