The Shift from Malls to Mixed-Use Developments: What Billionaires Are Investing In
- Apr 15
- 25 min read
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Why Billionaires Aren’t Building Malls Anymore (and What They’re Building Instead)
Can ClassPass Go Public While Studio Owners Revolt?
Jan 18, 2026
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Why Luxury Left the Mall and Moved Into Private ClubsWhen Saks filed for Chapter 11, something clicked for me. Not because luxury retail is “dying”, we’ve heard that headline before, but because it confirmed a quieter truth we’ve all been feeling: malls didn’t just lose relevance, they lost desire.
They stopped being places people chose. The places we’d meet friends, wander, kill time, try on versions of ourselves. Instead, they became places people tolerated. In and out. Errands, not experiences.
And culture doesn’t live where people feel rushed, overstimulated, or invisible.
So culture left.
It didn’t disappear. It relocated. Which is why Target quietly becoming a wellness and beauty destination actually makes perfect sense. Target didn’t try to be luxury. It tried to be where life already happens. Clean beauty. Supplements. Skincare. Little rituals you toss in the cart without friction. Target isn’t replacing Bergdorf. It’s replacing the mall. That’s the difference.
And this arc isn’t new. Department stores have been fading for decades. Before Barneys. Before Lord & Taylor. Before Bon-Ton. Before Sears. Even before that, there was Marshall Field’s. A cultural institution, not just a retailer. Eventually consolidated, diluted, erased.
What’s fascinating is that beauty never followed fashion down with it. Beauty slipped sideways. Into specialty retail. Into boutiques. Into gyms, studios, medspas, clinics, locker rooms, and now wellness aisles. Because beauty isn’t seasonal. It’s habitual. You don’t need a mall to buy a serum. You need trust, education, and five good minutes with a mirror.
And yet, here’s the gap no one is talking about loudly enough: the U.S. still doesn’t have a true high-end beauty retail experience. We have mass. We have “luxury-adjacent.” What we don’t have is a calm, editorial, impeccably curated beauty destination that feels like a Bergdorf floor, but entirely dedicated to beauty. (That’s why I keep whispering about Mecca.)
Now here’s where it gets spicy.
As department stores shrink, third spaces are stepping in to control more of the consumer wallet. Not just attention. Spend.
Private clubs. Boutique fitness. Wellness studios. These spaces aren’t just absorbing culture, they’re monetizing it more intelligently. When you trust a place with your body, your time, your nervous system, and your social life, buying products from that space doesn’t feel like shopping. It feels like alignment.
This is why Soho House and Equinox aren’t just selling access anymore (and yes, we all know Soho House lost some of its cool when it went mass-tige). They’ve become taste-makers and trust engines. And trust converts better than advertising ever did. A candle, supplement, skincare product, or uniform sold inside a trusted third space will outperform a department store shelf every single time. Endorphins beat escalators. Every time.
Here’s the hot take most people won’t say out loud: department stores didn’t lose to e-commerce. They lost to belonging. Amazon didn’t kill Saks. Community did. When people stopped needing stores as social spaces, the stores that didn’t evolve into something relational became irrelevant.
And honestly, I think the next great retail brands won’t call themselves retailers at all. They’ll be clubs, studios, clinics, and communities that happen to sell things. The transaction will feel secondary. Almost invisible. That’s exactly why it will scale.
And boutique fitness is wildly underrated in this shift. Studios are habitual. Two to five times a week. High trust. High recommendation velocity. They’re already showrooms with heart rates. Expect more private-label products, tighter brand collaborations, and serious wallet share quietly moving from malls to locker rooms.
The throughline in all of this is simple: retail doesn’t die when people stop spending. It dies when it stops reflecting how people live. Beauty survived because it stayed intimate and ritual-driven. Third spaces are winning because they host people, not just transactions.
The future of retail isn’t about where you shop. It’s about where you belong.
And the brands smart enough to embed themselves inside belonging, instead of chasing square footage, are about to own the next decade quietly, profitably, and with real cultural gravity.
Come Sit With Us: The 2% Club Takes New YorkNew York, consider this your soft launch into Wellness Week by The 2% Club. Not a conference. Not a brand grab bag. This is a curated, come-as-you-are week where movement, money, and meaningful conversation actually overlap.
