Last week, I received an email from a recruiter at a well-known executive search firm.

The opportunity sounded impressive. A board director role. A nominating committee seat. Total compensation in the range of $1M to $1.6M. It was way out of line for what he described, and it set off five alarms. Something smelled weird.

The recruiter had done his homework, referencing my fractional CMO background, my work with the WSJ CMO Network, and my experience in brand strategy.

But the outreach was oddly personal. It felt targeted and specific. It felt real.

It wasn’t.

The First Red Flag I Almost Missed

The email came from a Gmail address. Not a company address. A personal Gmail.

Now, I get informal outreach all the time, and I’ve learned not to dismiss something just because it doesn’t arrive on official letterhead.

But a partner at a retained executive search firm conducting a confidential board search? That person would never use Gmail. Their firm’s reputation depends on discretion and professionalism. A Gmail address is a liability, not a convenience.

I almost overlooked it because everything else about the email seemed so credible.

The Compensation Was Too Good to Be True

Board retainers in the $1M-plus range exist, but they’re reserved for large public companies and major private equity-backed enterprises.

For the kind of small to mid-sized consumer brand described in the email, that compensation structure made no sense.

Legitimate board roles at that level typically pay somewhere between $50,000 and $150,000 in cash and equity combined.

When something sounds too good to be true in marketing, I always tell my clients it usually is.

The same rule applies here.

I Pulled the Thread

Rather than ignoring my gut, I started checking. The first thing I did was put all the communication into Claude and ask for a review to see if there were signs of a scam.

The company named in the opportunity, Apex Brand Partners, Inc., had no verifiable online presence. That’s a significant red flag on its own.

But the recruiter’s name led me somewhere different. I found his LinkedIn profile. Real career history. Real companies. Everything checked out.

Then I went directly to the search firm’s website and found the partner who had reached out. He was listed as a Partner, with his official firm email and a direct phone number.

That’s when it clicked.

The person in the emails was not the named partner.

Someone had stolen his identity and was using his real name, background, and his firm’s credibility to run a scam.

What Happens Next in This Kind of Scam

The likely next step would have been a request for my resume and board bio for “internal benchmarking.” From there, the scammer would have had my personal information, my career history, and potentially enough to attempt identity theft, credential harvesting, or an advance-fee scheme.

These scams work because they target people with public profiles.

If your name appears in industry publications, on LinkedIn, or in association directories, you are a target. Scammers pull that information and use it to make their outreach feel earned and specific.

I Contacted the Real Partner

I emailed him directly at his recruitment company’s address, forwarded the suspicious emails, and asked whether any of this was legitimate.

He had no idea it was happening. He appreciated the heads-up, and his firm launched an investigation.

Five Things to Check Before You Respond to Any Opportunity

1. Is the email from an official company domain? A Gmail address from a partner at an established firm is a red flag, full stop.

2. Does the compensation make sense for the type of company described? If it sounds extraordinary, it probably is.

3. Can you independently verify the company? A quick search should surface something. If it doesn’t, that’s your answer.

4. Is the recruiter listed on the firm’s official website with matching contact information? Don’t use the contact details in the email. Find them yourself.

5. If something feels off, contact the firm directly through their main number. One email or phone call can settle the question in two minutes.

Your Public Profile Is Your Brand. Protect It.

For those of us who have spent years building a visible professional presence, that visibility is an asset. But it also makes us easier to target. Scammers are getting more sophisticated. They don’t just send generic phishing emails anymore. They personalize. They research. They use real names, real firms, and real career details to build credibility.

The best defense is simple.

Slow down.

Check the basics. And trust your instincts when something doesn’t feel right. And AI can be your friend when you screenshot a message that feels odd.

My gut almost talked me out of it.

I’m glad I kept asking questions.

Connect with Jeff at The Marketing Sage Consultancy. Interested in setting up a call? Use my calendly to schedule a time to talk. The call is free, and we can discuss your brand, marketing needs, and challenges.

Feel free to email me at jeffslater@themarketing sage.com or text 919 720 0995. Thanks for your interest in working with The Marketing Sage Consultancy.

Photo by Bermix Studio on Unsplash

The post A Recruiter Reached Out About a Board Director Role. Surprise, It Was a Scam. appeared first on The Marketing Sage.

