[four-minute read]
Ever wonder how new Oats Overnight flavors come to be? Or why some disappear and others stick around forever? Like you, our flavors are on a journey to discover their ultimate purpose. We call it the flavor lifecycle, and it’s pretty awesome.
It Starts With Flavor Development
It all begins with an idea. Easy enough. Sometimes the concept for a new flavor comes straight from our CEO, Brian, who tends to have a good feel for what people will like. In other cases it’s the flavor development team. We also go to you –– our customers –– for recommendations, which led to flavors like Key Lime Pie.
The harder part comes with making it real in the flavor lab. While it might look like witchcraft and wizardry when you peek through the window into the lab, our flavor team is just really good at what they do. There’s no easy way to make familiar flavors out of different combinations of natural ingredients, but they work through a bunch of different formulations, fine-tuning this and that until they nail it.
Subscribers Taste Test These Flavors
Our team can only guess whether new flavors will be worthy of release. So after developing the flavor and sampling it around the office, we look to subscribers.
Every month we send a free in-development flavor to subscribers to taste test, alongside their regular order. They’re invited to fill out an email survey to give us detailed thoughts on the recipe, including elements like taste, texture, and overall likability. At the end of the month, the survey results tell us what needs to happen next.
Your Input Decides The Rest
Subscriber input is essential to deciding the destination of our flavors. With hard data in hand, we rework the flavors that need improvement and walk them out as a limited-time release. The not-so-populars often go back to the drawing board to get reworked and released as limited-time flavors. When they crush like S’mores or Dark Chocolate Cherry, they go on the permanent menu.
And then there’s the flavors that land somewhere in the middle. Maybe they’re loved by some and not so much by others. We look at the survey results and limited-time launch metrics to find them a proper home. Many of those could end up as subscriber-only flavors accessible through the Portal.
We haven’t perfected this process. Sometimes we miss. But when was the last time the Quaker man or Dr. Kellogg looked to you for advice? The lifecycle of every flavor depends on you –– the customer. And we’re pretty stoked to have you along for the ride.
Want to join the flavor development fun? Learn more here.