Think intimate rooms, sharp minds, strong bodies, and the kind of energy that makes you leave feeling clearer, calmer, and more connected.
We’re kicking things off with a Fireside Investing Chat on Jan 29 for real talk on capital, confidence, and how women actually build wealth, followed by sweat sessions at Physique57 (only 2 spots remaining) on Jan 29 and NRTHRN Strong on Jan 30 (already waitlist only).
If you’ve been craving community that feels both high-caliber and human, this week is for you. Come for one event or move through the full arc. Either way, you’ll want a seat.
Can ClassPass IPO If the Industry Is Protesting It?ClassPass’s current identity crisis only makes sense when you remember what it was originally built to do.
Before it lived under Playlist. Before platform ambition. Before private-equity polish. It ran on a generous idea:Expand the pie.Make movement more accessible.Help people experiment before committing.Help studios meet customers they would not otherwise reach.
It was a gateway drug to wellness. That framing mattered. It created goodwill, momentum, and cultural relevance in an industry that runs on trust as much as treadmills.
Somewhere along the way, that generosity thinned out.
What was once framed as exposure slowly started to feel like extraction.
Today, many boutique fitness owners don’t talk about ClassPass as a growth channel. They are actively revolting. Spend five minutes on social media and you will see studio owners not so quietly airing grievances.
This is not just industry chatter.It is a reputational problem.
When your supply side is more than a little frustrated, it erodes the very stability public markets look for.
On the consumer side, the drift shows up differently.
Beauty was meant to be the natural adjacency. From a consumer perspective, it was an epic miss.
Instead of tightening the thesis, the company widened the map. Movies. Concerts. Experiences.
At a certain point, expansion stops reading like vision and starts reading like uncertainty. Wellness, unlike entertainment, depends on coherence. People do not want everything. They want the right things, curated with intent. When the platform stretches too far, it stops feeling like a guide and starts feeling like a directory.
Which is what makes the acquisition of EGYM both logical and confusing.
If Playlist is trying to build a true fitness operating system, the deal makes sense. Hardware. Data. Corporate wellness distribution. A deeper grip on how people actually move over time. That is a serious infrastructure play.
But infrastructure implies commitment.
You do not build an operating system for wellness while simultaneously flirting with movie theaters.
If the goal is to be all-in on fitness and health, EGYM is a statement.If the goal is to be a broad tech marketplace for anything experiential, EGYM feels tangential at best.
This is where the comparison to Peloton becomes instructive.
Peloton spent years straddling identities, unsure whether it was a hardware company, a media company, or a lifestyle brand. Playlist now faces its own version of that fork.
Are they a wellness company, rooted in industry expertise and cultural authority?Or a technology company, optimizing supply and demand across whatever categories happen to book well?
Both are defensible. Trying to be both is where things get messy.
If Playlist wants a real path back to the public markets, the work ahead is less about scale and more about clarity.
Investors will want predictable revenue. Disciplined unit economics. A flywheel that compounds without alienating the studios that make the platform viable.
But the more interesting test is qualitative.
Does the company actually understand where wellness is going next?
That kind of insight does not come from spreadsheets alone. It comes from operators, founders, and next-gen leaders who live inside the industry and feel its shifts in real time.
Without that perspective, Playlist risks building something very large, very sophisticated, and slightly out of sync with the moment it is trying to own.
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Part II: If Department Stores Are Dying, What Happens When Third Spaces Start Selling?If Part I was about why malls lost cultural relevance, this is about who’s quietly picking up the spend.
If department stores were built around volume and visibility, third-space retail will be built around context and conversion. Not more product. Better placement. Not more choice. More confidence.
This isn’t about turning studios or clubs into mini Sephoras. That misses the point.
What’s coming next is quieter. More embedded. And much more powerful.
Retail won’t be displayed. It will be absorbed.
In third spaces, you won’t “shop.” You’ll notice.
The skincare on the locker-room counter is what instructors actually use.The supplements at checkout align with the class you just took.The apparel isn’t seasonal merch. It’s a uniform.
Everything for sale will feel like a natural extension of the experience you just had. If it doesn’t belong inside the ritual, it won’t belong in the space.
First, curation gets ruthless, and that’s the advantage. Department stores struggled because they were built on abundance. Third spaces win because they’re built on edit.
