13 Mar 2026 Libstar’s Rialto expands with General Mills brands in SA

Libstar’s Rialto has just completed one of its biggest rollouts, integrating 55 General Mills products into its portfolio in under a year…..

This partnership strengthens Rialto in fast‑growing categories such as premium ice cream, global cuisine, snack bars, and baking. Consumers can now find these favourites at major retailers, including Shoprite‑Checkers, Pick n Pay and Spar.

The partnership with one of the US’s oldest and most iconic food companies, announced in 2025, introduces four established international General Mills brands to the local market:

Häagen-Dazs in the super-premium ice cream segment; Old El Paso brings a range of Mexican meal solutions; Nature Valley adds to the snack bar category, and Pillsbury strengthens the baking portfolio with both traditional products and newer formats, such as ready-to-spread frosting. All categories show growth potential.

Ranges listed in part or full are available across major retailers including Shoprite-Checkers, Pick n Pay, Spar, Food Lover’s, Dis-Chem, Massmart and leading forecourts.

The Food Service channel contributes a further 14% of sales, driven largely by Häagen-Dazs in independent restaurants and branded chains.

Commenting on the partnership, Wendy van Zyl, Category and Customer Executive at Libstar, said: “This partnership with General Mills represents a significant milestone for Rialto.

“The addition of four global category leaders strengthens our portfolio in key growth segments while expanding consumer choice. The speed and scale of this integration underscore the agility of our teams and our ability to execute complex, large-scale rollouts, reinforcing our commitment to delivering world-class brands to local shelves.”

So how did this challenging rollout happen? Daily Maverick went to find the answers….

When spotting an alluring tub of I’ll-start-the-diet-tomorrow ice cream at your local Checkers, exactly how the ice cream got there in the first place is not top of mind.

For Rialto, a division of the Libstar Group, it represents a logistical mountain that had to be moved at -22°C. Integrating 55 General Mills products into the local market has proved to be an exercise in operational agility and financial modelling for the company.

According to Derek Couzens, Managing Executive at Rialto, the introduction of the frozen component required for Häagen-Dazs forced the company to build a highly disciplined, costly infrastructure from the ground up.

“You’re bringing a 40-foot container into a central frozen warehouse, for example, in Cape Town. And then you’re taking product, dividing it up and sending it to three regional depots or hubs in Gauteng, Cape Town and KwaZulu-Natal. And then from there you are delivering on a daily basis a product that is fairly unstable in its form.”

And unstable it is indeed. The ice cream has to be stored at nothing less than -22°C and delivered at nothing less than -18°C, Couzens told Daily Maverick. “All of these factors really proved incredibly challenging in the beginning.”

Couzens explained that SA’s warmer climate and less reliable refrigeration systems lead to more product spoilage than in Europe. To prepare for this, the company factored a higher expected product loss rate of 7% into its financial budget.

A 2025 GeoPoll survey shows that 42.3% of consumers rank quality as their primary purchase driver before price and brand. The company treats the cost of melted stock as a strategic trade-off rather than a failure, betting that premium margins will easily swallow the losses.

The gamble might already be paying off. During the past five months, sales have outperformed 2025 targets twofold, according to Couzens.

Hunting the premium node

While the General Mills range is available across major retailers like Checkers, Pick n Pay, and Food Lover’s Market, Rialto is hunting premium nodes.

The rollout relies on targeted convenience channels, specifically forecourts.

“Nearly one quarter of all ice cream is actually sold out of forecourts. So we had to get our minds around sales representation, and regional stock holdings,” Couzens said.

He said that many of the 330 forecourt freezers had been sitting in the same spots for more than five years. Because post-Covid habits changed, the company moved these units to busier forecourts to find premium shoppers.

“We partnered with Maxi Cool to manage all technical work and refurbishments,” Couzens said. “Together we built a centralised portal that provides real-time data on each unit, including location, service history, technical issues and sales performance.”

Will the premium consumer drink the proverbial Kool-Aid (or rather soda float)? According to Kerry Elliot, Client Success Lead at Trade Intelligence, one in 10 shoppers take out personal loans to afford food.

“This trend is visible across all income brackets, not only in the lower end,” she said.

Brand promiscuity and the top-ender

The SA ice cream market size reached R5.8-billion ($363.1-million) in 2025, according to data from market research firm Imarc Group, with projected a growth rate of 2.89% through to 2034. The question is whether Häagen-Dazs steals share or expands the pie…..

Daily Maverick: Read the full story here