The trial thing is odd. I’ve wasted a fair bit of money with Huel discovering that sucralose is the devils work (in as much as I hate the taste of it, but Huel go very heavy on it in many products). I get that trial samples don’t last long enough to give you a full impression, but at the very least it would at tell you if you have a fundamental issue with the taste.
I could very easily have quit at the very start, £40 out of pocket, if I hadn’t happened to have ordered U/U as well, which was a game changer in terms of me modifying each drink to personal taste.
Trials are particularly important with RTDs as it’s incredibly unlikely anyone is going to modify the flavour as they do with powder. I have a fridge full of Saturo, it tastes really, really lovely, but it makes me feel so dehydrated I rarely take it out with me as I’d need the equivalent amount of bottled water to drink every time as well.
I’m all for trials. Especially if they get you the option to customize the pack or give you all the options there. Runtime’s or Shake2day’s are good examples of good priced bundles that allow you to try everything.
But it is also true that they produce more waste. They require another item in your shop, and perhaps another manufacturing process (in terms of bags) for Huel. Plus, we do not really know how many people were buying the sample packs.
At the end of the day, even if we think something is useful is about money and profitability. Huel may think that is not the time now.
The problem here is that samples don’t really help much. Anyone who is going into a meal replacement product for the right reasons knows they’re going to need to try it for a few weeks anyway to see if it works for them and if they feel any healthier/better.
Anyone who is “just gonna give it a try” isn’t likely to like the taste well enough to continue… so giving someone a trial pack isn’t likely to change whether they become a user.
Having said that, the existence of trial packs may changes which product someone going into it for the first time tries first, and if you might be happy with any of them, but you try product X first due to having a sample pack, you’re probably also psychologically more likely to stick with that one.
I think it’s just YFood with a decent taster pack at the moment, but they don’t have any worries around taste because they’re milk based, so it’s unlikely people are going to need any time to adjust to them.
I’m not so sure. The cheapest way into Huel is over £40, that’s a hell of a risk financially for a lot of people. I’d love to try the bars but not at nearly £30. If I could order a much smaller trial pack I might be a regular subscriber by now.
And as mentioned earlier in this thread, if I’d purchased two lots of vanilla for my first order that would’ve been game over straight away. It was sheer luck that I ordered u/u and I’m now a fully paid up subscriber.
A £10 pack would give you a working weeks worth of lunchtime meals, that’s a pretty decent trial in terms of evaluating flavour and getting used to the idea of a liquid lunch.
I would imagine that a manufacturer that is more comfortable about the first impression of the product will make trial packs available, counting on people getting hooked. While manufacturers with products less easy-to-like might prefer to have the customer commit to a bigger pack. I’d be surprised if they don’t choose one strategy or another after some heavy consideration.
Anyway: Huel, while Soylent attacks your base, maybe you should start attacking Australia! We’re here waitinnnnnggggg!
