Oat Bar Journey
news NPD Vegan
The seven-year story of our Protein Oat Bars
\With the recent launch of our newest product, plant-based Protein Oat Bars in four different flavours, we spoke to co-founder Jason Kerr about how brainstorming ideas became brilliant bars!
"So, Jason, it’s been a pretty long journey, right? Could you tell us more about the development of the bars?"
Here at the FUEL10K development HQ, taste has always been our priority, and these bars were no different. In fact, it’s been a long journey, after coming close to finalising the recipe 7 years ago we put a pause on things after realising they just weren’t quite as tasty as we wanted them to be.
As a company however taste isn’t our sole priority, our products need to deliver nutritionally too. This is no easy task – hence why it’s taken us 7 years to get an oat bar range we are happy with!
To sum up the seven-year process, it went something like this:
1. First things first we issued a brief to our production partner, this is everything from a product description to the ingredients and nutritional's.
2. Next up is outlining the number of variants wanted, and benchmarking products in terms of flavour
3. Then we’re tasked with the all-important job of determining price, we want our products to deliver on taste and nutrition whilst ensuring customers aren’t charged a premium price. Certainly, no easy feat given that protein is an expensive ingredient to buy. To get around this we start with the retail price and then work backwards to see how much we need to make the product for. Sometimes this proves too difficult and the project gets mothballed, but we normally find a way to make things work
4. The next step is probably the most exciting – kitchen samples. Our supply partners are top notch and together we work on recipes in the test kitchen that we know we can produce on a big scale. Our product team will tweak recipes to improve flavour, texture, aftertaste, and the overall ‘eat experience’. Once we get a product that we’re happy with, we send samples around the team for feedback. Only when we are happy with the feedback do we go on to the design work.
6. After this is about getting the visuals finalised and then beginning talks with the right customers.
7. Finally, once we have that initial interest to buy them, the production button gets pressed. Because of who we work with, typical minimum volumes are about 40k-50k units – so it’s a pretty big commitment!
It’s been a long process, but it’s worth it when we have a product, we’re thrilled with... as you can see from my expression! Now all that’s left is for you all to try them!