Conagra planned for lost volume before it raised prices

Responding to: Conagra sales volumes dip as new CEO Brase grapples with inflation pressures, Reuters (via KSL.com), September 30, 2026.

Conagra had a hard quarter on paper. Reuters reported that volume fell 2.1%, organic sales declined, and the shares dropped to a three-month low. CEO John Brase, who took over in June, put it plainly: “You definitely have a pressured consumer. There’s no doubt about it.”

But one line on the earnings call is one I’d want every owner of a 20-to-200-person company to hear. Asked whether competitors were following Conagra’s price increases, Brase said: “we have not assumed any followership in our pricing moves.”

In other words, when Conagra raised prices, it planned as if nobody would raise prices alongside it. It assumed it would lose some volume and built that loss into the plan before the new prices hit the shelf. CFO Dave Marberger said the outlook was already “factoring in greater-than-historical volume elasticities.” And Brase said customer acceptance came in with “no surprises versus our planning posture.”

The decision came before the pressure

From the outside, it looks like the price increase wasn’t a reaction. It was a campaign: a decision, a set of assumptions, a date, and a plan for what would happen to volume.

Compare that with how price increases often go in owner-led companies. Costs creep up. We hold the line because we don’t want to upset anyone. Margin gets thin. Then we raise prices in a hurry, lose one good customer, panic, and start discounting to win them back. We end the year with the same volume, less margin, and a team that now believes raising prices doesn’t work.

The difference isn’t courage. It’s math done in advance.

The math to run before you raise prices

Here is the question Conagra answered and most of us skip: how much volume can we lose and still make the same gross profit?

Say a product sells for $100 and costs $60 to deliver. You keep $40.

Raise the price 8%, to $108. Now you keep $48 on each sale. To earn the same total gross profit as before, you need 40 ÷ 48 of your old volume, or about 83%. You could lose almost 17% of your units and be no worse off.

That number surprises most leaders. We tend to fear losing a handful of customers. The math usually leaves far more room than the fear does.

And the customers most likely to leave are usually the ones buying on price alone, who are often the hardest to serve. The ones who stay are the ones who value what you do. I call them your “Hell Yes” clients.

Turning it into a plan

Conagra has analysts and models. You don’t need any of that. You need four things, written down:

1. The number. The percentage increase, by product or by customer group.
2. The break-even volume. How much you could lose and still make the same gross profit, using the math above.
3. A trigger point. The level of lost volume that would make you stop and rethink. Decide it now, while you’re calm, not in the meeting after the first cancellation.
4. An owner and a date. One person runs the increase as a campaign: customer notices, talking points for the team, and a weekly look at the numbers.

Conagra also got a reminder that plans meet surprises. Benzinga reported that the company’s transportation costs were rising at about twice the rate it had expected. That’s why the fourth step matters. A plan you check every week can adjust. A plan you file away can’t.

Your price decides how hard your year will be. Decide it on purpose.

If you want to run these numbers on your own business, the Get Your Numbers Right course walks a leadership team through pricing, margin and cash flow, step by step.