Walmart Shoppers Taking Weight-Loss Drugs Are Buying Less Food, US CEO Says

Walmart has seen a decline in customers’ demand for food since the boom in Wegovy, Ozempic and other weight-loss drugs.

“We definitely do see a slight change compared to the total population, we do see a slight pullback in overall basket,” John Furner, chief executive officer of Walmart U.S., said in an interview with Bloomberg Wednesday. “Just less units, slightly less calories.”

While Furner said it’s too early to measure the full impact of the effect of appetite-suppressing drugs, Walmart is studying potential differences in shopping tendencies between people who take the drugs and those who do not, using anonymized sales data.

But there are bright spots: Walmart's Chief Financial Officer John David Rainey said in an interview with CNBC last month that customers who use weight-loss drugs “tend to spend more with us overall,” even though they buy less food.

"We're actually hoping they'll spend more on apparel as they trade down into smaller pant sizes," Rainey said.

Popular appetite-suppressing drugs like Novo Nordisk’s Wegovy and Ozempic, and Eli Lilly’s Mounjaro, work by tricking people’s “appetite hormones” into signaling that they’re full. Wegovy was approved for weight loss by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in June 2021. Ozempic and Mounjaro are approved for the management of blood sugar in adults with type 2 diabetes. Clinical trials have found, however, that people often gain back the weight they lost after stopping the drugs.

The medications have been flying off shelves, with Novo announcing that it plans to restrict sales of Wegovy through the rest of 2023 "to safeguard continuity of care," after reporting a whopping 537% increase in the drug’s sales over the past year.

Walmart is not the only company looking at the potential downstream impacts of drugs that will make its customers less hungry. The CEO of the parent company of Pringles and Cheez-It said it is studying the effect these drugs could have on dietary behaviors.

“Like everything that potentially impacts our business, we’ll look at it, study it and, if necessary, mitigate,” Steve Cahillane, the CEO of Kellanova (formerly Kellogg Co.), told Bloomberg earlier this week. 

The market for weight-loss medication does not appear to be slowing down anytime soon. Mark Purcell, a Morgan Stanley European Biopharmaceuticals analyst, wrote in a recent report that a combination of social media promotion and affordable insurance coverage could send demand skyrocketing.

“While supply constraints have capped sales growth in the near term, the global obesity market could go from a $2.4 billion category in 2022 to reach $77 billion in 2030, up from our previous estimate for a $54 billion,” Purcell said.

About 40 million people in the U.S. now have access to weight-loss drugs through their insurance plans, according to Morgan Stanley.