The Shifting Basket: How GLP‑1s Are Reshaping Grocery Inventory Strategy

Introduction

What happens when 4% of the U.S. adult population changes how — and what — they eat?

Grocers are beginning to find out. As adoption of GLP‑1 weight-loss medications like Ozempic and Wegovy accelerates, their impact is showing up not just in consumer behavior, but in store inventory data and category performance.

According to Food Business News, reporting on a study conducted by Cornell University’s SC Johnson College of Business in partnership with Numerator:

• GLP‑1 prescriptions have surged more than 600% since 2019, with approximately 4% of U.S. adults now using these medications as of 2024
  
• Households with at least one GLP‑1 user reduce grocery spend by 5.5–6% within the first six months
  
• Higher-income households (earning $125K+) cut back grocery spend by nearly 9%
  

But this isn’t just about spending less — it’s about buying differently. The shrinking basket isn’t random. It’s shifting away from shelf-stable staples toward fresh, perishable, and health-driven items. For grocers and food distributors, this marks a clear turning point: Long shelf life no longer equals profitability.

From Shelf-Stable Profits to Perishable Pressure

Center-store categories like snack foods, sugary drinks, and processed pantry staples are showing consistent declines among GLP‑1 users. At the same time, sales of produce, yogurt, and fresh, nutrient-dense items are holding steady or increasing.

This is more than a product mix shift — it’s a wake-up call for inventory strategy.

For decades, grocery profitability was rooted in the stability of long shelf-life goods. With weeks or months of buffer, teams could tolerate forecast variance, overstocking, and batch-based replenishment.

But when shoppers demand fewer items, faster turnover, and fresh-first options, that safety net disappears. A shelf-stable mindset leads to stockouts, shrink, and missed margin.

Inventory Risks in the New Grocery Basket

Shorter shelf life introduces tighter margins and less room for error:

• Spoilage and shrink increase with perishable goods
  
• Replenishment cycles shorten, increasing labor demands
  
• Stockouts are harder to predict, especially during high demand
  
• Waste from over-ordering cuts directly into margin

Legacy inventory systems — built around warehouse logic and shelf-stable padding — can’t keep up with fresh-driven demand.

Grocers and distributors need a more responsive, granular, and real-time approach to store inventory management.

What Real-Time Store Inventory Enables

With a real-time store inventory system, grocery teams can:

• Run mobile cycle counts across high-turnover departments like produce, dairy, and deli
  
• Track inventory by specific location (shelf, backroom, display)
  
• Get automated alerts for expiring items or unexpected shrink
  
• Validate inventory at pick time to reduce substitutions and increase customer satisfaction
  
• Feed real-time data into forecasting and replenishment engines to adjust faster

These capabilities aren’t just nice to have — they’re critical to operating in a world where your most profitable items now expire in days, not months.

Shrinking Baskets Require Sharper Systems

Let’s step back: If 4% of the U.S. population is already reshaping grocery spend and product mix, what happens when that becomes 10%?

And if traditional pantry categories continue to lose share while fresh SKUs take center stage, what’s the cost of an inaccurate count? A missed rotation? A spoiled case of strawberries?

The bottom line is this: As shelf-stable food loses its dominance, your profit now depends on how well you manage shorter shelf life items.

Moving From Lagging to Leading Indicators

Modern store inventory systems flip the model:

This shift enables grocers and distributors to go from reacting to problems to preventing them entirely. It’s about moving from risk management to revenue optimization — especially in fresh and perishable categories.

Use Case: Fresh Food Retailer, Mid-Sized Chain

A regional fresh food retailer noticed increased demand volatility in produce and chilled prepared items. Their team:

• Deployed mobile store inventory tools for daily departmental scans
  
• Enabled real-time alerts for nearing expiry in dairy and fresh-cut
  
• Integrated inventory data directly into their replenishment system
  

Within 60 days, they reduced perishable shrink by 16% and increased pick accuracy for online orders by 22%. Those two metrics alone recouped revenue that offset basket contraction.

What to Prioritize in a Store Inventory System

If you're preparing for shorter shelf lives and leaner baskets, your inventory tools should support:

• Mobile scanning and cycle counts
  Enable staff to conduct fast, accurate counts directly from mobile devices — across departments like produce, dairy, and frozen.
  
• Real-time sync to POS, ERP, and ecommerce platforms
  Ensure inventory updates flow instantly between systems, preventing delays in fulfillment or replenishment.
  
• Item-level tracking with expiry and freshness logic
  Capture lot, batch, and expiry details — with configurable workflows to support FIFO rotation and reduce spoilage in fresh categories.
  
• Department-specific workflows
  Configure tasks, alerts, and reporting to align with how each department operates — from backroom prep to on-shelf replenishment.
  
• Configurable alerts for stock movement, misplacement, and nearing expiry
  Trigger proactive actions when inventory falls below expected levels, is scanned out of place, or is approaching expiration.
  
• Flexible integration with forecasting, WMS, and analytics tools
  Support for native replenishment modules or integration with your preferred systems — including ERP, data lake, and BI tools.

The goal isn’t to do more — it’s to waste less, stock smarter, and fulfill faster.

Final Thoughts: 

We’re entering a new chapter in grocery. Shoppers are buying fewer items. Center store is shrinking. Fresh is rising. And shelf life — once the backbone of profitability — is now a liability if you can’t move fast.

Real-time store inventory isn’t just about accuracy. It’s about keeping pace with change.

From grocers managing 3 stores to national chains balancing fresh and ambient categories, the retailers who win in this shift will be those who manage their most fragile items with their most precise tools.

OrderGrid helps teams do just that — by bringing real-time visibility, perishable-first workflows, and mobile control to every aisle.

Want to learn how we support grocers adapting to smaller baskets and fresher demands? Contact us to book a demo.