How Grocer Folk Grew a Leading Canadian CPG Brand's Blended ROAS to 4x+ — Then Helped Them Launch Into the US Market

For lean CPG brands, Instacart performance often breaks down at campaign structure, budget allocation, and reporting visibility, not lack of demand. With one of our early Canadian CPG clients, Grocer Folk grew blended ROAS to 4x+, which gave the brand the data and confidence to launch into the US market.

The Problem

The brand was already sold through major Canadian grocery retailers, but paid media performance was not where it needed to be. A lean team was managing spend across multiple channels while trying to make decisions without a clear optimization framework or a single source of truth for ROI.

That created three problems:

1. Instacart campaigns were not structured tightly enough to support efficient scaling.
2. Budget allocation across Instacart, Meta, and Google was guided more by instinct than by clear performance visibility.
3. The team could not confidently answer which dollars were producing growth and which dollars were being wasted.

Grocer Folk's Approach

1. Instacart account audit and restructure

We reviewed the existing campaign setup, identified wasted spend, surfaced bidding issues, and found gaps in SKU coverage. The goal was to move from reactive campaign management to a structure that could be optimized consistently.

2. Bid and budget guardrails

We introduced a repeatable optimization framework across Sponsored Product and Display campaigns so spend decisions were driven by performance signals instead of guesswork. That made it easier to trim inefficiency and put budget behind the placements most likely to drive profitable growth.

3. Blended performance reporting

We built a weekly reporting cadence that brought Instacart, Meta, Google, Walmart Connect, and Loblaw Advance into one view. Instead of piecing together five dashboards, the team could see the relationship between channel spend and business results in one place.

4. New-to-Brand focus

We also identified ways to improve the New-to-Brand spend mix so more budget could support acquisition, not just repeat demand. This helped align media decisions with long-term customer growth.

Results

Grocer Folk grew the brand's blended ROAS to 4x+, more than doubling return on ad spend while giving the team better visibility into how each channel contributed to growth.

The outcome went beyond the ROAS number. The brand gained a clearer operating rhythm for cross-channel decision-making — and the performance data gave them the confidence to launch into the US market. That is the result that matters most: ad performance that compounds into a real business decision.

Why This Matters for CPG Brands

If your brand is already spending on Instacart, poor results are not always a demand problem. More often, the issue is weak campaign structure, unclear reporting, or budget being spread across channels without enough accountability. This case study is a good example of what can happen when those fundamentals are fixed first.