Inaugural 5W grocery research found AI engines recommend store brands nearly 2-to-1 over national CPG brands. 5W AI Communications published its first grocery-focused AI visibility study, the Grocery edition of The Private Label AI Advantage, the opening installment of a five-part series measuring how answer engines cite store brands against national brands across grocery, e-commerce, pet, pharmacy, and supplements. 5W modeled the Citation Share of 25 grocery brands — 13 retailer-owned store brands, 12 national consumer-packaged-goods brands — across ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini, and Google AI Overviews, using 64 consumer-intent prompts. Store brands averaged a Citation Share of 44. National brands averaged 23. A 1.9× gap. Eight of the ten most-cited grocery brands are store brands. Trader Joe's (78) and Kirkland Signature (74) lead the entire index. Good & Gather, launched in 2019, already out-cites Cheerios. Tyson, Philadelphia, Frosted Flakes, Hellmann's, Campbell's all land in the bottom third. The gap is platform-dependent; Perplexity shows the widest gap (+32 points in favor of store brands), while Google AI Overviews is the narrowest (+10). U.S. private label hit a record $282.8 billion in 2025, a 21.3% dollar share, growing nearly three times as