Expect:
5–15 SKUs, not 500
One hero brand per category
Products chosen for outcomes, not trends
This is conviction-led retail. Fewer brands. Higher trust. Stronger conversion. When someone buys, they’re not guessing. They’re opting in.
And ironically, this restraint is what makes it feel luxurious again. Calm. Intentional. Considered.
Second, services become the real storefront, because in third spaces, the service is the sales funnel.
A facial introduces the skincare line.A recovery session introduces the supplement stack.A trainer introduces the footwear or compression wear.
Education happens through experience, not signage. The product is offered as a continuation, not a pitch.
You don’t buy because you were persuaded.You buy because you already felt the result.
Third, private label quietly moves to the center. Once a third space understands what its members actually use and repurchase, private label stops being risky and starts being obvious.
Expect:
Studio-branded skincare and recovery products
Club-branded scent, home goods, or uniforms
Apparel that signals membership, not fashion
Not everything will be private label, but the most successful spaces will own the pieces of the ritual that matter most. Higher margin. Deeper loyalty. Stronger identity.
This isn’t about becoming a brand house overnight. It’s about owning the essentials.
Finally, retail becomes a perk, not a push. One of the biggest shifts: retail will feel exclusive, not promotional.
Members-only drops.Limited runs tied to seasons or events.Products you can’t buy unless you belong.
Retail becomes a benefit of participation, not a revenue grab. Scarcity does the selling.
What brands need to understand right now:
Third spaces care less about your follower count or launch hype (although that naturally helps). They care more about:
Does this product integrate naturally into the experience?
Does it solve a repeat, real problem?
Does it align with the values and aesthetic of the space?
The pitch shifts from “we want distribution” to “we want integration.”
Fewer doors. Better doors.
Why this works financially:
Third spaces already have what traditional retail lost:
High-frequency visitation
Built-in trust
Low CAC
Long-term relationships
Retail becomes incremental revenue layered onto an already-engaged audience. No billboards. No markdown cycles. No chasing traffic.
It’s quieter. And far more profitable.
The real shift…
This isn’t about gyms selling candles or clubs selling skincare. It’s about retail moving closer to the body, the routine, and the relationship.
Department stores asked: What can we sell you today?Third spaces ask: How do you live, and how can we support that?
The future of retail won’t look loud or obvious.It will look embedded. Curated. Trust-led.
And the brands and spaces that get this right won’t just sell more product.They’ll own more of the customer’s life.
Cheers to my forever obsession with Marshall Fields (Chicago girl forever), my constant battle with ClassPass (no rebranding to Playlist doesn’t solve a single problem), and my excitement for New York so soon!
All the best,
Rachel & WGV Team
Do you know someone who would benefit from being part of this community? Simply forward this email to them and share the link below to join our list!
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Discussion about this post
What you say about the malls makes so much sense to me. The idea of having all the products your talking about in the wellness spaces, our communities is thebrilliant!
Week after week I learn so much from this substack!
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I Passed on Investing In A Brand I'm Still Obsessed With
The Most Powerful Nutrition Advice Isn’t About Food
Jan 25, 2026
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I Passed On a Brand I’m Still Obsessed WithA few months ago, I passed on investing in a skincare brand I’m still completely obsessed with.
That sentence alone tells you how hard the no was.
I still buy the products monthly. They’re beautiful. They feel incredible on my skin. The science is real, proven, and thoughtfully developed. The founder is a true creative force. She’s been in the beauty world longer than I’ve been alive. She has credibility. Respect. A loyal following that actually listens.
On paper and in person, it had the IT factor.
And I still said no.
Those are the hardest ones.
Not the obvious passes. Not the “this doesn’t fit our thesis” kind. The ones where your heart is fully in and your brain has to pull the emergency brake.
Here’s the part founders don’t hear enough: This wasn’t personal. It was structural.
The founder needed a COO. An executor. Someone to translate vision into systems, timelines, and tradeoffs. That wasn’t her lane. And more importantly, she didn’t yet fully see that it wasn’t her lane.
That level of self-awareness is brutal. It asks you to separate your identity from the company you birthed. To admit that being the magic is not the same as running the machine.
When you’re building a business, you are not building a brand around yourself. You are building something that has to grow, scale, and survive beyond you. Those are different muscles.
I see this pattern constantly in beauty.
