Bank of America reported Nielsen Food scanner data covering the four weeks ending March 21 that placed Belgian biscuit maker Lotus Bakeries at the top of the list among European food companies operating in the US market, with value sales up 48.4% over the period.
The rise for Lotus was overwhelmingly volume-driven. Unit sales rose 48.1% in the same four-week span, while price and mix added a marginal 0.3% to the company’s overall sales increase.
By contrast, French food group Danone produced the weakest showing among the companies tracked in the dataset. Danone’s value sales were essentially flat, recording 0.1% growth. That performance relied mainly on a 4.6% contribution from price and mix, which offset a decline in volumes during the period.
Looking across the tracked food categories, Bank of America highlighted that average value growth reached 3.9% for the four weeks ending March 21 compared with the four weeks ending February 21. That represented a month-on-month acceleration of 1.8% in value growth. Volume accounted for 1.0% of the gain, while prices contributed 0.8%.
Confectionery specialist Lindt registered the strongest acceleration in sales momentum among the tracked names, with acceleration of 12.9 percentage points to a total growth rate of 19.9%. Bank of America noted this step-up in growth could be associated with earlier Easter timing in 2026 versus 2025.
Despite Lotus Bakeries’ high absolute growth rate during the four weeks ending March 21, Bank of America’s data also showed Lotus experienced the largest slowdown in growth relative to the prior period, decelerating by 19.0 percentage points even as it maintained 48.4% value growth for the period under review.
Data notes
- The figures cited reflect Nielsen Food scanner data for the specific four-week periods identified and were reported by Bank of America.
- Value growth and its decomposition into volume and price/mix contributions are shown for the period comparisons described above.