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.

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When The Ordinary launched under the DECIEM Company umbrella, it felt like a small, sharply focused rebellion against the beauty category.

DECIEM was a multi-brand beauty incubator. Instead of focusing on one line, it launched multiple brands at once, all rooted in science, transparency, and in-house formulation. Its most famous brand, by far, is The Ordinary, which has become a global hit. Other DECIEM brands have included:
NIOD, Hylamide, The Chemistry Brand, and The Ordinary (by far the largest)

Instead of glossy promises, celebrity packaging, and vague claims, The Ordinary offered clear ingredient callouts, clinical-looking labels, and prices that felt almost confrontational. That mix of utility, transparency, and affordability turned what could have been a niche lab brand into a global phenomenon.

This post examines the brand and marketing strategy behind The Ordinary, sketches the founders and ownership arc, offers an estimate of 2025 volume, explains their enemy and positioning, and closes with three practical takeaways for brand builders.

Origins and the founders

DECIEM was founded in 2013 by Brandon Truaxe and Nicola Kilner.

Truaxe brought a contrarian streak and a tech-like obsession with product formulation.

He launched multiple brands at once with a stated mission to demystify beauty and to expose the industry’s markup mechanics. Nicola Kilner functioned as the operational and strategic counterpart, helping scale the organization into a multi-brand, vertically integrated operation.

The company’s early years were chaotic and dramatic, and the brand survived leadership turmoil and the founder’s tragic death.

Eventually, DECIEM drew strategic investment, and in 2024, the Estée Lauder Companies completed the acquisition of the group. These milestones matter because they show how a disruptive positioning can be institutionalized at scale.

What makes The Ordinary unique: the Positioning

The Ordinary appears to compete on price and clinical efficacy.

That is correct but incomplete.

The deeper strategic insight is that The Ordinary used authenticity and transparency as an organizing brand idea.

Rather than framing competitors as using impure ingredients, The Ordinary framed the broader industry as guilty of obfuscation, hyperbolic claims, and cosmetic storytelling that hid the fundamental value proposition.

In short, their enemy was not chemistry.

Their enemy was inauthentic marketing and the category’s habit of selling beauty via aspiration rather than clear information.

The Ordinary inverted that script. It presented straightforward typography, plain bottles, and ingredient-first names to signal honesty and to empower the consumer with knowledge rather than persuasion.

This positioning created three seismic advantages.

• First, it lowered purchase friction by making product choice easier.
• Second, it built trust among skincare enthusiasts who value measurable actives.
• Third, it turned the brand into a conversation starter for influencers, editors, and online communities who could discuss percentages and compatibility rather than vague benefit claims.

Packaging and visual system

Packaging is where strategy meets signals.

The Ordinary’s lab-white boxes, clinical typography, and minimal labeling communicate science and seriousness.

That aesthetic also serves as visual shorthand on crowded shelves and small screens. While other brands fight for attention with color and photography, The Ordinary relies on legibility and a neutral grid.

The minimalism performs double duty. It reinforces the ingredient-first messaging, and it reduces perceived overhead, making price-point claims feel credible.

The simplicity is not accidental.

It is a deliberate brand lever that signals utility, positions the product alongside clinical or pharmacy brands, and streamlines content generation for social channels.

Distribution and channels

The Ordinary built its initial momentum through direct-to-consumer channels and DECIEM’s own stores.

As demand scaled, it expanded into mass and specialty retail partners, including major beauty and drugstore channels. Strategic retail placements amplified reach while keeping the brand accessible.

The combination of DTC and broad retail availability helped the brand control storytelling online while benefiting from discoverability in physical stores

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2025 volume and scale (estimate)

Estimating volume for a private business that a public conglomerate now owns requires caution.

Public-facing sales data for the brand alone is scarce. Still, marketplace and online sales trackers suggest The Ordinary’s own e-commerce business generated north of hundreds of millions in annual gross merchandise value in recent years.

Conservative projections based on baseline and modest growth expectations place 2025 online volume in the low double-digit percentage increase range versus the prior year.

Put differently, the company operates at an accurate mass-market scale rather than at boutique, niche levels, and drives hundreds of millions in sales across channels.

That fact explains why large strategic investors were willing to consolidate ownership.

Competitors and category dynamics

The Ordinary’s success invited an immediate wave of lookalikes.

Brands such as The Inkey List, Good Molecules, Versed, and established players like Paula’s Choice and CeraVe compete on transparency, price, and ingredient clarity.

Each competitor takes a different angle.

Some focus on more explicit consumer guidance and ritualization. Others emphasize dermatologist endorsement and distribution in mass pharmacy channels. The competitive set pushed the category toward a new norm in which ingredient disclosure, clinical claims, and accessible price points are baseline expectations.

