Days into her new job as COO of General Mills, Dana McNabb said her key priority is to “restore profitable top-line growth”.
McNabb, who took the role on 1 June but still remains president of General Mills’ North America retail and pet food units, suggested the company’s fiscal 2026 results due to be published early in July will show signs of improvement in volumes.
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Continuing to invest in “remarkability” across the US food group’s brands, along with innovation and renovation around functionality, clean label and “bold flavours” will be key thrusts for the business, McNabb said during a Deutsche Bank conference.
“My number one priority hasn’t really changed, it is to restore profitable top-line growth for the enterprise,” she said at the dbAccess Global Consumer Conference.
“We’ve been focused on improving the remarkability of our brands. Our first investment was against price, and we’re seeing that work as we close this fiscal year. We are improving our base volume, we are improving our competitiveness, and we are back to household penetration for the first time in three years.”
McNabb explained ahead of the fiscal 2026 results on 1 July that General Mills’ “base” volumes were down 10% in the 2025 financial year but “closing this fiscal year, it’s up 1% on the brands that we invested in”.
She added: “If I look to our Pillsbury business, which is our biggest and where our problems were the most acute, if you look at fiscal ‘25 on base volume, it was down 10%. Pillsbury is finishing the year up 3% on base volume.”
For the portfolio as a whole, the new COO said 2026 has seen a 25% increase in new products. “They’re working. That gives us a really good foundation, and we’ll have a step change on that again this year,” she added.
“We are going to have meaningful innovation and renovation on all eight of our billion-dollar brands. That’s about delivering against the benefits the consumer values – functional nutrition, clean label, bold flavours.”
Protein will feature in breakfast cereals with Honey Nut Cheerios, while General Mills plans to “scale businesses” like Annie’s, Epic and Tiki Cat, McNabb said.
Upcoming launches include Ghost Performance Nutrition Bars and taking the Wan Chai Ferry dumplings brand sold in China into new markets to complement innovation in price-pack architecture, such as new pack sizes, formats and functionalities.
McNabb said Cheerios protein cereals have been “highly incremental to the business” to the tune of around $100m, with an additional $200m of new product offerings for the category expected in fiscal 2027.
Nonetheless, a potential headwind is US consumer confidence as General Mills continues to pursue its Holistic Margin Management (HMM) programme based on improving productivity.
McNabb described the consumer in General Mills’ home market as “stressed” amid inflation pressures, gas prices and reductions in SNAP benefits.
“We just closed our fiscal year. In our Q4, we saw our categories slow down by about a point and, as we turn to this next fiscal year, we’re not assuming that’s going to improve,” she explained.
“We’re assuming categories will stay soft, and our goal is to get game share in those categories, and to be the leader, and to improve them.”
Sitting alongside McNabb was finance chief Kofi Bruce at the dbAccess event although CEO Jeff Harmening was not present.
Bruce emphasised that General Mills is in “the middle of a multi-year transformation initiative”, which kicked off in 2026 and delivered $100m of costs savings on top of the HMM benefits.
“We would expect at least that level in fiscal ‘27 and there will be more as we move into fiscal ‘28 and beyond,” Bruce said.
“Those things are going to be critical, both to helping us move through the cycle, fund the growth investments that we need to get the top-line moving again, and then over the long term will help us drive the leverage in the P&L we need to help restore earnings and cash flow.”
