Thursday, November 05, 2026

Vistage puts you in a group of 12 to 16 owners with a Chair. Simple-Growth is one owner-run coach who finds your constraint first. Here is who each suits, what is public on cost, and six questions to ask. Checked 5 November 2026.

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.

Sunday, October 25, 2026

More people call themselves a business coach than ever before. Here's the one test that actually separates a coach who gets results from one who just talks.

Sunday, October 25, 2026

A 2024 study found SME owners lose 22% of their working week to admin and compliance. Here's the task-level AI audit that claws the time back without hiring anyone.

Sunday, October 25, 2026

Seller-initiated deals close at nearly double the rate of buyer-initiated ones. Here's why proactive selling beats waiting for inbound, and how to shift the ratio.

Sunday, October 25, 2026

The best customer-acquisition channel most SME owners ignore isn't an ad platform — it's the audience someone else already spent years building. Here's how to borrow it properly.

Sunday, October 25, 2026

Most strategic plans don't fail in June — they fail the day they're signed off, while everyone still feels confident. Here's the one-page exercise that catches the fatal flaw first.

Saturday, October 24, 2026

79% of SME owners can't make a strategic plan stick, and it's not an ambition problem. Here's the one-page fix that turns an annual plan into a system you actually use every week.

Saturday, October 24, 2026

SMB customer acquisition cost rose 18.4 percent year on year in 2025. Here's Alex Hormozi's Value Equation, and why improving your offer beats outspending a rising ad market.

Saturday, October 24, 2026

A 2026 Bluehost study found 87 percent of small business owners now use AI daily, yet only 6 percent trust it with their brand voice. Here's exactly where a business coach still earns their fee.

Saturday, October 24, 2026

Gallup found 55 percent of US business owners have no real plan for their business beyond themselves. Here's the two-week test that reveals how dependent your business really is on you.

Saturday, October 24, 2026

LinkedIn's 2026 research found 40 percent of B2B deals end in "no decision," not a loss to a rival. Here's how to build urgency into your sales process so your pipeline stops dying in silence.

Saturday, October 24, 2026

Organic reach on Instagram fell roughly 14 percent year on year in 2026, and every platform is heading the same way. Here's the channel SME owners already own that no algorithm can throttle.

Saturday, October 24, 2026

Up to 90 percent of strategies never get executed, and it's almost never the document's fault. Here's the team dysfunction actually behind it, and how to fix it before you rewrite the plan again.

Friday, October 23, 2026

Two-thirds of small business owners are raising prices in 2026. If you're in the third who won't, the real problem is probably your offer, not your price point.

Friday, October 23, 2026

Revenue was fine. Profitability growth wasn't, for the first time in a year and a half. Here's the one number to track through your own busy season so the same thing doesn't happen to you.

Friday, October 23, 2026

Just 25% of business owners have natural delegator talent. Here's the Clockwork test a good coach runs before any strategy conversation happens.