ForceBrands Pay Tables Already Picked CPG’s Winners

ForceBrands priced a 15-year food CEO at $324,500 to $425,000, and the rest of the chart already showed who would keep getting paid.

The firm released five consumer-brand reports on November 1, 2024, covering food and non-alcoholic drinks, beer wine and spirits, beauty wellness and supplements, cannabis, and pet. The next survey, plus a year of big-company cuts, then sorted the winners from everyone else.

What Food and Beverage CEOs Made in the Report

For brands doing $21 million to $50 million in revenue, the food CEO band is $324,500 to $425,000. The CFO band is $297,500 to $390,000, and the COO band is $265,000 to $375,000, all for people with 15 or more years in the seat.

Those figures are base pay only. ForceBrands rounded every number to the nearest $500 and built the food and non-alcoholic salary tables from a year of its own placements plus public U.S. pay data. The firm notes it usually works with companies in the $50 million to $500 million band, so a listed CMO high of $324,500 becomes $366,685 at a $500 million-plus company once the 1.13 multiplier is applied.

FOOD AND NON-ALC C-SUITE BASE PAY

The government number sits in a different universe. May 2025 figures from the Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics program put the national mean wage for chief executives at $269,630 across every industry and company size, which is why ForceBrands’ food floor is higher. On the plant side, food manufacturing average hourly earnings were $28.52 in February 2026, a preliminary Current Employment Statistics print for the whole NAICS 311 workforce.

The Raise Split Already Favored the Top

Sixty-two percent of the people in ForceBrands’ 2024-cycle survey said they got a raise, and 64 percent said they got a bonus. Most of the money did not come from jumping ship: 78 percent of the raises were annual reviews, and 22 percent came from a job move.

Among people who got an increase, 51 percent landed in the 3 to 5 percent band. Executives still took twice as many raises above 5 percent as staff below manager level. Four in 10 respondents planned to switch jobs within a year, and two-thirds of that group were middle managers trying to grow pay and title at the same time.

HOW THE 2024 RAISES LANDED

• The 3 to 5 percent band: Just over half of all increases sat here, which is the default, not a retention tool.
• No raise: 60 percent of those people said they were likely to switch employers within a year.
• An 11 percent or larger bump: 88 percent of that group said they were loyal to their employer.
• Who is leaving: Two-thirds of the people planning an exit were middle managers, not the C-suite the reports keep pricing up.

That is the scoreboard inside the 2025 reports. The titles companies said they needed (chief commercial officer, chief marketing officer, head of sales) sit at the expensive end of the chart. The people most likely to walk sit in the middle.

The Cannabis Discount Against Food Pay

ForceBrands’ cannabis edition listed a CEO low of $271,000, which is $53,500 under the food CEO floor. Eric Rosen, a ForceBrands client strategist, told cannabis operators to stop hiring as if they were a niche.

To attract top talent in 2025, cannabis companies need to step outside the industry bubble and align their compensation with more established sectors. Position yourself not as a ‘cannabis’ company but as a competitor within the broader business landscape.

Eric Rosen, Client Strategist, ForceBrands 2025 Cannabis report

Pet went the other way. The pet C-suite lows matched food, including the $324,500 CEO floor, and Rosen wrote that pet companies were already chasing people out of traditional food, high-growth consumer firms, and beauty and wellness for operations, sales, marketing, and finance. Pet is paying food money for food skills. Cannabis is still asking food people to take a cut.

Beer, wine, and spirits had the same C-suite gravity with a commercial tilt. Rachel Doueck, ForceBrands senior director of client strategy, said 2024 demand clustered on chief commercial officers and chief marketing officers as companies tried to scale volume, and that pay had “stabilized” even as offers still had to be rich enough to move “dynamic leaders.”

Hybrid Work Became the Relocation Substitute

Anna Johnson, ForceBrands senior partner of retained search, wrote the food edition’s hiring brief around sales and commercial leadership. She also named the constraint that decides who can sit in those jobs.

Relocating talent remains challenging, with hybrid models becoming the new and preferred norm.

