---
title: "Who Is 'Remaking' Nestlé?"
description: "As the global consumer market enters a phase of stagnant competition, the food and beverage industry is undergoing deep adjustments. Consumer preferences are shifting from big brands and standardized products toward functional, health-oriented, and localized options, rendering the old scale-driven growth model ineffective. In this context, Nestlé's business performance is under pressure, with fluctuating sales and slowing growth in major segments, leading to a mass layoff plan of 16,000 employees. The layoffs are just the surface; the real signal is that a century-old company is at a crossroads of redefining its growth strategy."
author: "任建新"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
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published: "2025-10-25"
categories: "Brand Marketing"
language: "en"
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citation: "任建新. “Who Is 'Remaking' Nestlé?.” New Distribution, 2025-10-25. https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/who-is-remaking-nestle-c687aa35/"
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# Who Is 'Remaking' Nestlé?

> As the global consumer market enters a phase of stagnant competition, the food and beverage industry is undergoing deep adjustments. Consumer preferences are shifting from big brands and standardized products toward functional, health-oriented, and localized options, rendering the old scale-driven growth model ineffective. In this context, Nestlé's business performance is under pressure, with fluctuating sales and slowing growth in major segments, leading to a mass layoff plan of 16,000 employees. The layoffs are just the surface; the real signal is that a century-old company is at a crossroads of redefining its growth strategy.

