The surging popularity of hunger-suppressing weight-loss jabs, like Ozempic and Mounjaro, is having a slimming effect on restaurant menus.
The “grand tradition” of British cuisine has always favoured “big roasts, hearty pies and desserts that require a nap after consumption”, said The Independent, but the recent influx of customers with “slimmer waistlines” and “dramatically reduced appetites” is pushing restaurateurs to offer lighter, more “Ozempic-friendly” dishes.
‘Skinny-slice puddings’
At first, the restaurant sector worried that the growing availability of weight-loss jabs would mean fewer customers through their doors. Instead, the same numbers are coming but they’re arriving less hungry.
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It started in the US first. As far back as March 2023, restaurants began changing menus and cutting portions for the “Ozempic crowd”, said the New York Post. Diners were “suddenly failing miserably” to finish their meals.
Now, in the UK, some of “the most in-demand establishments” are reporting a “worrying dip” in profits, as diners taking the “skinny jab” just order a starter or a small plate, said the Daily Mail. According to a survey by Morgan Stanley, 63% of people on Ozempic order considerably less when dining out than they would have done before they were prescribed the drug.
Top chefs are trying to “cater to the fat-jab generation”, said The Times. A dish of asparagus spears “draped with lardo” is “reconfigured” so each spear is “individually wrapped” to make it easier for less hungry diners to share. And “skinny-slice puddings” – a half-portion of chocolate tart or a single scoop of sorbet – are increasingly the norm.
But people on weight-loss jabs tend also to have “reduced cravings for alcohol”, said The Independent, and this “side effect” is even more concerning than “a few hardly touched mains” because alcohol sales are one of the biggest money makers, often “propping up” a restaurant’s slim profit margins on food.
Adapt or ‘fall behind’
Restaurants have “always been about more than food”. We go to them to “socialise, celebrate and conduct business”, too. But when the food becomes a “mere accessory”, the financial model of the industry “begins to wobble”.
This isn’t “just a short-lived trend”: forecasters say the weight-loss drug market will be worth $105 billion (£79 billion) by 2030. Restaurants will need to adapt or “fall behind”, and this means prices may rise and menus may become more flexible. The “traditional three-course dining experience” could soon become as “outdated as smoking sections”.
For now, weight-loss jabs are a “rich person’s drug”, so it’s the “more upmarket” restaurants that are affected, said The Times. But, as injectable weight-loss medication “becomes more widely used, as it inevitably will”, mid-market chains and fast-food shops will be “next in the firing line”. Does anyone fancy “going halves on a Chicken McNugget”?
