Is diversity, equity & inclusion dead in UK food & drink?

On his first day in office, US president Trump went straight for the kill. His first victim? DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) or “woke”, as he likes to put it.

Only hours after re-entering the White House, Trump signed an executive order directing all federal staff in DEI roles to be laid off.

His anti-woke crusade is also targeting business. Last week, Trump directly urged Apple to scrap its DEI policies after the iPhone maker’s shareholders voted overwhelmingly to keep them – telling his Truth Social followers that “DEI was a hoax that has been very bad for our country”. And his message is clearly getting through. A flurry of US companies – including previous bastions of free speech such as Google and Meta, as well as Amazon, Pepsico, McDonald’s, Walmart and Target – have announced they are pulling back on DEI.

There are now concerns the tide may be turning on this side of the pond. A poll of 500 execs by JPP Law shows one in three bosses believe DEI has gone too far. And the UK operations of US multinationals are in a particularly invidious position. Do they stick to their guns? Or twist to Trump’s new tune? So is there a future for DEI in the UK food and drink industry? Or will all the progress be lost?

The ripple effect

Most senior HR and c-suite professionals in the UK (70%) now expect the anti-woke backlash in the US to influence the UK workplace, according to a January survey by Occupational Health Assessment.

In fact it’s already noticeable, confirms Sam Akinluyi, former Innocent Drinks UK MD and founder of Psalt, a brand accelerator for under-represented demographics. He’s seen “one company with American ownership that went super cautious because of the laws passed there, saying: ‘We’re not going to pursue this any more.’”

Dan Hodge, founding director at Lime Talent, an fmcg hiring firm specialising in DEI candidates, says last year more clients than ever were looking for candidates that fitted their diversity strategy, but “over the past few months the direction of travel [is] going the other way”.

Meanwhile, a leading group advocating for supplier diversity in the UK was unable to offer comment for this piece due to board-level pressure, showing how sensitivity around DEI has heightened.

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“What’s happening in America is giving people the excuse to be able to vocalise” their true thoughts, argues Lyndsey Cambridge, head of engagement & communication at the FWD, who’s been leading on DEI at the trade group. Its Women in Wholesale report, to be published later this month, will also show the number of women at board level in the sector has fallen from 20% in 2022 to 16% in 2025.

“There’s always been a lot of people rolling their eyes at DEI and ‘wokeism’ behind closed doors, but the eye-rollers are now being given almost an invitation by Trump to be more vocal and that’s dangerous.”

The dangers aren’t limited to corporate culture. There’s also a “real risk of Trump having a negative impact on consumer trends”, fears Roshana Gammampila, co-MD of tea brand Devagiri, whose key selling point is its ethical production standards focused on helping Sri Lankan producers out of poverty.

The brand is in the early stages of trying to get into the US market, and Gammampila worries “this shift will mean US consumers and buyers will value things like diversity of supplier and ethical traceability less”.

US-UK friction

For US-headquartered fmcg multinationals, or European ones doing big business in the US, knowing where to sit on the issue is becoming a real quandary.

Such is the case with PepsiCo, which last week dropped its chief global DEI officer role as part of a “new strategy” that will see DEI leadership responsibilities absorbed into a broader role. Monica Bauer Mengelberg, who only got the job last year, is now listed as global employee engagement senior VP.

When asked how UK employees felt watching their US parent company publicly retreat from recent commitments, Janika Patel – grocery controller and chair of the ethnicity & culture network at PepsiCo UK – told The Grocer: “The importance of inclusion hasn’t gone away. We remain committed in the UK, to going through with our DEI initiatives. There’s not been a feeling in the organisation that it’s been pulled back at all.”

Still, it’s evidently problematic for people who have felt minoritised their whole careers to suddenly find themselves in an environment where “they can’t be themselves or have to hide parts of themselves”, notes Claire Ashton, packaging development manager for KP Snacks and a member of its inclusion and diversity programme. She has been a vocal supporter of LGBTQ+ rights since her daughter came out to her as transgender at the age of 14. Ashton has found in KP Snacks an “incredibly supportive” and “safe” space – so seeing companies in the US readily jump on the anti-DEI bandwagon has left her “horrified”.