Anna Johnson, Senior Partner of Retained Search, ForceBrands 2025 Food and Non-Alc report

Commercial work can live on a hybrid calendar. Plant leadership, lab work, and most operations jobs cannot. The reports price a VP of marketing from $212,000 on the low end for the same $21 million to $50 million companies, while Head of People sits at $162,500 to $243,500. The people who can take the hybrid deal are the people the commentary says brands are fighting over. The people who have to show up in a facility are not in that fight.

A 2026 pattern fits the same split. Companies still post director-and-up roles while they freeze hiring underneath, which is how a “stable” pay year keeps moving money toward the top of the chart and away from the middle.

The 2026 Survey Found Fewer Raises

ForceBrands’ next salary study, summarized on January 12, 2026, is the first hard check on that 2025 “stabilized” line. Pay satisfaction rose to 55 percent from 48 percent, a 7-point gain. The share of people who actually got a raise went the other way. ForceBrands found that just 53 percent received a raise, down 9 points from 62 percent in the prior cycle, and the default increase was still 3 to 5 percent.

THE 2024 CYCLE VERSUS THE 2025 CYCLE

Satisfaction rose while raises got rarer because the people still in the building are the ones who got paid. Among staff who were satisfied with pay, 27 percent still planned to switch jobs within a year. Among dissatisfied non-executives, that share was 53 percent. Dissatisfied executives sat at 40 percent. About one in five people were blindsided by no raise, double the one-in-ten rate from the prior year.

ForceBrands also put a price on replacement. It often takes 15 to 20 percent more pay to pull a top performer from a competitor. For executives, switch intent does not move until an increase exceeds 20 percent. Equity still sits with the top: 67 percent of executives reported an ownership benefit, against 38 percent of non-executives. Transparency is the same split in plainer clothes. Forty-five percent of executives said pay is very transparent. Thirteen percent of non-executives agreed.

Emerging Brands Are Buying Big-CPG Talent Cheap

While ForceBrands was measuring those raises, the largest food companies were pushing people into the market. Andy Roads, founder of retained-search firm High Altitude Partners, called it the great inversion in an April 2026 hiring report: the talent that sat inside the biggest CPG firms for two decades is now moving, and founder-led brands in the $50 million to $500 million band are the buyers.

NAMED CUTS THAT FED THE POOL

• Nestlé: 16,000 jobs cut globally in October 2025.
• Kraft Heinz: about 1,000 roles in a 2026 restructuring after a $28 billion split was halted in February 2026.
• PepsiCo: two Frito-Lay plant closures, about 500 jobs.
• General Mills: three Missouri plants, with $130 million in restructuring cost in October 2025.
• Hormel: 250 corporate roles.

High Altitude said it was tracking, conservatively, more than 20,000 displaced senior and middle-management roles across the largest CPGs. In its own searches, candidates from Nestlé, Kraft Heinz, and General Mills units were landing at emerging brands at 15 to 20 percent below their last packages, a pay cut on prior cash that is a different number from ForceBrands’ 15 to 20 percent premium to recruit a star who is not already on the street.

Circana figures in that same report show why the buyers feel urgent. Companies under $1 billion grew distribution 42 percent in 2025, against 7 percent for larger competitors, which is six times the rate. The $8 billion-plus manufacturers kept losing share. That is the other half of the ForceBrands scoreboard: the $21 million to $50 million brands in the salary tables, and the $50 million to $500 million brands the firm actually staffs, are the ones still hiring for growth.

Six in Ten Executives Are Open to Leaving

Rob Ganjon wrote in a December 22, 2025 ForceBrands note that only 13 percent of organizations had succession plans for their top three strategic roles. Six in ten C-suite executives said they were open to or planning a move within a year, and one-third intended to act. The January 2026 trends piece added that two-thirds of executive leaders lacked a succession or backfill plan for their own roles.

So the titles ForceBrands priced most carefully are also the titles with the thinnest bench. Commercial leaders can take the hybrid jobs Johnson described. Pet can keep paying food-level cash for food people. Cannabis still starts its CEO $53,500 below food. Big CPG is selling experience at a discount. The middle of the org chart, which already made up two-thirds of the people who planned to leave in the 2025 survey, is the group that saw raises get rarer.

Thirteen percent of brands have a plan for their top three jobs. Six in ten of the people in those jobs are already open to a move, and the 2026 raise rate says most of the staff under them will not be bought off with another 3 to 5 percent.