I’m a little confused why people are getting concerned by the ‘price hike’ – I’ve re-read it all in case I missed something - so the cost of the individual bar and the boxes have both come DOWN – only the cost per calorie has slightly increased due to the reduction in calories in each bar – which is a good thing right?
(yes, I get that the bars are physically smaller too but as a snack alternative with better quality ingredients than previously, that’s also a good thing? Downsizing as a result of new formulation is a pretty common standard in the snacking industry and is usually done for benefits other than commercial - such as portion control, improved raw material quality, nutrition etc)
Cost per calorie is the only cost I care about. The bars getting smaller doesn’t save us anything, it just means it takes new 5 bars to get the nutrition of 4 of the old bars. Same with the box size.
“Lower calories” is not a universally good thing for products to strive for. We need calories to live.
yes the nutrition is changing but the only real ‘downside’ is that 4 bars would not give you your daily RI of fibre. Protein - 4 bars would. But as has been said - it isn’t very likely that you would use these as your sole source of these things.
We also have a daily calorie requirement, and if we don’t eat that amount of calories, our weight changes. This is like Duracell marketing new improved batteries that are totally amazing and cool (except they don’t last as long).
Hopefully the improvements in taste and texture are as significant as Tim says, because that’s the only way the cost-per-calorie increase is justifiable.
edit: I hope I don’t sound too cross about this. The price going up isn’t ideal, but it’s not a large increase. I just feel these things more because I’m poor.
An easy way to think of it is, if the cost-per-calorie is going up, then the cost of protein, fibre, fat etc. is going up. Maybe not universally - I haven’t done the maths and I’m not going to - but the price of the nutritional contents as a whole, per unit, is going up.
I totally get where you’re coming from David - I was just curious on peoples reactions - I guess I saw it differently because I see this kind of change all the time with clients in the snacking business especially and like I mentioned, it’s usually done for largely beneficial reasons when there is a reformulation - so we’ll see the results at the end of the month.
I don’t really see the bars and granola as meal alternatives at all but I thought about trying the JimmyJoy bars previously - but their air freight shipping is ludicrously expensive compared with Huel’s tiered weight system so didn’t bother. These I might try.
Try the granola if you haven’t yet. Nutritionally, and economically, it’s very similar to the powder. I don’t like Huel shakes that haven’t been refrigerated for a few hours, so the granola is great when I want to eat and don’t have a shake prepared in advance.
I just got a box of each in my last delivery - I found the Original a bit of a challenge (although chucking in a handful of dried fruit helped a lot) but the Berry I liked so would definitely get that again - measuring it out to the 60g serving and adding some dried cherries and using oat milk made a nice breakfast.
sorry I should have clarified that I meant I didn’t see them as meal alternatives because of the volume of food but I guess thats just psychological conditioning.
Yeah, I ignore the suggested portion sizes. I have 105g servings of granola. It’s a weird amount but it’s 1/4 of a box and a full meal for me.
It’s also why the smaller bars doesn’t matter much to me. I don’t wear a special belt with a single bar holster (much), so if I need to pack more than one bar it’s no problem. And it’s easier for people who want small portions, because they don’t have to save half a bar if they don’t want a full one.
Yes I’d like that. In fact I’d like a way to have a variety of flavours in one bar. Huel should channel Willy Wonka a bit more.
I feel your pain Literally the only thing that would make me buy the bars, RTD, granola and more powder is the price. They should just work on the price instead of taste and texture.
Because when it comes to the powder I think we can all agree taste comes after convenience, nutrition and price
Edit: unless there’s some people who have huel for no other reason then they like the taste?
C’mon, that’s not a fair comparison. Our Bars have gone down in size and down in price. It’s not gone totally the other way. We’re using better production methods, better ingredients, and the result is a better product.
We really don’t think we have, because that would make no sense. Although slightly off topic, Rhubarb and Custard, Matcha Tea, Cacao etc were absolutely not our most popular Flavour Boosts, so we rethought them and came up with other flavours totally different we hadn’t tackled before.
As for the Bars, over shelf life they dried out and meant our Hueligans had to eat them with a glass of water. Improving the texture and taste feels like exactly the right thing to do. If people think our Bars are dry and not tasty (not my personal opinion, but just feedback we’ve received) then how are we going to appeal to wider audience?
For us it’s nutrition first, taste a close second. Having outstanding nutrition in our products is only useful if those products are then consumed. If you don’t like the taste, you won’t eat it and wont get the benefits of complete nutrition.
I think it’s good that the price per bar has gone down, but I will ask if you could consider having the ability to add just one box to an order/subs for powder, even if it means starting a new subscription (which was how I managed to try the RTD and realised how much I hate the vanilla one & was grateful I didn’t have a case of it).
I have to disagree. Cacao fb is incredible.
I think the problem with sales have been:
Some people don’t know what Cacao is
Some people think it must taste the same as real cacao or cocoa and therefore is pointless
If it was renamed dark chocolate, I think it would sell better. @Tim_Huel would you guys consider at least trying this before withdrawing it completely?
It really does have the most incredible intense bitter dark chocolate flavour, which when mixed with UU makes the best chocolate Huel in the world.
I’m gonna be so sad if I can’t have this anymore
I put real cacao powder in every kind of Huel I make @Bee
But the cacao flavour boost is completely different from cacao powder. It’s a flavour. Not real cacao. I love the bitter dark taste and the very slight sweetness of it.
UU powder plus Cacao Flavour boost creates a dark chocolate flavour Huel that cant be recreated by cacao powder alone.
I really love it.
90% of the time when this happens with chocolate snacks (Ok wagon wheels and taking out the last Rolo isn’t included in this one) it is for similar reason to those Tim mentioned - the product is reformulated to include better quality and more popular ingredients which are conversely more expensive in their raw state. Such as using less fats based cocoa flavourings rather than using actual cocoa solids for example. It is not normal for prices to increase because of this instead what you usually find is that the product reduces in size and remains the same retail price.
Its also important to remember that small portion snacking products usually have very small profit margins so any changes to production costs can rarely be absorbed by the manufacturer - even for large entities such as Mondelez or Mars who sell tens of millions of bars a day.
Prices are already higher than in the UK; will the price change be proportional?
This seems to be a market trend right now. While the most vocal advocates cry for bigger bars; it seems that the sales are not backing this concept. Queal lowered the size of the bars; Soylent has a 100kcal bar; Vitaline a 200kcal one etc…
This move (like the others with FS) has been clearly been driven by sales/questionnaire data; for those who “don’t understand” the change.
What’s the reason for this?
I think this is the key point here. Bars are being seen as a snack. I don’t know if this makes them more easy to sell because we are familiarized with 200kcal bars or what. I think that most “normal people” see 400kcal as a “waste of meal” perhaps. Don’t believe that a bar can fill them or will satisfy them. Just thoughts.
Also; this changes might hint a US launch of the bars soon?
Every region has experienced a slightly different price increase. Each article I’ve linked to above has been tailored to each region’s price changes.
Essentially changing some ingredients that were drying the Bars out, we’ve also changed production method which helps too. We haven’t added preservatives if anyone thought that!
Sorry Christina. I know you’re upset, but we’re not going to be relabelling our Cacao Flavour Boosts.
Literally the only thing that would make me buy the bars, RTD, granola and more powder is the price. They should just work on the price instead of taste and texture.