“All of these organisations will have LGBTQ+ people working for them – are we going back 20-30 years, where those people will have to disguise part of their identity? And if you’ve been open with that business up to that point – that’s not a nice place to be, is it?” she argues.

Lois Brown, digital learning & capability manager at Britvic, and founder of the company’s DEI employee resource group, is also fearful at the potential loss. Throughout her nearly two decades of striving to make UK fmcg a more inclusive place, progress “hasn’t come easy. It’s come over time. Doing the work, having the meetings, putting proposals together, bringing it to leadership, changing to include diverse policies” – allowing employees to swap an Easter bank holiday for an Eid day off, for instance. “So, the feeling of this no longer being important to people, just made me feel… not great.”

Another concern is potential job losses. The global market for DEI was estimated at $9.4bn in 2022 and was forecast to more than double by 2030. But the US’s recent moves could threaten DEI roles, Akinluyi warns. “You’ll have people thinking: ‘What’s going to happen to my job?’.”

Support for DEI

On the other hand, there’s plenty of support for DEI here in the UK. A recent survey by Apella found that while 22% agree that DEI has gone too far, 53% felt it would be “bad” if Trump’s executive orders led to British companies scaling back their commitments.

And some of the world’s largest companies are doubling down rather than retreating in the face of pressure – including those with federal contracts like Coca-Cola. The PepsiCo rival has warned that any policies that could lead to a less diverse workforce would negatively affect its business.

Caroline Cater, VP of people & culture at Coca-Cola Europacific Partners, says the bottler is “committed to creating a business where everyone is welcome. We want to make sure we’re a place where anyone can get in and get on,” she adds. “A big part of that is feeling like you belong and having a safe space to do your best work.”

The British arm of McDonald’s has also defied its US parent, reiterating it will keep its target to have 40% of senior leadership roles held by under-represented groups by 2030 and strengthen “social inclusion” across its supply chains.

Brown was also reassured by Britvic’s leadership team that it would not back down on DEI.

But the food industry is not only facing pressure from anti-woke rhetoric in the US. The current economic backdrop, with a barrage of new costs such as increases to National Insurance and the national living wage, plus the new levy on packaging, is forcing cuts.

“It’s tough out there. I’m seeing people being made redundant and initiatives being stopped or delayed, but that’s across the board – it’s not a cost-cutting exercise specifically targeting ESG and diversity. Every single cost has been scrutinised,” notes Tea Colaianni, founder and chair of Diversity In Hospitality, Travel & Leisure (WiHTL) and Diversity in Retail (DiR).

But Colaianni is encouraged to have received “a lot of commitment” from organisations that are members of DiR – including Sainsbury’s, Tesco and Lidl. “The CEOs I speak to are still incredibly committed to the agenda.”

As proof, the latest GroceryAid report shows over 100 partners are now signed up to its D&I in Grocery programme, versus only 21 in 2020. And the programme raised a record £1m-plus for GroceryAid last year.

At the same time, DiR data shows retail took “a significant step forward in 2024”, with 50% of direct report-level positions now being held by women, the first time this benchmark has been reached. Minority ethnicity representation at boardroom level was also up 1.9% year on year. And just last week, the annual government-backed FTSE 100 Women Leaders Review report for 2025 – published ahead of International Women’s Day this week – showed women now occupy 1,275 or 43% of roles on company boards. This marks a year-on-year increase and means the target of 40% women’s representation by the end of this year remains on track.

IGD’s flagship reverse mentoring programme – which allows senior leaders “to understand what it’s like in the shoes of somebody from an under-represented background” – has also attracted a record number of sign-ups, says inclusivity programme manager Amie Burke. And she’s not seeing businesses disengage with DEI initiatives at all: “When people say scale back, some of these businesses were doing such huge amounts of DEI activity anyway, so they may be figuring out what’s actually working and focusing on that.”

Psalt’s Akinluyi doesn’t believe UK retailers will be ditching efforts any time soon, either – but he is sceptical of how inclusive companies claim to have become. “It’s easy to say: ‘We’re not backing off’, but what were you doing in the first place? Are people who are different able to really thrive within organisations? Are line managers not just accommodating difference but actually leveraging it? I don’t think that’s really moved on.”

