Business growth in the egg industry is about consumer trust and building a reputable brand, not using a claim on packaging, explained Vital Farms President and CEO Russell Diez-Canseco during the 2025 ICR Consumer Conference.
Consumer trust is becoming more of a priority to customers as there is a growing interest in how foods are produced, and Vital Farms believes that building a brand that consumers trust from the beginning is the key to advancing a business quickly.
Do consumers purchase for the pasture-raised claim?
Vital Farms is the largest brand of pasture-raised eggs in the U.S. and the second largest brand of eggs, Diez-Canseco said. However, when the producer has conducted consumer research, they have found that a large portion of consumers are confused about eggs claims such as free range, pasture raised, cage free or organic.
“Surprisingly, more than half of the people that buy our eggs don't know that they are called pasture raised. And in fact, more than half of our consumers attribute more value to the term free range than they do to pasture raised,” he stated
“Our takeaway is people are looking to us because they trust us in the way that we operate. They trust us to be transparent. They trust the brand.”
Diez-Canseco added that over the years, the words ‘pasture raised’ on its egg cartons have gotten smaller, while the Vital Farms logo has gotten bigger. Much of the egg industry, he explained, looks at data, sees the growth in popularity of pasture-raised products and decides to produce that.
“Every one of our top ten customers has at least one pasture-raised egg offering, yet we've got the highest price of all of them, and we are growing faster than all of them. I think that speaks to the fact that it's not about the term or the claim. It's about the brand.”
Diez-Canseco continued, saying the if the company has decided to call its pasture-raised egg offering by another name 15 years ago, then that name would have been the fastest growing part of the egg system. “It's incidental that we called it pasture raised,” he stated.
