Hey @Mark_Huel, thanks for the quick reply and tackling each point 
Mac & Cheeze:
- Thank you. I’ve previously raised it here and via email with more clarity. I now have the Carbonara primarily which I find more enjoyable than M&C. Essentially, more sauce and less macaroni in a third version of M&C would be perfect.
Discount system:
- I’m not knocking the discount system itself, only how it’s presented as it can turn off new potential customers and makes it so much more complicated and time-consuming for people who love Huel to recommend it to others. Before, it was dead simple, changing the quantity to see the lowest price and work out monthly costs. Now, I have to spend a couple minutes faffing around with logging in, editing my own subscription, jumping to Upcoming Deliveries, etc that I explained in my previous post, all simply to calculate the monthly costs, e.g. how much it costs to have 1 RTD every day for a month, or A-Z, etc.
- Before, it also clearly showed how purchasing more saves you money on the product page, dead simple. Now it’s impossible for new/existing customers to know this, or what the actual true cheapest monthly cost is, unless they happen to catch the small text in the banner at the top while it’s flipping between different messages, or the bullet point next to the green tick on only some of the product pages. Even then, they have to either calculate it themselves manually, or go through the entire checkout process, or have an existing subscription and mess around with it for a couple minutes.
- Solution: Show a comparison for each product between one-off, subscription, and subscription with ÂŁ85+. This would give new and existing customers knowledge of and clear incentive to maintain a regular monthly subscription.
Communication:
- Huel’s communication is by far the best I’ve ever seen in a company. I’m only referring to the growing trend in vilifying processed foods, and Steven Bartlett’s recent podcast. Just seems extremely odd for a podcast sponsored by Huel, an ultra-processed food, ran by Steven who’s quickly becoming the face of Huel, to have a podcast released that drives people away from Huel, then not challenge it, or get in front of it, or educate about this topic more, etc. Steven interviewed a guy heavily slating processed/ultra-processed foods in-depth for an hour and a half, without discussing Huel at all, challenging the vilification of processed foods/UPFs, or showing the good and bad. The podcast was great and it’s excellent that we’re critiquing UPFs, but the conflict with Huel was clear.
- The YouTube video has 2600 comments, many criticising Huel and/or Steven for this, some thinking Steven is going to drop Huel or that Huel is now considered junk food/bad. A friend of mine who loves Steven showed me streams of comments on Facebook and Instagram about the backlash, thought it was really strange, and avoids Huel now. If you hover over the seek bar, it shows the most replayed part is when Steven cut to a quick promotion of Huel. A family member recently took out a Huel subscription, saw this podcast, bought Chris’s book, then cancelled Huel.
- Steven is influential and I think this situation could have been handled a lot better. Besides the podcast, search “Huel” on YouTube and see many other popular videos slating it. Ultimately, Huel has excellent marketing and does touch on the UPF element sometimes, but I feel there is significant need to communicate the UPF element more clearly and transparently to help educate people more, particularly in succinct, digestible, widely available ways (e.g. not Substack or a newsletter).
- Solution: Get James Collier, Julian Hearn, or someone similar on Diary of a CEO to discuss this fairly, accurately and in-depth – I would personally love to see this! Do a follow-up with Chris about it. Release more content on YouTube, socials, ads or the website about ultra-processed foods. Have people from Huel on other podcasts talking about it in-depth rather than just promoting it. Release more studies about people using Huel partially or 100%. Talk about specific nutrients or processing methods that position Huel far better than the majority of the food industry. Something along these lines that address both the fair critique and vilification of ultra-processed foods, and mindset of Huel being junk food, so people are more educated and aware. Articles in a newsletter can be good, but this is locked away to people only subscribed and actively reading Huel’s emails. Over a million people watched the podcast, more across other platforms, with many thousands of people commenting across all platforms – those are the people that need to be reached.
Appreciate you feeding back! Of course let me know if I can clarify anything