Founders are brilliant. Creative. Tastemakers. Often the reason the brand exists at all. They build cult followings. They understand product and storytelling on a cellular level (yes, pun intended).
But execution? Operations? Margin math? Channel discipline? That’s a different craft.
I only half-joke that we need speed dating between beauty founders and former McKinsey consultants. Pair them up. Send them into the business world together.
So why did I pass, really?
I needed more specificity on margins. Not “we’ll improve them over time,” but how. Where. At what scale. Under what assumptions.
I needed a clearer growth strategy. Not just ambition, but sequencing. Getting into Sephora is not the same thing as building a business. Retail is an amplifier, not a strategy.
Instagram engagement is down across the board. CAC is harder. Discovery is fractured. Attention is expensive. So the question isn’t “where are you sold,” it’s “how are you actually growing.”
What’s driving repeat? What’s increasing LTV? What channels are you testing now so you’re not panicking later? What breaks if growth slows for six months?
These aren’t gotcha questions. They’re survival questions.
And this is the uncomfortable truth for founders:A beautiful product is table stakes.A compelling story is necessary.A charismatic founder is powerful.
None of them replace a plan.
The brands that win long-term are the ones that marry magic with mechanics. Vision with execution. Creativity with constraint.
If you’re a founder reading this, here’s the takeaway I actually want you to have:
Do an honest audit of your strengths. Not the aspirational version. The real one. Ask yourself what you do better than almost anyone, and where the company would genuinely benefit from someone else in the room.
Build your business around profitability and durability, not just applause and placement.
And remember this too: Sometimes a no is not a rejection of the brand. It’s a recognition of what the brand still needs to become investable. I have passed on brands before that when they made the necessary adjustments and came back, I then invested.
I still love that skincare line. I still believe in the founder. I’ll probably keep buying it.
But belief and capital are not the same thing.
And learning the difference might be one of the most important lessons in building something that actually lasts.
The Food Pyramid Didn’t Change Our Health. It Changed the Economy of Food.The food pyramid changing isn’t interesting because it tells people to eat differently.
It’s interesting because it quietly decides what we’re allowed to buy without guilt and what companies are allowed to sell at scale without pushback.
Nutrition guidance doesn’t just shape diets. It legitimizes demand. And when government-backed or mainstream health narratives elevate protein, red meat, and dairy again, that isn’t a philosophical reckoning. It’s a commercial one.
When protein becomes the hero again, it shows up everywhere. Frozen aisles. Snack bars. Fast casual food menus. Beauty-adjacent wellness brands. “High protein” slapped across packaging like a moral badge. We’re told we’re making the “right” choice. Clean. Strong. Responsible.
But here’s the quiet truth no one puts on the label:Retail doesn’t curate shelves based on metabolic outcomes. It never has.
Shelves are optimized for margin, velocity, and repeat behavior. Investors don’t underwrite food based on optimal health. They underwrite what sells quickly, scales cleanly, and doesn’t spook regulators or consumers. So when protein sells, protein gets shelf space. When dairy regains cultural status, dairy expands. When a category is culturally approved, friction disappears at checkout.
The food pyramid doesn’t dictate health. It writes the cultural script for what moves smoothly through the system.
And that’s why every change in nutrition guidance quietly reshuffles capital. It influences which founders get funded, which products retailers feel safe expanding, and which ingredients glide through consumer consciousness without a second thought.
What’s missing, still, is the part that actually matters.
Not what category food falls into, but how it’s made.
Plants grown in pesticide-heavy systems don’t magically shed those chemicals because they’re labeled “plant-based.” Those inputs hitch a ride straight into our bodies. Animals accelerated with hormones and antibiotics don’t reset at slaughter. Those shortcuts follow the food all the way to the plate and into our bodies.
Health isn’t just macros. It’s the receipts of the system that produced them.
Yet nutritional hierarchies almost never go there. They stay clean, simple, and scalable. Categories are easy to message. Quality is inconvenient. It requires nuance. It resists massification.
My hope for the next evolution of this conversation isn’t a new pyramid or another pendulum swing from carbs to fat to protein and back again.
It’s a shift from category-based thinking to quality-based thinking. From “Is this allowed?” to “How was this made?”
