How is the American economy doing? According to the Federal Reserve’s latest Beige Book, prospect of COVID-19 vaccines has bolstered business optimism for 2021 growth, but what about the CPG industry specifically?  The Beige Book is a Federal Reserve System publication that collects mostly qualitative information, gathered directly from District sources. This consumer data creates an opportunity to characterize dynamics and identify emerging trends in the economy that may not be readily apparent in the available quantitative economic data. Additionally, most CPG businesses today are offered nationally through e-commerce or large brick and mortar retail chains, so it’s important to understand that America is not a one-size-fits-all economy, especially during the coronavirus. Because of that, the Beige Book can potentially help you with regional insights that can be applied to create advantages in your business. To save you time from reading the whole document that comes out every 45 days, I started a content series that takes five CPG industry related highlights that I found most insightful from the latest Beige Book, such as what the vaccine rollout means to CPG brands, empty shopping malls, ecommerce continuing to grow, and food prices rising that will likely result in increased inflation throughout 2021. On CPG industry Beige Book Vol.5, I also provided some additional bonus quantitative December retail data that came from the U.S. Census Bureau.