Many attendees of the Spill the Beans event, which offers black and ethnic minority FMCG producers the chance to get their products in front of supermarket buyers, have “expressed concerns about the lack of visibility and meaningful support from major retailers”, according to organiser Colin Mordi.

They feel that securing contracts with big retailers is becoming increasingly difficult, Mordi says, and that “they still face discrimination and restrictions on access to funding and retail opportunities”.

Julianne Ponan, founder of allergy-free brand Creative Nature, also notes that despite programmes like Sainsbury’s Thrive – an incubator for black-founded businesses – there’s still a lack of knowledge when it comes to supporting challenger brands from underrepresented backgrounds beyond that initial point of entry. “Getting into stores is just the first step; brands like ours need additional support to secure shelf space and access lower-cost data, which supports challenger brands to compete with industry giants who have massive marketing budgets.”

There are other blind spots, too – like disability hiring. DiR’s data shows fewer than 10% of businesses can identify one physically disabled leader. Lime Talent’s Hodge confirms “a lot of businesses would openly say they struggle to hire people with disability”, despite figures that show reducing the disability employment gap could add £17bn to the UK economy annually.

Robust support for non-visible disabilities like neurodiversity is particularly hard to find, Hodge adds. And Casper Gorniok, a neurodiverse marketing manager in fmcg, feels he’s been fobbed off by employers due to his openness about his autism spectrum disorder. “I hear nearly every week that ‘meritocracy’ should determine who gets a job or gets promoted. But if there’s never been inclusion in the first place to help people with disabilities flourish, it’s not an even playing field,” he says.

‘Real-world consequences’

There’s undoubtedly a lot to be done. But many across grocery are resolute in walking the walk.

Co-op CEO Shirine Khoury-Haq recently said DEI was core to its principles and warned rolling back on it wasn’t “just an internal business decision, it has real-world consequences – it deepens inequality, weakens trust and risks undoing decades of progress”.

The Co-op is the UK’s first big grocer with a female CEO, CFO and chair, and took top spot in this year’s FTSE Women Leaders Review’s Top 50 Private Companies ranking.

In another example, Asda’s new 2024 gender pay gap figures showed a reduction in its median hourly pay difference between male and female colleagues to 4% from 5% the year before – significantly lower than the UK average of 13.1%.

Crucially, these actions aren’t being made just for the sake of social equity. A new report by EY UK underlined the “critical importance of DEI in improving productivity and workforce innovation in UK companies amid an unpredictable macroeconomic environment”. The findings build on a 2020 McKinsey study showing that gender-diverse businesses were 25% more likely to have higher profits, with that number bumping to 36% for ethnically and culturally diverse businesses.

At Britvic, for instance, Brown recalls how it improved soft drinks sales by marketing product around significant cultural events, like Ramadan and Eid. That required a “diverse thought pattern”, she says.

Richard Stratton, Tesco’s group sourcing and commodities director and the chair of GroceryAid’s D&I in Grocery Strategy Steering Group, agrees “there’s a very strong business case to support DEI – not only from a people perspective but also commercially”.

Indeed, a July 2024 Kantar survey showed that 75% of consumers globally said diversity and inclusion – or a lack thereof – influenced their purchase decisions.

Stratton says that when the steering group met in early February, “the sentiment in the room was very much business as usual, especially with new legislation coming down the track in the UK on data reporting”.

City regulator the Financial Conduct Authority is expected to roll out plans to require listed companies to report information and disclose against targets on the representation of women and ethnic minorities. And as with gender pay gap regulation, the government is also planning to make ethnicity and disability pay gap reporting mandatory.

Additionally, the incoming Employment Rights Bill will underscore the need for companies to foster a culture of inclusion and offer strong protection against discrimination and prejudice in the workplace.

And of course, the concepts of diversity and inclusion are vital to retaining talent – particularly in an industry that is suffering from chronic labour and skills shortages – so the risks of pulling back are immense. This is particularly true for younger generations, which prioritise wellbeing and inclusion before deciding who to work for, Burke says.

Colaianni agrees: “You can’t just say: ‘We’ll stop focus on this’, because that means you stop investing in your future, which lies in the people that join our supermarkets and, in many cases, grow all the way to become CEOs. Is this the end of DEI? I don’t think it is. The genie’s out of the bottle. We can’t go backwards now.”