How social media built the brand

Social platforms accelerated The Ordinary’s rise because the brand’s product architecture is inherently shareable.

Single-ingredient narratives and measurable concentrations give creators content hooks that are easy to explain and compare.

The brand leaned into educational content, user-generated reviews, and community debate.

Forums and social networks turned serums into conversation topics and earned coverage from editors and influencers, amplifying that effect. The Ordinary’s minimal packaging helped here, too.

It reads well in short-form video and in editorial close-ups, and the brand leaned into community Q&A rather than aspirational celebrity storytelling.

Risks and limitations

The Ordinary’s stripped-back identity is not a silver bullet.

Minimal packaging can be perceived as clinical or austere depending on the audience. The ingredient-first approach can intimidate beginners who want a guided routine. Increased competition has led to price compression and a crowded aisle of similar propositions. Finally, scale brings operational complexity.

A brand built on radical transparency must maintain control over its supply chain and consistent product quality to avoid betraying the trust that underpins its positioning.

Three learnings for brand builders

1. Build an enemy you can own. The Ordinary did not merely oppose high prices. It opposed obfuscatory marketing. That choice allowed the brand to create a clear cultural contrast with incumbents and appeal to consumers who wanted an honest alternative.
2. Make your product architecture the content engine. When the product itself supplies simple, repeatable talking points, the community will do your creative work. The Ordinary’s ingredient-first naming convention turned every product into a content module that creators could explain, compare, and recommend.
3. Design for clarity and context. Minimal packaging does more than look good. It communicates positioning, reduces perceived overhead, and optimizes for the small-screen attention economy. But clarity must be matched with education. If your product signals expertise, provide the how-to education to make that expertise usable for customers.

The Ordinary is Extraordinary Because of Discipline

The Ordinary is a modern case study in how a coherent idea, executed consistently across product, packaging, price, and community, can rewire a category.

It did not win because it offered a discount. It won because it made honesty and ingredient literacy into a brand and a movement.

For marketers, the lesson is simple.

A disciplined enemy, a product truth that informs content, and a visual system that signals that truth can become the kernel of a powerful, scalable brand.

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 Minimalist Skincare Revolution: The Ordinary’s Formula for Market Domination appeared first on The Marketing Sage.

I’ve been in a lot of packaging reviews lately—brands at every stage, from scrappy startups to mid-sized companies trying to grow their retail footprint. The categories are different. The products are different. The founders are different.

The problem is always the same.

The front panel is trying to do too much.

I get it. You’ve poured everything into this product. You know every ingredient, every benefit, every reason someone should choose you over the twelve other options on the shelf. You want the package to say it all. But the shopper isn’t reading. They’re moving. And you have about one second, maybe two, to stop them.

One second is not a brochure. It’s a billboard.

The Shopper’s Brain Is Already Full

Walk into any grocery store and pay attention to what’s happening. People are checking their phones. They’re thinking about dinner. They’re deciding whether to grab something else from the next aisle. The cognitive bandwidth available to your package in that moment is almost zero.

This is not the moment to communicate eight things. It’s the moment to communicate one thing clearly enough for it to register.

When I work with brands on front-panel design, I push them toward a simple framework: tell me the product form, one key benefit, and the flavor or variety. That’s it. Three things. Often two is better.

Product form: What is this? A chip, a bar, a drink, a sauce?

Key benefit: Why does it matter? Not seventeen reasons. One. The one that makes your brand different from everyone else in the category.

Flavor or variety: Spicy Mayo. Sparkling Ginger. Tangy Tomato. This sounds obvious, but it gets buried all the time, and people need to know what it will taste like right away.

If a shopper can read those three things in one glance and understand what they’re looking at, you’re in good shape. If they have to work for it, you’ve already lost them.

The Badge Trap

Here’s where things go sideways. Someone on the team, sometimes a founder, sometimes a salesperson preparing for a retail pitch, starts adding badges.

Non-GMO. Gluten-free. Vegan. Keto-friendly. Woman-owned. B Corp certified. Made in small batches. No artificial flavors. Not tested on animals. Regenerative. Keto-friendly. Paleo-inspired.

Each of those things may be core to the brand.

Each of them matters to some shopper somewhere.

But piling them onto the front panel doesn’t make the package more compelling. It makes it harder to read. It creates visual noise that competes with the message you actually need to land.

I call this the badge trap. Brands use certifications and claims as a proxy for having a clear positioning. If we can’t explain why we’re different in one sentence, maybe we can convince people with a collection of stamps. It doesn’t work that way.

Badges belong on the back of the pack. The shopper who cares about your Non-GMO certification will look for it once they’ve already decided to pick up the product. Your job on the front panel is to get them to pick it up.

