A few weeks ago, a regular at one of my restaurants ordered her usual lunch, but barely touched it. Before leaving, she confided that she’d been on a new weight-loss “programme” since spring and was still learning her new appetite, but truly missed our food. Or the idea of it, at least.

The conversation touched on something I’ve been discussing internally with my leadership team for months. It also came up recently with a publisher friend who said she’d noticed cookbook sales softening as people were cooking less adventurous food at home. The GLP-1 effect on eating is no longer a rumour, it’s already reshaping behaviour.

Menus are changing

Supermarket shelves in London have already adapted. M&S has rolled out a “Nutrient Dense” range designed around high-protein, high-fibre meals in smaller portions. Morrisons has “Small & Balanced,” the UK’s first supermarket range explicitly labelled GLP-1-friendly. Sainsbury’s has “Small but Mighty,” Co-op has its “Good Fuel” mini-meals, and Ocado briefly ran a Weight Management aisle.

Sainsbury’s reports online searches for “high protein” are up 57 per cent year on year, and searches for “high protein ready meals” up 300 per cent. India meanwhile is embracing protein lassi, protein kulfi and even protein bhel bars.

Fast food has been on the uptake too. Shake Shack in the US launched a “Good Fit Menu” with lettuce-wrapped burgers and higher-protein options, explicitly stickered as GLP-1-friendly. Chipotle introduced a high Protein menu in December, and Starbucks has been pushing protein lattes and cold foams.

American restaurants more broadly are redesigning menus around GLP-1 diners: more protein callouts, smaller portions and macro-balanced offerings. In London, even British Bakery chain Greggs has acknowledged that customers are asking for smaller portions and clearer information.

The writing is on the walls. It’s time for the rest of us to catch up.

A UCL study put the number of UK adults on Wegovy or Mounjaro at 1.6 million in the year to early 2025, with a further 3.3 million interested in starting. Ninety-five per cent pay privately, at £150 to £200 a month. In the US, over fifteen million people are now on GLP-1s, and a Morgan Stanley survey cited widely in the UK press found 63 per cent of them eat considerably less when dining out than they used to.

Can GLP1’s change India’s culture of abundance

Then there is India. On 20 March this year, the Indian patent protecting Novo Nordisk’s semaglutide expired, and within days dozens of generics had landed from Sun Pharma, Dr Reddy’s, Zydus, Lupin and others. At prices as low as ₹900 a month, a fraction of the original. India is set to become the world’s largest producer of affordable GLP-1s.

Sitting in London and watching this unfold in the country I grew up in, I find myself unusually interested in what happens next. A dining culture built on abundance, feeding, and festivity about to meet a drug that could change everything.

Diners on GLP-1s aren’t losing their love of food, they’re just eating less of it. And the newer wave of users is doing so deliberately, taking lower carefully titrated doses, paired with lifestyle changes rather than the appetite-obliterating protocols of the early days.

Many report that their taste buds get fussier. The salt-fat-sugar loop that powers so much of the processed and ultra-processed food economy stops working on them. What still lands though, are balanced meals providing depth, flavour and real ingredients.

Users of weight loss drugs still want the company, the room, the novelty, and the notion of being looked after. Just like our regular. They’re simply ordering differently. One Reddit user wrote that their whole family had started ordering this way together, even though only one of them was on the drug, because they got to try more and nothing went to waste.

How to pivot for a world that eats less, but better

Which means restaurateurs, including me, need to approach this with the same creativity we once brought to gluten-free, vegan, and allergen diners. Half portions of popular dishes, clearly marked and fairly priced. Macros visible enough that a GLP-1 diner doesn’t have to interrogate the waiter. A protein and ingredient-led section that puts grilled fish or chicken breast at its centre. Shorter, modular tasting menus. Sharing dishes engineered so the person on the drug and the person off it can sit at the same table without either feeling out of step. Good for the GLP-1 diner and no worse for anyone else.

And a drinks list that takes ferments, soft drinks, and low and no-alcohol options seriously. Because one side-effect of these drugs is an almost total collapse of the urge to drink, and drinks, for most restaurants, are where the margin lives.

Fast-casual and QSR, built on the economics of one person eating one big plate, will feel it first and hardest. Fine dining is also exposed, because its core demographic overlaps heavily with the people who can afford £200 a month private prescriptions. The casual middle will have to adapt.

The total volume of food eaten out may shrink. The market for thoughtful dining experiences will not.

Chefs and restaurants have been in a quiet kind of denial about all this. But what used to turn up anecdotally at one table in fifty now turns up at one in ten, and once Indian generics reach the disposable-income class across large cities, that curve will steepen exponentially. The restaurants that adapt early will be the ones still full in five years.

And so they should be. Hospitality, at its best, is the art of making everyone at the table feel welcome. A guest who needs less food is no less of a guest.

Karan Gokani is a London-based chef and restaurateur who spends his time cooking, travelling and exploring what the world is eating. He loves the gym, biriyani and his frying pan. Not necessarily in that order.