I get several inquiries a month from people who want help but can’t afford to hire a startup branding consultant.

Founders who have just left a good job try to convince their spouse that the salsa recipe everyone loves at the holiday party is actually a business.

They are trying to figure out what to do first, and they don’t have the budget to hire an experienced marketing advisor.

So here is the free version of what I share.

Eleven pieces of advice, in the order I think matter most, based on years of advising more than fifty entrepreneurs. None of these suggestions requires a marketing degree. Most of it requires slowing down before you jump.

1. The Problem You Solve Comes Before Everything Else

Before starting on the recipe, packaging, and pricing, you need one honest sentence that explains what problem your product solves and for whom.

Rebel Cheese didn’t set out to make “another vegan cheese.” They set out to fix the actual problem: most plant-based cheeses taste like a sad compromise for people who are lactose intolerant. Their answer was cheese made from cashews using real aging and culturing techniques, so it tastes like cheese, not like a consolation prize.

If you can’t say what problem you solve in one or two sentences, you don’t have a product yet. You have a commodity.

2. Know Your Numbers Before You Make a Single Unit

This is the one thing nobody wants to hear, and it’s the one that kills more food businesses than bad marketing ever will. Before you find a co-packer, design packaging, create a brand name, or build a website, sit down and figure out exactly what it costs you to make your product. Then figure out what a store would need to pay you for it, and what that store would then charge a shopper.

If that final shelf price makes you wince, you have a problem to solve now, not later. A lot of founders fall in love with a brand name or a novel recipe, and then fall back on the business model. Flip that order. Know the economics first. The recipe can be adjusted. Channels of distribution can be changed. A business that loses money on every unit sold cannot survive. Know your numbers at startup, and estimate whether you can build volume and get better pricing at scale.

3. Solve One Problem, Not Five

New founders love to list everything their product does. It’s healthy. It’s convenient. It’s sustainable. It supports a cause. It tastes amazing.

Pick one.

A shopper walking down an aisle gives your package about two seconds. Two seconds is not enough time to read a list of virtues. It’s enough time to understand one clear idea. What is the single reason someone should buy this instead of the ten other things sitting next to it? Answer that question honestly, then build everything else around it.

4. Get It In Front of Real Strangers Before You Spend Real Money

Your friends and family are not a focus group. They love you, and they will tell you your product is great even when it isn’t ready. Before you invest in packaging, a website, or a big production run, find a farmers’ market, a local pop-up, or a neighbor’s backyard barbecue where you can hand your product to people who have no reason to be nice to you.

Watch their faces before they say anything. That reaction is more honest than any survey you could run.

If your product is for new moms, put it in front of them to get an honest reaction. Find creative ways to get honest feedback.

5. Start Small and Prove It Works Close to Home

Every founder dreams about a wall of their product at a national chain. That dream is fine to have, but it’s not where you start. Start with the store down the street, the local co-op, the market where you can actually walk in and see how your product is doing.

Selling well in one store and selling well again the next month in that same store tells you something a big launch never will. It tells you people are coming back. That is the real test, not the size of the first order.

I often advise that getting distribution is the easy part. But will your customer come back and buy again and again? Testing and learning locally is much easier than at a distance.

6. Make Your Package Do the Talking

You will not be standing in the store to explain your product. Your package has to do that job alone, in about two seconds, from a few feet away. That means a clear name, a clear picture of what’s inside (if it helps), and one clean message about why someone should care.

Resist the urge to cover the front of your package with every award, certification, and claim you’ve earned. Save those for the side or the back. The front has one job. Everything else is a supporting cast member, not the star.

7. Get Into the Right Stores, Not Just Any Store – or Online

Not every store is the right store for your product, even if they’ll take you. A store’s shopper needs to match the person who actually wants what you’re selling. A high-end health food shop and a busy convenience store attract two very different customers, and your product might make sense to only one of them.

Chasing every yes is tempting when you’re small, but a shelf that doesn’t match your customer is a shelf where your product quietly dies. It’s better to be strong in a few of the right places than thin and invisible across a lot of wrong ones.

