Heineken urges pubs to push half pints as L’Oréal targets ‘Ozempic face’

A Dutch brewer and a French beauty group, between them the owners of Amstel, Sol, Maybelline and La Roche-Posay, have now said out loud what consumer companies had mostly kept to investor footnotes: the weight-loss drug boom has reached the till. Heineken has warned British pubs and bars that drugs such as Ozempic and Wegovy could mean fewer pints poured, while L’Oréal’s chief executive told investors the same drugs are changing what people buy for their skin.

For anyone who runs a pub, the advice attached to Heineken’s warning matters more than the warning itself: sell half pints, push low- and no-alcohol beer, put small plates of food next to the glass. For shoppers, the shift is already on the shelf, where L’Oréal brands sell products meant to work alongside the loose skin that can follow rapid weight loss. A medicine developed for diabetes is now redrawing a drinks list and a skincare aisle.

What Heineken told British pubs

The presentation, sent to UK hospitality customers and revealed by Reuters, said GLP-1 medication can reduce the desire to drink alcohol, leading to “fullness and fewer serves”. It suggested the multi-pint session could become a less frequent occasion. Heineken, which also owns Strongbow cider, told the Guardian it sees “some changes in consumption behaviour” among users and will keep tracking them through 2027.

The brewer’s own research describes something subtler than abstinence. Users opt for smaller serves, lower-alcohol drinks and more premium products. “GLP-1 users are not simply replacing alcohol,” a spokesperson said. “They are becoming more purposeful in their choices.” For a landlord, that distinction is the margin. A customer who orders one good half instead of three pints is still a customer, only a smaller one.

The numbers explain the nervousness. Heineken puts beer sales in British pubs, bars and restaurants at almost £14bn in the year to February, with less than £300m of that coming from no- and low-alcohol products. If drinkers on the drugs drift toward that thin slice, it has a long way to grow before it makes up for the lost pints.

L’Oréal sells into the side effects

L’Oréal’s version of the story runs the other way: the drugs create a problem it can sell against. Nicolas Hieronimus called GLP-1s “a very important phenomenon for us” and said they were “having an impact on beauty consumption and skin care consumption in particular”. Its SkinCeuticals and Kiehl’s brands have products “designed to work alongside and complement GLP-1 and its side-effects on skin sagging”, and the group lifted its stake in Galderma, maker of the Sculptra and Restylane injectables, to 20% last December. Both companies are testing products on GLP-1 users in separate clinical trials, according to Reuters.

The evidence is still thin

Neither company has put a figure on the effect, and the industry does not agree on its size. Diageo, the Guinness maker, has told investors any impact should be manageable, and Carlsberg told Reuters its data does not support the view that weight-loss drugs are moving beer consumption. Surveys by Circana, NIQ and KAM do point to users drinking less, but those users belong to a wider turn toward moderation that began before the injections went mainstream. Heineken itself says these habits “are not unique to GLP-1 users”. AB InBev, the world’s largest brewer, listed new medications among the shifts threatening beer demand in its annual report this year, as its volumes fell 2.3%.

Heineken’s memo was written for the British on-trade, but the user base is largest in the US, where 10 million people turned to the medication last year, according to JP Morgan research. And L’Oréal hardly reads like a company under pressure. Adjusted like-for-like sales growth accelerated to 7.7% in the third quarter, its dermatological beauty division grew in double digits, and nine-month sales reached €35.33bn. The group says it will deliver another year of growth in sales and profit.

The pint has outlasted smoking bans, price rises and the alcohol-free lager fridge. Heineken’s own slide deck suggests its next rival arrives as a weekly injection.

Tags: GLP-1, Ozempic, Skincare, beer, Heineken, L'Oréal