You have probably heard the number.

85 percent of new food products fail.

It gets repeated so often that it has become a kind of industry folklore, the thing everyone says right before they explain why their product is different.

Here is where it actually comes from, what it really means, and the one piece of research behind it that matters more than the headline number itself.

Where the number comes from

The 85 percent figure traces back to Nielsen data, reported by FoodNavigator-USA in 2014.

The question Nielsen asked was simple...

How many consumer packaged goods that launch in the US will still be around two years later? The answer, according to that data, was about 15 percent.

Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen is often cited alongside this figure too. His research suggested 80 percent of the roughly 30,000 new consumer products launched each year do not survive.

Estimates in the industry generally land somewhere between 70 and 85 percent.

It is worth knowing that this number is not universally accepted.

A peer reviewed paper in the Journal of Product Innovation Management called the 80 to 90 percent claim an "urban legend." That research puts the real failure rate closer to 40 percent.

So which is it?

Honestly, it depends on how you define failure. And that debate matters less than what comes next.

The number that actually matters

Buried inside the grocery industry research is a data point far more useful than the headline stat.

Marketing researcher Inez Blackburn looked specifically at new product introductions in US retail grocery. She found the overall failure rate ran 70 to 80 percent.

• But then she broke the number down further.

• The top 20 food companies in the country failed at a rate of just 24%.

• The bottom 20,000 companies failed at a rate of 88%.

Read that again.

The largest, most established food companies in the country fail less than a quarter of the time. Everyone else fails almost nine times out of ten.

Blackburn's own explanation for the gap was direct. It comes down to the amount of research and strategic marketing behind the product.

Not the recipe. Not the packaging. Not even the marketing budget.

The process behind the product.

Why most products actually fail

Poor product market fit shows up more than any other reason. The product solves a problem nobody was asking to have solved, or it solves it in a way that does not stand out.

Inadequate market research is close behind. Skipping consumer testing feels like it saves time. It usually costs far more later.

Taste and quality failures matter more than people expect. Research on repeat purchase behavior suggests it takes about seven purchases before a product becomes habitual. A product that does not deliver on taste rarely gets that far.

Weak differentiation is another common thread. If five products in your category already claim to be clean label, that claim is not a differentiator anymore. It is the baseline.

Mispricing takes down products that otherwise had a real shot.

And running out of capital ends more good ideas than bad ones. A 2022 Deloitte survey found nearly 90 percent of food and beverage brands said rising ingredient costs directly shaped their operations. Almost half said they had to halt production on certain products entirely.

What the successful 15 percent actually do

They test early and often.

Not once. Not at the end. Throughout the process, while changes are still cheap to make.

They run blind panel tests across multiple formula versions. Internal teams lose objectivity fast. A founder who has tasted their own product fifty times cannot evaluate it the way a stranger can.

They document shelf life before they ever approach a retail buyer.

They use a structured process with real go or kill decision points, not just forward momentum.

They study the competitive shelf before they finalize the formula, not after.

They price for margin from day one, targeting 40 to 50 percent gross margin so the business can actually support growth.

And they get compliance right early, because fixing a labeling or regulatory problem after launch is far more expensive than getting it right the first time.

None of this is complicated.

It is disciplined.

The bottom line

Whether the real failure rate is 85 percent or closer to 40 percent, the underlying story does not change.

Companies that invest in research, testing, and a structured process fail far less often than companies that do not.

That gap between 24 percent and 88 percent is not about resources most small and emerging brands do not have.

It is about a process most small and emerging brands were never taught.

Greg Aronoff is the Communications Manager for Oregon State University's Professional and Continuing Education program.