Just came across this post in linkedin where this person is telling us how GLP - 1 drugs are causing people to buy less food and in turn generate less revenue for big food companies like Nestlé and Kraft Heinz.
Their solution will therefore be premiumising of food such that even though they sell less in volume, they sell it at higher prices, maintaining bottom lines. This is also called shrink to grow strategy that has been popular in CPG industry last few years (think how dishwasher detergent powder vanished from shelves and got replaced by more expensive pods)
And everyone, not just GLP-1 users will pay for this premiumisation. Your food prices are about to get worse.
I’m honestly not sure this would affect everyone. We’ve already seen this trend for a while now. Companies sell overpriced “health” foods, green drinks that taste awful (but at least they have 500% your normal daily vitamins!), etc for way too much money already, but they exist alongside existing food options.
My assumption is that rather than affecting the whole market, this will just create a two-tier food system. One tier is for those who are optimizing their consumption because of things like GLP-1’s, or them being obscenely rich, and the rest is for people who care about their health, but are, at the end of the day, persuaded more by cost than maximizing health.
Companies don’t even have to make entirely different foods for each group, they just have to add some extra vitamins/protein powders to their existing products, then just package it differently and add a markup.
If the gross margins are higher on the GLP optimised Food options, the companies will be incentivised to sell more of those rather than conventional products. And more shelf space and ad space etc will be allocated to these too, making conventional products less readily available.