8. Build Relationships With the People Who Decide, Not Just the People Who Taste

A buyer at a store is not the same as a shopper trying your sample. Their first question is often, ” What new customers are you bringing to this category? The buyer cares about things like how fast your product sells, how reliable your deliveries are, and whether you’ll still be in business next year. Getting to know that person, being honest with them, and showing up when you say you will matter just as much as how good your product tastes.

Food and beverage is a relationship business before anything else. The founders who last tend to be the ones buyers actually like.

9. Protect Your Cash Like It’s the Last of It, Because It Might Be

Growing a food business costs money at every single stage. Ingredients, packaging, shipping, a bigger cooler, and a new labeling machine. It adds up faster than most first-time founders expect, and running out of cash is one of the most common reasons good products never make it.

Before you say yes to a big order or a new piece of equipment, ask honestly whether you can actually afford it, not whether you can find a way to afford it. Those are two very different questions, and the second one gets founders into trouble. You can use Claude or Chat GBT to create financial models that help predict cash flow.

10. Expect It to Take Longer Than You Think

Nobody’s product blows up overnight, no matter what the founder’s social media interviews make it look like. Most of the brands you admire spent years building, one store and one customer at a time, before anything looked like an overnight success from the outside.

If your growth feels slower than you hoped in the first year or two, that doesn’t mean you’re failing. It might just mean you’re doing it the normal way. Patience is not a weakness in this business. It’s usually the difference between the founders who make it and the ones who quit right before they would have. Most founders who succeed don’t ever quit. They keep finding a way forward until they succeed.

11. Focus on Getting People to Buy It Again, Not Just Once

A first sale is easier than a second one. Anyone can get a curious shopper to try something new. The real business is built on the customer who buys it again next month, and then again after that, without needing to be convinced all over again.

If people aren’t coming back, that’s a signal worth paying attention to, even if your first sale numbers look good. A business that lives on repeat customers can actually grow. A business that only wins new customers over and over is a business that’s always starting from zero.

Four Key Takeaways

Bring a solution to a community in need. Find a group of people with a problem and try to deliver a product that solves that pain point. Don’t be a vitamin; be a painkiller when you start with a community, like those with dairy intolerance who would love to eat cheese again, make a cheese they can enjoy without the lactose issues.

Your numbers matter more than your recipe. A great-tasting product built on a business model that loses money on every unit is not a business; it’s an expensive hobby. Know your costs and your pricing before you fall in love with anything else.

Clarity beats cleverness on the shelf. Shoppers don’t have time to read a list of everything your product does. Give them one clear reason to pick it up, and let the package do that job without any help from you standing there.

Patience and repeat customers build real businesses. The founders who make it are rarely the ones with the fastest first year. They’re the ones who kept showing up, kept the customers they earned, and let the business grow in the slow, steady way that actually lasts.

I didn’t figure any of this out on my own, and neither will you. Hopefully, this saves you a few of the expensive lessons I learned the hard way.

Connect with Jeff at The Marketing Sage Consultancy. Interested in setting up a call? Use my calendly to schedule a time to talk. The call is free, and we can discuss your brand, marketing needs, and challenges.

Feel free to email me at jeffslater@themarketing sage.com or text 919 720 0995. Thanks for your interest in working with The Marketing Sage Consultancy.

The post Starting a Food Business? Here are Eleven Pieces of Sage Advice. appeared first on The Marketing Sage.

One in eight American adults is now taking a GLP-1 drug. That number has more than doubled in eighteen months.

That is not a trend.

That is a structural shift.

And if you make, market, or sell snack food, the data from Cornell, Numerator, and Circana tell a story you cannot ignore.

The people on these medications are not just eating differently. They are buying differently.

And the categories they are walking away from first are the ones that have driven snack-aisle growth over the past two decades.

Who Is Using GLP-1 Drugs and How Fast Is This Growing?

The headline number comes from RAND Corporation research published in August 2025: 11.8 percent of U.S. adults have used a GLP-1 such as Ozempic or Wegovy.

A separate Gallup survey from mid-to-late 2025 put the weight-loss-specific number at 12.4 percent, up from 5.8 percent in February 2024. Prescriptions have more than tripled since 2020.