Because the future of food, wellness, and real health won’t be decided by which macro wins the headline. It will be decided by who’s brave enough to talk about what happens long before food ever reaches the shelf.
And once you start looking there, the grocery store reads very differently.
Ulta’s Wellness Move and Sephora’s Identity ProblemPart I: The Move Everyone’s Underrating
Ulta’s wellness launch is being framed as a category expansion.It’s not.
It’s a thesis about how people actually behave.
This week, Ulta unveiled Wellness by Ulta Beauty, a shop-in-shop featuring nearly 60 brands across supplements, body care, stress, sleep, intimate wellness, and functional beauty.
On paper, it looks obvious. In reality, it’s a land grab for ritual.
Ulta has always understood something most beauty retailers forget: beauty isn’t just aspiration. It’s replenishment.
You don’t go to Ulta for fantasy alone. You go because you’re out of things. Your cleanser is empty. Your mascara dried out. Your shampoo is on its last pump.
That behavior matters. Because wellness behaves the same way.
Supplements get finished. Body care gets used. Magnesium bottle is empty.
Ulta isn’t betting on trend velocity. It’s betting on repeat behavior.That’s the quiet advantage.
Wellness fits Ulta’s muscle memory perfectly because it doesn’t require people to shop differently. It just gives them more reasons to keep coming back.
And that’s where pressure quietly builds across the category.
Why does this create a problem for Sephora? Because Sephora used to be a sharp edit. A point of view you trusted. Discovery felt intentional.
Over time, that edge softened.Assortments felt crowded without cohesion.Brands felt stacked, not selected.
When everything is on shelf, nothing feels special.
Sephora drifted into the most dangerous place in retail: the middle. And when the middle erodes, it erodes quickly.
Which brings us to the next move.
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Part II: The Real Risk in Sephora’s Olive Young Bet
In Part II, we unpack:
• Why Sephora’s partnership with Olive Young is smart, necessary, yet fundamentally risky• Why Ulta is building gravity while Sephora is chasing acceleration• What this means for founders deciding where their brand actually belongs• Why “wellness as infrastructure” is the next real retail moat
This isn’t about who wins a beauty war. It’s about who understands who they’re for.
And that distinction is about to decide a lot more than floor space.
Continue reading →
Olive Young works because it doesn’t just sell trends. It creates them. It operates at the speed of culture, not the pace of quarterly planning. New ingredients appear, go viral, get reformulated, and disappear again within weeks.
That velocity is exactly what Sephora needs.
But here’s the problem: importing speed is not the same as owning it.
Sephora used to be the Western equivalent of Olive Young. It didn’t wait for trends to prove themselves. It crowned them.
Now, instead of setting direction, Sephora is borrowing energy. That can absolutely drive traffic in the short term, but it does not rebuild authority on its own.
And while Sephora is chasing acceleration, Ulta is building gravity.
Acceleration says: stay fast, stay current, stay visible.Gravity says: stay useful, stay embedded, stay habitual.
Ulta’s wellness move works because it doesn’t ask customers to learn a new behavior. It deepens an existing one.
You’re already there. You already trust the retailer. You already restock.
That’s defensibility.
Sephora’s challenge isn’t relevance. It’s coherence. Right now, Sephora risks becoming a showroom of everything that’s hot without being a home for anything that sticks.
What This Means for Brands: If you’re a founder watching this unfold, the lesson isn’t “Ulta good, Sephora bad.” The lesson is positioning discipline.
Ask yourself:Are you a ritual or a moment?A refill or a flex?A habit or a hit?
Ulta is increasingly the right home for brands built on repeat behavior, daily use, and quiet loyalty.
Sephora still makes sense for brands built on discovery, artistry, and cultural conversation. But only if Sephora can reclaim its role as a confident editor instead of a crowded marketplace.
Distribution doesn’t just scale revenue. It defines your brand’s role in someone’s life. So choose accordingly.
Zoom out and this isn’t about beauty shelves at all. It’s about where wellness is allowed to live.
Not in niche boutiques. Not only online.But in the middle of everyday life.
When mass retailers start treating wellness like infrastructure instead of inspiration, the category shifts from trend to utility.
That’s what Ulta is betting on.
And if they’re right, the winners won’t be the loudest brands or the most viral ones. They’ll be the ones people quietly buy again next month. And the month after that.
And that’s how categories are actually built.
