Sometimes if your patient enough, the world’s largest (and most diversified) food, beverage, and nutritional supplements company, will eventually “remix” one of your worst predictions into a real possibility again! If you’ve followed my content for long enough, you’ve seen me publicly take countless “victory laps” that essentially patted myself proudly on the back for making correct marketplace predictions. At this point, the strategy and M&A leadership at many mega CPG companies are just following my prediction playbooks at this point. But since no one has built a “tracker app” to reconcile my endless stream of predictions yet, I must stay honest and call myself out when I flat out miss judge marketplace movements. So, what was this bold prediction that I got wrong? Just over three years ago, within a piece of content analyzing the almost $6 billion acquisition of The Bountiful Company, I laid out this vision for what Nestle Health Science could look like in the 2030s. It began with explaining my base case around how Nestle CEO Mark Schneider, having professional experience in healthcare, realized that “we are a sick society” and there’s a ton of opportunity for Nestle to diversify away from slower-growing food and beverage products, and become “a health and nutrition powerhouse.”And that part has become 100% true, as Nestle has made market moves to prioritize better nutrition, improved its already market-leading positioning for today’s current “made to stock” product consumption reality, but also aligned itself for tomorrow’s consumer demand focused on personalization. Yet, this is where that personalized nutrition prediction starts going wrong...as Nestle decided to shutter (Freshly) an important piece of its personalized nutrition equation that will define the CPG industry of the future. But less than a year later, and right after Wonder Group acquired another meal delivery kit company Blue Apron, Nestle creates a strategic partnership with Wonder Group that included a $100 million investment. So, Nestle is technically back in the meal kit delivery business again, but this time with a hands-off approach that potentially has much wider potential. This strategic partnership obviously begins with Nestle earning another important foodservice revenue stream. But a $100 billion plus company doesn’t get excited over some immaterial short-term foodservice revenue…I think Nestle learned some expensive lessons from Freshly and sees a much bigger long-term opportunity with Wonder Group’s super app multichannel business model. Nestle might have the upper hand right now by owning a portion of the personalized nutrition equation that will define the CPG industry of the future, that’s only one component of the larger interconnected health personalization trend that can’t be wholly owned and will instead require strategic partnerships to unlock value. But in the meantime, Nestle is playing the moves that are available on the proverbial chess board as it hopes to play an important role in severally limit nutritional diseases in the future. It was announced a few weeks ago that Nestle would launch its first major U.S. brand in nearly three decades. Vital Pursuit is a frozen product line that looks to meet the needs of consumers taking GLP-1 medications and other individuals focusing on weight management.

FOLLOW ME ON MY SOCIAL MEDIA ACCOUNTS