The household picture is even more striking. Circana reports that 23 percent of U.S. households now have at least one GLP-1 user. By 2030, they project that GLP-1 households will represent 35 percent of all food and beverage units sold in this country.

Who is on these drugs matters as much as how many.

The demographic profile has shifted sharply. In 2021, the majority of GLP-1 prescriptions were issued to patients with type 2 diabetes. By 2025, Circana found that 78 percent of users say they are taking the drugs for weight loss, up 41 points from 2021. The RAND data shows use is highest among women aged 50 to 64, while women aged 30 to 49 are more than twice as likely as their male peers to have used a GLP-1. Circana characterizes the typical GLP-1 patient as Gen X, with a household income of over $100,000.

That income profile is not a footnote. Higher-income households are disproportionately likely to purchase premium snacks, specialty retail products, and natural-channel items. When their consumption changes, it shows up fast in the data.

What the Purchase Data Actually Shows

The most rigorous study to date, by Cornell University and Numerator, was published in December 2025 in the Journal of Marketing Research. Researchers tracked grocery and restaurant spending for 2,623 households with at least one GLP-1 user, drawn from Numerator’s 150,000-household consumer panel. They matched these households against surveys that asked when medication began and why.

The headline finding: within six months of starting a GLP-1 medication, households reduce grocery spending by an average of 5.3 percent. Among higher-income households, the drop is over 8 percent. Spending at fast-food restaurants and coffee shops falls by about 8 percent.

The reductions are not spread evenly across the store.

Calorie-dense, ultra-processed foods saw the sharpest declines.

• Spending on savory snacks dropped roughly 10 percent.
• Sweet bakery items, cookies, and sweets declined by similar magnitudes.

The Cornell and Numerator data specifically call out chips, sweet bakery, side dishes, and cookies as showing the largest declines in individual categories, ranging from 6.7 to 11.1 percent.

Numerator’s GLP-1 Trends Hub, launched in October 2025 and built on quarterly surveys of 30,000 consumers, adds another layer. Among GLP-1 users focused on weight loss, packaged bakery, snacks, prepared foods, and beans and grains showed year-over-year buy rate declines of 10 to 20 percent compared to non-users. Users focused specifically on losing 15 or more pounds reduced spending by 10 percent across more than 100 categories in grocery, quick-service restaurants, and tobacco within six months of starting the medication.

One data point on the other side of the ledger matters here. The Cornell research found statistically significant increases in only a handful of categories: yogurt, fresh fruit, nutrition bars, and meat snacks.

Weight-loss users specifically showed modest increases in fresh produce and yogurt. Protein shakes rose 38 percent among GLP-1 users. Superfoods climbed 58 percent.

The biology drives the basket. GLP-1 drugs suppress appetite and reduce cravings for high-fat, high-sugar foods. Protein becomes increasingly important for preventing muscle loss. Fiber supports digestive health.

Every calorie has to work harder, and users are making choices accordingly.

The Snack Industry Is Not Panicking Yet, but It Should Be Paying Attention

EY-Parthenon has been tracking this closely. Their analysis suggests GLP-1 adoption could put up to a $12 billion dent in snack food market growth and significantly slow the sector’s current 3 to 4 percent annual growth rate.

Survey respondents using GLP-1 drugs for weight loss reported declines in consumption of 40 to 60 percent across snack categories, while specialty and health foods climbed by nearly 50 percent, proteins by 65 percent, and fruits and vegetables by nearly 80 percent.

• General Mills CEO Jeff Harmening told analysts at the Consumer Analyst Group of New York conference that anti-obesity drugs will have a lasting influence on the food market.

The company is reformulating products, launching smaller portion sizes, and adding protein and fiber to existing lines, including Honey Nut Cheerios Protein and Ghost performance nutrition bars.

Nestle launched Vital Pursuit in 2024, its first major U.S. brand in nearly three decades, specifically targeting GLP-1 users with portion-controlled, nutrient-dense frozen meals. Danone rolled out an Oikos yogurt drink in 2025 designed to help GLP-1 users build and retain muscle mass.

Circana’s research adds nuance that matters for brand strategy.

GLP-1 users are still outspending non-users on CPG overall. Their spending shifts away from mass and dollar stores toward club stores and e-commerce.