Cheers to spending the week with The 2% Club in New York, Ulta understanding what’s going on and where the world is going, and everyone caring about how food is produced…
All the best,
Rachel & WGV Team
Do you know someone who would benefit from being part of this community? Simply forward this email to them and share the link below to join our list!
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Is Pilates… dead?
Why Being Featured in Poosh Meant More Than I Expected
Jan 11, 2026
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GLP-1s Are Scaling in Middle America. Wellness Brands Should Pay Attention.For a while, GLP-1s looked like an Upper East Side phenomenon. Private doctors. Out of pocket only. The equivalent of exclusively consuming Erewhon smoothies.
That phase is over.
Now the signal is coming from places wellness hasn’t historically centered. Drive-thrus. Strip malls. Suburban parking lots. Middle America.
When Chipotle launches a high-protein menu.When Shake Shack quietly builds GLP-1-friendly ordering paths.When Smoothie King explicitly references GLP-1 users in its menu strategy.
That’s not trend-spotting. That’s infrastructure adjusting.
This is how behavior change actually scales in America. Not through boutique wellness. Through chains with thousands of locations between Target and Home Depot.
GLP-1s didn’t just change what people eat. They changed how much people eat, how often people eat out, and what people value when they do. Protein matters more. Portions feel oversized. Heavy meals lose their appeal. Appetite becomes something people manage instead of override.
And Middle America is where that behavior shows up first at scale.
Suburbs. Secondary cities. Families juggling work, kids, commutes, budgets. People who aren’t trying to biohack their way into longevity but do want to feel better in their bodies without blowing up their lives.
Wellness has spent the last decade speaking in coastal shorthand. Cold plunges. $28 smoothies. Language that assumes disposable income, time, and cultural fluency.
But now this is the moment where wellness stops being a niche identity and becomes everyday infrastructure.
When GLP-1s reshape appetites at scale, they don’t just change diets. They change demand curves. Ticket sizes. Product formats. Frequency of use. They quietly rewrite the rules of what “works” in food, beverage, supplements, fitness, and preventative health.
That’s not a cultural moment. That’s an economic one.And it creates a massive opening.
For the last decade, most wellness startups chased the same customer. Coastal. Affluent. Digitally native. High willingness to pay. Also very expensive to acquire.
GLP-1s introduce a different buyer profile. Not hypothetical. Already behaving differently. Already spending differently.
This consumer doesn’t need to be convinced that wellness matters. They already feel the difference in their body. They just need options that fit into real life.
This is why it’s interesting…Because when Panda Express and Olive Garden adjust their menus, they do it for one reason only. Millions of people changed how they eat, and there are revenue repercussions.
Wellness startups should pay attention to that signal.
Middle America represents a potentially lower-CAC, high-repeat customer. Not because they’re disengaged, but because the behavior change has already happened. The education cost is lower. The friction is lower.
The next wave of breakout wellness brands might just win by being legible.Legible pricing.Legible benefits.Legible placement in everyday routines.
GLP-1s didn’t make wellness less exciting outside the coasts. They made the real market impossible to ignore.
The brands that understand that won’t need to chase trends. They’ll build alongside behavior.
Is Pilates… dead?This week on The 2% Club podcast, Melissa Weiss and I dig into what might be the hottest take in wellness right now: is Pilates out?
My take? I don’t think we’ve been here before. Because this shift isn’t about one brand or one modality falling out of favor. It’s about a deeper change in bodies, behavior, and incentives.
Yes, Pilates is feeling saturated. But more importantly, GLP-1s are reshaping how people relate to movement altogether. Less appetite for punishment. More focus on efficiency, outcomes, and feeling good. That matters for Pilates. It matters for SoulCycle. And it matters for every fitness concept built around a very specific moment in time.
At the same time, we’re seeing hot yoga resurface not as a trend, but as a response. Structure. Heat. Stillness. A nervous system reset in a world obsessed with optimization.
Zoom out even further and the money tells its own story. Founders, operators, and capital are increasingly looking to Texas. Lower friction. Better margins. Different values. A quiet shift in where the center of gravity for wellness and finance actually lives.
In this episode of The 2% Club, we talk through these changes for what they are: signals. Not predictions. Not panic. Just patterns worth paying attention to if you’re building, investing, or operating in wellness.