Two Packages. Same Product. Completely Different Conversation.

The image of the fusilli pasta is a hypothetical, but it captures something I see in real packaging reviews every week.

Remember, this isn’t a design exercise; this is a messaging challenge first.

Two versions of Heirloom Pasta, side by side on a shelf. Same brand. Same product. Very different front panels.

In 2 seconds, I get the message from the box on the right. I’d need a weekend to read the box on the left.

The package on the left is working very hard. Count the claims: heirloom grains, 17g protein per serving, good source of fiber, non-GMO, made the traditional way, slow-dried for better texture and taste, 100% heirloom grains, no artificial anything, great taste that’s good for you and the planet, supporting sustainable farms, crafted in small batches, bronze cut for superior sauce grip. That’s before you get to the Non-GMO Project Verified badge in the corner and the “New Look!” callout at the top.

Every one of those claims is true. Several of them are genuinely interesting. But together, they create a package that requires a shopper to slow down, scan, prioritize, and decide what matters. Most shoppers won’t do that. They’ll move on.

Now look at the package on the right. Brand name. Product type. Variety. One supporting line. A window showing the pasta.

That’s it. And it’s enough. At a glance, you know exactly what you’re holding and what the brand believes is worth saying about it. Heirloom grain pasta. If that’s what you’re looking for, you’ve found it.

The busy package says: “Here are 15 reasons to buy me.” The simple package is saying: here’s exactly what I am. If that matters to you, pick me up.

The more claims you add, the less any single claim lands. Simplicity doesn’t remove meaning. It amplifies the meaning that matters most.

What Clarity Actually Looks Like

Think about the brands that cut through on the shelf. The ones that are easy to find, easy to understand, easy to hand to someone else, and explain.

They made a choice. One thing, said clearly, reinforced by the design. The color, the typography, the imagery, the hierarchy, all of it points in the same direction. There’s no visual tug-of-war between the benefit claim, the certification badge, the flavor callout, and the origin story, all compressed into four words.

That clarity is not an accident. It is the result of someone making a hard decision about what not to say.

When I’m in a packaging review and a brand can’t tell me their single key benefit without a five-minute explanation, that’s a positioning problem, not a design problem. The package is a symptom. The confusion started earlier, before anyone opened a design file.

Getting to one clear benefit requires being honest about what actually makes you different in the category your customer is shopping, not the category you wish you were in. That’s a harder conversation than picking a font. But it’s the conversation that determines whether the package works.

The Back Panel Exists for a Reason

Everything that doesn’t belong on the front panel has a home. The back panel, the side panel, the inside of the lid, and the QR code that links to your full brand story. These are the places for nuance, credentials, the founder’s letter, and the ingredient glossary.

A shopper who has already picked up your product and is reading the back is a different person from the one passing your product on the shelf. They’re interested. They have a moment. Give them everything then.

But you have to earn that moment first. The front panel earns it.

I’ve seen beautifully designed back panels on products that never got picked up because the front panel couldn’t do its job. All of that detail, all of that care, wasted because the first impression didn’t land.

Think of the front panel as the invitation. You’re not trying to give someone the whole party on the doorstep. You’re trying to get them inside.

Three Key Takeaways

1. You have one job on the front panel, and it is not education. It is getting noticed in the category.

The front panel is a communication tool with a single purpose: to stop the shopper, help them understand what they’re holding, and give them a reason to flip it over or put it in the cart. That’s the whole job. The brands that struggle on the shelf are usually the ones that have turned the front panel into a lecture. Teach later. Connect first.

2. If you can’t name your one key benefit without a qualifier, you don’t have a benefit yet.

“We’re kind of like X, but also Y, and we appeal to people who care about Z” is not a benefit. It’s a positioning problem dressed up as a feature list. Before you finalize your front panel, you should be able to say, in one short sentence, what makes your product different from everything else next to it. If you can’t do that, go back to the previous strategy before going to the printer.

3. Badges signal insecurity, not quality.

Certifications and claims have real value in the right place. On the back panel, they reassure the committed shopper. On the front panel, crowded together, they read as noise. The implicit message of eight badges is that you don’t trust one strong idea to do the work. The shopper picks up on that. Move what belongs on the back to the back, and let the front do what only the front can do.

The best packaging I’ve seen lately is the packaging that knows what it isn’t trying to say. That’s the discipline that separates the brands that cut through from the ones that crowd themselves out.

The front panel is not a conversation. It’s a first impression. Make it count.

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

Would you like to read some testimonials about my work? Click here.

If you want to learn more about my new offering, The Trusted Advisor Board, click here for details. 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 The Front Panel Has One Job. Don’t Give It Eight. appeared first on The Marketing Sage.