Wednesday, November 04, 2026

Rocket Lab began in New Zealand and is now headquartered in Long Beach, California. Three source-linked lessons in outside thinking for US business owners, plus a five-question blind-spot test.

Your sales team didn't lose that account. Your customer didn't switch to a cheaper brand down the aisle. They just started eating less — and there's a good chance nobody in your business has put that into a single planning meeting this year.

New data from McKinsey's State of Grocery North America 2026 report — based on a March 2026 survey of nearly 5,000 grocery shoppers and an April 2026 survey of more than 40 grocery executives across the US and Canada — puts a number on something FMCG and SME owners have been feeling without being able to name it: 16% of grocery shopping households now report someone in the home is currently using a GLP-1 medication (Ozempic, Wegovy, Mounjaro and similar), with another 7% reporting past use. Among households currently using these medications, 48% say they're buying smaller portions and 46% say they're buying fewer snacks and indulgent items.

That's not a marketing problem, a pricing problem, or a private label problem. It's a straight reduction in how much of your category actually gets eaten — and most ranges were built and priced for a market that's already shifted underneath them.

Why Your Range Planning Is Still Fighting the Wrong War

When sales go soft, most owners run the same three checks: pricing, competitors, marketing spend. All reasonable. All can miss the real story entirely.

Grocery's own decision-makers are already responding to what the data shows. According to McKinsey's State of Grocery North America 2026 report, close to 90% of grocery executives expect to expand high-protein shelf space over the next two to three years — not because protein is a passing trend, but because it's where a genuinely changed shopper is spending. Units per trip fell across nearly every retail channel in the 12 months to June 2026, and over half of shoppers report cutting back specifically on impulse purchases — the exact category most exposed to reduced appetite.

If your last range review didn't ask "has consumption itself changed," it wasn't a full review. It was a pricing exercise wearing a strategy hat.

The Appetite Audit: A Three-Step Range Check

Kevin runs this framework with every FMCG and SME client before a range or NPD decision goes to market:

1. Exposure Check. List every SKU and mark which sit in the categories most exposed to reduced consumption — snacks, large-format packs, indulgent or "treat" positioning. These are the lines most likely to be quietly losing volume for reasons that have nothing to do with your marketing.

2. Format Response. Test smaller pack sizes and portion formats against your current best-sellers. A shopper eating less isn't choosing to abandon your brand — they're choosing the format that matches how much they actually want now.

3. Category Reallocation. Shift a defined share of your NPD pipeline and shelf-space negotiation toward where consumption is genuinely growing: fresh, protein-forward, and wellness-adjacent lines. Don't wait for the retailer to tell you; bring the data to them first.

"Kevin has some amazing ideas around marketing, things we would have never thought of ourselves. He also helped us through the process of getting into supermarkets. He has gone above and beyond what he needed to!"

— Amy Nixon, Icehouse Coaching Programme

The Execution Gap

Most owners who see this data will nod, agree it's real, and change nothing for another two quarters. Not because they don't believe it — because there's no system forcing the question onto the agenda. Range reviews happen annually, GLP-1 usage keeps climbing month on month, and by the time it shows up as a clear sales trend, a competitor with a smaller-format or higher-protein alternative has already taken the shelf space.

The real obstacle usually isn't insight. It's sequencing: no owner has built "consumption shift" into their regular planning cadence, so it only gets attention once it's already cost them a quarter of flat or falling volume. That's exactly the kind of system gap coaching exists to close — not by telling you what to think, but by building the cadence that makes sure you ask the right question before the market answers it for you.

Quick Wins

Three things you can do this week, before a full range review:

  • Pull your last 12 months of unit sales by SKU and flag anything in a snack, indulgent, or large-format line that's down on units even where dollar sales held or grew.
  • Ask your top three retail buyers whether they're seeing category-level softness beyond your own brand — it tells you whether this is a you problem or a category problem.
  • Check your smallest current pack size against what a GLP-1-adjacent shopper would actually want. If your smallest format is still built for a bigger appetite, you're already behind.

Key Takeaways

  • 16% of grocery households now include a current GLP-1 medication user, with another 7% having used one previously, per McKinsey's State of Grocery North America 2026 report.
  • Among current users, 48% buy smaller portions and 46% buy fewer snack or indulgent items — a genuine consumption shift, not a pricing or loyalty issue.
  • Nearly 90% of grocery executives expect to expand high-protein shelf space over the next two to three years in direct response.
  • Run the Appetite Audit — exposure check, format response, category reallocation — before your next range or NPD decision.
  • Build consumption-shift review into your regular planning cadence, not just your annual range review.

If your range hasn't been stress-tested against this shift, that's the conversation worth having before your next planning cycle.

...and you become the owner who spots the shift in your range before the shelf does.

Wednesday, October 21, 2026

49% of business owners question monthly whether running the business is worth it, a US survey found. Here's what changes when someone else is asking that question with you.

Wednesday, October 21, 2026

Nearly half of NZ SME owners are planning Christmas trading changes, MYOB research found, and most of it is a discount. Here's how to build memory before you build the offer.

Wednesday, October 21, 2026

46% of New Zealand business owners aren't paying themselves, Xero research found. Here's the Profit First fix that changes the order money moves through your business, not the hours you work.

Wednesday, October 21, 2026

The share of businesses reporting serious dead stock has doubled since 2024, new research found. Here's why rising revenue can still mean tightening cash, and the three numbers that catch it early.

Wednesday, October 21, 2026

42% of business owners named efficiency their top 2026 priority, a US survey found. Here's Michalowicz's Clockwork system for building a business that doesn't need you in every decision.

Wednesday, October 21, 2026

B2B win rates fell to 19-21% in 2025. Here's why a quiet Q4 pipeline is usually a budget deadline in disguise, and the three moves that use it instead of waiting for January.

Tuesday, October 20, 2026

Chemical and industrial distributors rarely have a product problem. Here is how to find the real constraint, escape the price war and build a 90-day plan.

Tuesday, October 20, 2026

97% of small business owners believe branding matters to their success — only 18% have an actual strategy for it. Here is the 3-question Brand Key test that closes the gap without a rebrand.

Tuesday, October 20, 2026

Roughly 90 percent of companies never achieve sustained profitable growth. Here's Jim Collins' Hedgehog Concept for telling which growth opportunities are actually worth chasing.

Tuesday, October 20, 2026

68 percent of US Google searches now end with no click at all. Here's what that means for small business marketing, and the fix that doesn't depend on getting the click back.

Tuesday, October 20, 2026

Most strategic plans are tactics with better formatting. Here's the one-sentence test, borrowed from Sinek's Golden Circle, that tells you if yours has a real why behind it.

Tuesday, October 20, 2026

A private, unwritten goal succeeds about 35 percent of the time. One with a weekly accountability check-in succeeds more than 70 percent of the time. Here's why that gap exists.

Tuesday, October 20, 2026

Roughly 65 percent of small businesses are tied so closely to their owner they'd struggle to run without them. Here's Gerber's E-Myth framework for finally getting out of the technician's chair.

Tuesday, October 20, 2026

42 percent of B2B businesses do nothing proactive during the pre-Christmas slowdown. Here's what the ones who keep selling do differently, and why January rewards them for it.

Monday, October 19, 2026

Is Vistage worth it? A fair, source-linked look at what peer advisory groups offer US business owners, a checklist for deciding, and how one-on-one coaching differs.