I saw a recent discussion regarding NHS staff discounts, how about a student discount? Surely this makes more sense than an NHS discount (although both are great ideas). Students are a great target audience for Huel, since we need a convenient and cost effective way to eat, something which university often prohibits! I have been promoting Huel to other students at my university (after they’ve seen the shaker) only to be a little put off by the price.
A simple way to do it would be to have the student confirm their academic email address as their order email address or something of that sort.
Students are obviously a massive market for us so a discount seems appropriate. Confirming email addresses still involves a huge amount of manual work for us. We also don’t have the ability to apply discount retrospectively without conducting a partial refund, which seems a bit convoluted. The forces discount works because it is the company that vets people not us, therefore you can only access the discount on the website if you have been vetted and approved.
We will consider it but confirming emails isn’t the way forward.
I’m also a student that has recently discovered Huel. Other students are usually fairly receptive but price is the usual stumbling block I run into during my conversion attempts!
I know that many companies such as ASOS and Spotify use the UNiDAYS website to verify student status so maybe that could be an option?
Absolutely! There does seem to be a trend of offering many different types of discounts (Forces, NHS, emergency service, civil service, student) we try and keep the price of Huel low whilst balancing that with high quality ingredients. We already offer bulk discounts, refer a friend discounts, subscription discounts for everyone. Generally we don’t like discount codes because they get shared with people who are not eligible for them on discount code websites.
I guess the problem is just perception. Huel is cheaper overall than regular food but the thought of paying £45 up front in one bulk payment probably sounds a lot to a student. I assume the reason that you can buy a minimum of two bags at a time is to keep delivery and packaging costs down?
Since it becomes cheaper the more you buy, you could encourage your friends to team up and buy a bulk load of it and split the costs? Buying 8 bags on a subscription is a significant saving.
I’m not sure it is just perception. Are you maybe forgetting the realities of a student budget?
Whilst Huel is certainly cheaper than buying lunch from Pret, it’s possible to eat much more cheaply than £5.80 a day (i.e. the £1.45/meal of 8 bags) and many students do (e.g. cereal, home-made sandwiches and beans on toast will be £2 max). I’m happy to pay a bit more for the benefits of Huel but your average student may not be.
True, but I don’t think it’s fair to compare Huel to cheap crap with virtually no nutritional value. If you were considering Huel it’s probably because you’re bothered about eating a healthy diet. And your only other alternative if you’ve already decided to do this is to buy fresh food that’ll probably cost as much if not more than Huel. I agree a student discount would probably be a good thing, but I could only imagine it being 10% or something at most.
It’s good to see all the replies. I do think the UNIDAYS method is ideal for verifying the discount. I agree with fact that £1.45 for a healthy meal is great but I’m just talking from experience at my university that most people are put off a little bit with the minimum £45 spend, but are very keen to try Huel. I think the 10% discount would certainly attract more custom, albeit at a reduced profit for you but I think the increased custom would certainly outweigh the £4.50 “loss” per customer.
From a long-term business point of view, even if Huel were only to break even on student orders, chances are those students would continue buying at full cost after graduation, and then there’s the added value of brand exposure.
Definitely agree with this, loads of companies use unidays and the brand exposure on there would be great for you. Especially if you started with a ‘limited time only’ offer so you’d be featured. I’d suggest running this in September due to student loans being paid…
With all due respect there are far more deserving people that should be given a discount, if students got a discount before forces and emergency services I would be furious. Besides, Huel is cheaper than food already.
tbh, its not really going to be about who is deserving or not. It will probably be about who is the more valuable audience to reach.
That being said, I think there is more value in the NHS audience. The NHS audience will promote an image of Huel as a scientific and healthy food stuff. Most of us trust our doctors and nurses views or just about anything diet related (regardless of whether they have the expertises to actually know about it). Students, on the other hand, are frontrunners in the lands of crap diets.
Yes, eventually those students will graduate, and maybe start buying Huel at full price. But that’s a long way off. A discounted Huel will never beat the cheapest of student meals anyway (yes I know that would not be a healthy meal, but many of us cretins do not feel obliged to eat healthy).
If my uni days are anything to go by one also needs to factor in the cost of using Tesco Value Cider and the cheapest alco-pops on the planet to mix it with instead of tap water.
“lol hun got so wasted last night on three biiiiiiig Huel scoops with that Lidl Bacardi that I fell into the river by the co-op and woke up a mile away with a cat and traffic cone but the police gave me a free ride back from under the bridge and promised not to tell mum lol xx”
It’s a business, not a charity. The purpose of a discount isn’t to reward people for being heroes, it’s to encourage more business. Students, on the whole, are living off loan money, part time jobs and parent’s good will. If they can’t afford it they’re lost customers. Emergency services, vital as they are, are at least in full time employment and can afford to feed themselves anyway. Fair enough they deserve more than they get, but like people have already pointed out, Huel is already cheaper than equivalent healthy fresh food.