If you care about where bodies, brands, and money are moving next, press play.
Forbes Is the Goal. Poosh Was the Signal.Building a firm in wellness has never fit neatly into a box. Not CPG. Not healthcare. Not tech. But the full spectrum of how people actually live, move, eat, recover, spend, and take care of themselves.
When you build something untraditional, the milestones look different too. So being featured in Poosh by Kourtney Kardashian Barker didn’t feel loud or flashy. It felt… aligned.
Kourtney Kardashian built something truly pioneering with Poosh. Before “wellness” was a boardroom buzzword, it was already a cultural conversation. One rooted in curiosity, experimentation, and the belief that feeling good is worth paying attention to.
To be included as a wellness expert and thought leader in that ecosystem is an honor I don’t take lightly.
Yes, I still aspire to Forbes. But Poosh has helped define the modern wellness landscape long before many institutions knew how to talk about it.
This feature felt like a quiet nod that the way I’ve been building — patiently, intuitively, across categories — makes sense, so thank you to the team who believed in me.
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🔒 Behind the Paywall: The GLP-1 Opportunity Most Wellness Startups Are MissingYou asked, I listened: The economic implications most founders aren’t modeling yet…
Zooming out, this isn’t just a menu story. It’s a margin story.
GLP-1 adoption is accelerating fastest outside the coastal wellness bubble, driven by employer coverage, Medicare expansion conversations, and primary care prescribing, not concierge medicine. Today, an estimated 1 in 8 U.S. adults has tried a GLP-1 at least once. In many Midwestern and Southern states, prescription growth is outpacing New York and California.
That matters, because Middle America represents the largest share of U.S. food, beverage, and wellness spend. Roughly 60–65% of U.S. consumer spending happens in suburban and exurban zip codes. That’s where Walmart, Costco, Kroger, Target, and casual dining chains dominate baskets.
GLP-1 users don’t disappear from the economy. They redistribute spend.
Early data shows:
Restaurant visits decline modestly, but frequency stays surprisingly resilient
Average ticket size drops, but repeat visits increase
Spend shifts from indulgent calories to protein, hydration, supplements, and functional foods
This is why chains move first. They feel the pressure immediately.
When Panda Express reframes value around “balanced protein,” or Olive Garden experiments with lighter portions, it’s not branding. It’s unit economics responding to a changed appetite profile across millions of customers.
Now here’s where wellness startups should really pay attention.
For years, the category optimized for high AOV, low frequency. Expensive powders. Monthly subscriptions people forget to cancel. Products that require belief before behavior.
GLP-1 consumers flip that model.
They are:
Highly routine-driven
Extremely aware of how food makes them feel
Motivated by satiety, energy, and comfort, not transformation
They don’t want more products. They want fewer, better-fitting ones.
This opens the door to a different growth equation.
Lower CACBecause the consumer already knows why they need the product. You’re not selling “wellness.” You’re solving friction created by a smaller appetite and higher sensitivity.
Higher repeatBecause the product is used alongside daily behavior. Eating, drinking, moving, supplementing. Not aspirational, habitual.
Lower churn riskBecause once someone finds something that “works” with a GLP-1, they rarely experiment wildly. Appetite changes make consistency more valuable than novelty.
This is also why pricing matters so much.
Middle America will pay for wellness. It just won’t overpay for storytelling. Products need to clear weekly or monthly budgets. Think $2–$5 per use, not luxury positioning disguised as science.
Distribution matters even more.
If your product requires someone to seek it out, research it, and explain it to their spouse, you’ve already added too much friction.
The winners will live:
In grocery, not just DTC
In foodservice adjacencies
In routines that already exist
GLP-1s compress the distance between intention and action. That’s gold for brands that understand it.
The biggest mistake founders will make is assuming this market wants to be inspired.
It doesn’t. It wants to be supported.
This is why the next generation of wellness brands may not look like wellness at all. They’ll look like food. Or beverages. Or supplements that don’t announce themselves loudly. Brands that feel obvious once discovered.
GLP-1s didn’t shrink the wellness market. They clarified it.And Middle America is where that clarity turns into scale.
Cheers to GLP1s in Middle America, the end of pilates, my obsession with Poosh, and all the fun in NY we’re planning for this month.
All the best,
Rachel & WGV Team
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