PARSIPPANY, NJ. — B&G Foods, Inc. continues to struggle as weakness in the retail center-of-store persists. Adding to pressure on the company has been competition to its Crisco, Ortega and Green Giant brands.

“… Most of the B&G Foods portfolio has been slower to recover than expected,” said Kenneth Keller, president and chief executive officer, during a Nov. 5 conference call with securities analysts. “Consistent with the center-store packaged foods industry, we have not seen much improvement relative to the first half with consumers adjusting their purchasing patterns in the wake of high food inflation.”

Company management had hoped the weakness would ease in the first half of 2025, but now is guiding that the category challenges may persist until the second half of next year.

“… we're not really saying in the first half it’s going to get positive,” Keller said. “We’re saying it’s going to improve over the course of 2025. Between the first half (and) the second half, I would expect that we’ll see some normalization by the second half of 2025.”

For the third quarter ended Sept. 28, B&G Foods had net income of $7.46 million, equal to 9¢ per share on the common stock, and an improvement over the third quarter of fiscal 2023 when the company incurred a loss of $82.7 million.

Quarterly sales fell to $461.1 million from $502.7 million the year before. Contributing to the decline in quarterly sales was the divestment of its Green Giant canned vegetable business in November 2023.

In the company’s Specialty business unit, sales fell 10% to $161 million from $179 million the year before. The sales decline was attributed to lower Crisco pricing due to decreased commodity costs coupled with declines in volumes, according to the company.

“I think it’s all about making sure that we have the right pricing in the marketplace relative to the cost of soybean oil,” Keller said about recovery of the Crisco business. He added that improvement also will require supporting the business with recipes, digital outreach and influencers.

In the Meals business, sales fell 4% to $111.6 million from $116.1 million the year before.

The expansion of the partnership between the Kraft Heinz Co. and Taco Bell at retail has affected B&G’s Ortega brand.

“The largest driver was the Ortega brand (that was) impacted by competitive pressure from increased activity by the Taco Bell brand,” Keller said of the business unit’s sales decline.

To offset the competition, Keller added that B&G Foods plans to commit more money and resources to defending Ortega’s position in the market.

“The trends in the category are good,” he said. “It just happens that we are now splitting it along with Old El Paso (a General Mills brand) and with a third player who’s made some inroads in distribution.”

In the Frozen & Vegetables business, sales fell 20% to $89.2 million from $111.1 million, primarily due to the divestment of the canned vegetables business. Category volumes also fell during the quarter.

“In terms of the Green Giant frozen portfolio, we need to continue to drive the right price points on our …  core vegetables and sauce line, but we need to have successful innovation coming to (the) marketplace,” Keller said. “Right now, we are introducing new premium sides that have gone well in our past launches and we're also launching new ramen-based products that are coming into the marketplace this fall/next spring depending on the customer resets.”

A bright spot for the company was its Spices & Flavor Solutions segment that had sales rise 3% to $99.3 million from $96.9 million.