**Source** | Zebra Consumer
As the global consumer market enters a phase of stagnant competition, the food and beverage industry is undergoing a round of deep adjustments. Consumer preferences are shifting from big brands and standardized products toward functional, health-oriented, and localized options, making the old scale-driven growth tactics increasingly ineffective.
Against this backdrop, Nestlé's business performance is under pressure, with market sales fluctuating and growth in major segments slowing, eventually triggering a mass layoff plan involving tens of thousands of employees.
The mass layoffs are only the surface. Behind them lies a real signal: a century-old company is at a critical juncture of redefining its growth model.
New CEO Takes Drastic Measures?
On October 16, Nestlé Group CEO Laurent Freixe announced during the earnings release that the company would cut approximately 16,000 jobs globally, including about 12,000 white-collar positions and about 4,000 roles in production and supply chain. The plan is led by him.
Freixe officially assumed the CEO role on September 1.
According to Nestlé's financial report for the first nine months of 2025, global sales reached CHF 65.9 billion, a year-on-year decline of approximately 1.9%. Although the company reported organic growth of 3.3%, the real internal growth (RIG) was only 0.6%, with the remaining 2.8 percentage points coming from price increases.
In emerging markets, the pricing-driven growth is more pronounced. Nestlé reported that organic growth in emerging markets was 5.2%, but it was mainly driven by pricing, with real internal growth flat. In developed markets, organic growth was 2.1%, with a balanced contribution from volume and price, but the growth rate is significantly slower than the group's long-term targets.
At the regional level, the financial performance of Greater China may have been a trigger for the group's adjustments, with organic growth of -6.1%, including real internal growth of -2.9% and pricing contribution of -3.2%.
Facing growth pressure, Freixe, in his first month in office, set real internal growth as the primary goal and announced comprehensive adjustment measures, including workforce optimization, process reengineering, and divestiture of underperforming businesses.
The urgency of these adjustments is directly linked to Nestlé's overall market performance. Although third-quarter organic growth was 4.3%, improving from 2.9% in the first half, the report clearly states that this growth was mainly driven by pricing and other factors. In other words, the apparent recovery in growth has not yet formed a sustainable trend, especially with room for improvement in volume.
From an organizational structure perspective, Nestlé has compressed its original five regions into three: the Americas; Asia, Oceania, and Africa; and Europe. The flattening of the organization and the layoff plan are progressing in tandem, indicating not just workforce optimization but a shift in operational strategy. Nestlé may allocate more resources to faster-growing, higher-profit segments such as premium coffee, pet care, and health nutrition.
Thus, the mass layoffs are not a whim of management but a large-scale adjustment necessitated by severe challenges such as sluggish growth, pricing pressure, and regional divergence.
Is the Market 'Teaching' Nestlé?
For a long time, Nestlé has built a global multi-category consumer goods matrix, with core businesses including coffee, confectionery, pet care, infant nutrition, and ready-to-drink beverages. From the financial performance mentioned above, Nestlé's current growth is significantly supported by price increases rather than volume expansion.
Looking at specific businesses, Nestlé's two best-performing segments are coffee and confectionery. The earnings report shows that these two categories were the main drivers of organic growth in the first nine months of 2025, with some markets even achieving double-digit growth. However, the growth in these segments also shows a pricing-driven trend.
Taking the coffee business as an example, Nestlé continues to push brand premiumization and product upgrades in multiple global markets. In the third quarter, its coffee business maintained positive RIG growth. But it is worth noting that this growth stems more from long-term pricing strategies than from user base expansion. The confectionery business is similar; although premium confectionery can command higher prices, the health trend exerts long-term pressure on sugar-based product consumption.
In contrast, the pet food business performed strongly in several markets, becoming one of the few segments achieving growth in both volume and price. According to Nestlé, the pet care business saw organic growth of approximately 1.6% in the first nine months, with market share steadily increasing in most regions, indicating the segment's long-term essential nature. However, its revenue scale is still insufficient to reverse the group's overall figures.
Additionally, e-commerce channels became a growth highlight, with organic growth of 13.2% during the reporting period, accounting for 20.2% of total group sales. But this channel highlight cannot mask structural pressures: retail channels saw organic growth of only 3.1%, while out-of-home channels grew 6.2%.
These changes all challenge the sustainability of Nestlé's traditional growth path. In the past, Nestlé leveraged its strong brand assets, global distribution network, and standardized product matrix to achieve rapid scale expansion and effective cost control. However, in the face of increasingly prominent localized and health-oriented consumer demands, this once-unbeatable approach is gradually showing its limitations.
Its previously built high-growth engines—coffee, confectionery, pet care—are now showing imbalanced growth. Changes in consumer behavior, preferences, and channels are exerting multi-dimensional pressure on Nestlé's traditional growth. This also makes it difficult for Nestlé's repeatedly successful pricing strategy to maintain its former 'moat' effect.
How to rejuvenate brands, balance channels, and align product innovation with emerging demands all test whether Nestlé can resonate with the market environment in terms of product, price, and business operation models.
Behind this inevitable market reshaping, traditional leading brands and their multi-business product portfolios are no longer the only choice for consumers. Changes in market demand, the rise of Generation Z, and the release of emotional value may be 'teaching' the former industry giant.
Future 'Anxiety'?
Facing the reality of pressure on its growth model and structural imbalance, Nestlé is in a period of deep adjustment. The layoff of 16,000 people is just the beginning of a comprehensive strategic restructuring. The deeper issue lies in how to address the transformation challenges brought by the inertia of a giant. This requires solid and deep innovation across various business segments and brand perceptions.
Changes in consumer perception may also affect Nestlé's brand stickiness and loyalty. Traditionally, Nestlé emphasized standardization, family consumption, hero-product-driven growth, and multi-channel distribution. But current consumption trends are shifting toward personalization, health, and emotional value. For example, in the Chinese market, consumer demand for high-sugar and high-fat foods has weakened, limiting growth in Nestlé's traditional businesses like confectionery.
Furthermore, what Nestlé faces is not just changes in consumer perception, nor merely profit pressure or business issues, but a gradual deepening into its operating philosophy and organizational level. Its current adjustments involve simultaneously 'removing the old' and 'rebuilding' across brand, product, channel, and organization.
Although Freixe stated at the earnings conference that driving growth centered on real internal growth is a key goal for Nestlé's next phase, how will this goal be achieved? Taking Greater China as an example, it requires rebuilding the 'connection' with consumers, shifting from simple channel deployment and brand memory to a deeper transformation driven by business value, product innovation, and user experience.
Globally, Nestlé's deep transformation, which begins with 'turning the knife inward,' must ultimately focus on business innovation and model change, far from being achieved overnight through layoffs and cost cutting. The real 'anxiety' lies in Nestlé's future development.
The core issue is whether Nestlé, with its massive size and heavy system, can quickly incubate business and product innovation capabilities that keep pace with market changes.
The successful path of the past now faces the challenge of being out of step with the times. From suppressing competition with brands and covering markets with scale, to today having to face the reality of changing consumer behavior and fragmented distribution systems, this global food giant is trying to find new growth methods while maintaining stability.
What truly determines whether Nestlé can emerge from its 'remaking period' is not the cost savings from layoffs, but whether it can find and successfully implement a new business playbook that aligns with the new consumer era.
These questions are far more difficult to answer than the layoffs.


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## Citation metadata

- Publisher: New Distribution
- Author: 任建新
- Published: 2025-10-25
- Canonical: https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/who-is-remaking-nestle-c687aa35/
- Original source: https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/Xmv-UvxVAcQCZfYoFYhYkw

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