Convenience stores have an emerging opportunity because the channel is already built around single-serve, on-the-go, and portion-controlled formats. And a meaningful share of users, even when they stop taking the medication, hold onto some of the health-conscious behaviors they adopted while on it.

There is also a rebound dynamic worth watching.

The Cornell research found that about one-third of users stopped taking the medication during the study period. When they did, food spending returned to pre-adoption levels. Indulgent categories like candy and baked goods typically rebound within 3 to 6 months after users stop using them.

• The demand shift is real while users are on the drug. It is not necessarily permanent.

What This Means for Food and Beverage Brands

The short answer is that the brands most at risk are the ones most exposed to calorie-dense, highly processed snack categories with no clear functional story. Chips, cookies, sweet bakery items, and full-sugar beverages are the categories experiencing the steepest declines among GLP-1 households. If your core SKUs are in those aisles, you need to think about this now.

That does not mean the sky is falling on indulgence.

Barclays and Morgan Stanley estimate widespread GLP-1 adoption could lead to a 3 to 5 percent reduction in total calorie consumption across the U.S. That is meaningful, but it is not a wipeout.

Seventy-four percent of Americans say they do not plan to take these medications. The core snack market is not disappearing.

What is changing is the market’s composition.

A growing cohort of health-focused, higher-income consumers is actively shifting their baskets toward protein, fiber, hydration, and portion control. The brands that have already built a story around those attributes are well-positioned. The ones that have not need to decide whether to reformulate, reposition, or find a different lane.

The opportunity is real. SKU proliferation in high-protein, low-sugar, portion-controlled snacks has increased by an estimated 47 percent year over year since 2024. Brands that can credibly claim the protein or fiber positioning, in the right pack size, in the right channel, with a real taste payoff, are moving product.

The harder problem is for mid-market brands without the R&D budgets to reformulate or launch new lines quickly. Those brands need to be honest about where they are exposed, which customers they are losing, and whether a packaging or messaging adjustment can meaningfully help. At the same time, they figure out a longer-term product answer.

One more thing worth saying.

The consumer on a GLP-1 medication is not anti-snack. She is pro-value. Every bite needs to earn its place.

That is an opportunity for brands with a genuine nutrition story, not just a label that says “protein” on the front and has 3 grams of it.

Three Key Takeaways

1. The scale of this shift is no longer speculative. Twelve percent of U.S. adults have now used a GLP-1 drug, and 23 percent of households have at least one user. Cornell and Numerator’s purchase data confirms real, sustained declines of 10 percent or more in savory snacks, sweet bakery, and cookies within six months of adoption. Circana projects GLP-1 households will represent 35 percent of all food and beverage units sold by 2030. This is not a wellness trend you can wait out.

2. Protein, fiber, and portion control are not nice-to-haves anymore. The GLP-1 user is maximizing every calorie. Categories winning in this environment are yogurt, nutrition bars, meat snacks, fresh produce, and high-protein beverages. Brands that can credibly deliver protein, fiber, or portion discipline, and actually taste good doing it, are gaining share. Brands competing purely on indulgence without a functional dimension are losing it.

3. Channel strategy matters as much as product strategy. GLP-1 users are shifting their spending away from mass and dollar stores toward club, e-commerce, and convenience stores. The convenience channel, already built around single-serve and portion-controlled formats, is unusually well-positioned. Distribution in the right channel, paired with the right pack size, is not a detail. For this consumer cohort, it is the difference between being in the consideration set or not.

The snack aisle is not going away. But the consumer walking it is changing. The brands that figure out which job they do for someone eating 30 percent less on purpose, with a very clear sense of what every bite is worth, will be the ones still on the shelf in 2030.

That is not a small ask. But it is the right one.

Connect with Jeff at The Marketing Sage Consultancy. Interested in setting up a call? Use my calendly to schedule a time to talk. The call is free, and we can discuss your brand, marketing needs, and challenges.

Feel free to email me at jeffslater@themarketing sage.com or text 919 720 0995. Thanks for your interest in working with The Marketing Sage Consultancy.

The post GLP-1 – The New Hunger Games appeared first on The Marketing Sage.