General Mills Delivers Speedy New Product Success
At General Mills (www.generalmills.com), open innovation allows the company to leverage the many advantages smaller nimble companies exploit to facilitate speed to market. Many times these small companies rely on intuition to launch a great idea. The Nature Valley Bistro Cups is a perfect example of how General Mills drew on its internal expertise and tapped in to external expertise to launch a unique product for its consumers.
General Mills had dabbled in hot oatmeal products in the early 90’s with Undercover Bears and Total Oatmeal Swirlers. The products were simple and convenient — just add hot water and enjoy. Fast-forward 20-plus years and the need for a convenient and nutritious breakfast still exists.
According to Dena Strehlow, a 20-year R&D Technology manager and Innovation entrepreneur at General Mills, the time was right to revisit the possibility of bringing back hot cereal to the product line, this time in an entirely new and relevant way.
Research showed that more than 20 million U.S. households use a single serve beverage brewer, which busy consumers were using in order to maximize their mornings and make their coffee on the fly. However, consumers still desired a healthy breakfast, which was still often going by the wayside due to the morning rush.
With the popularity of single serve brewers and a solid understanding of the consumer’s rushed morning, the innovation team knew there could be an opportunity for a food product to meet this consumer’s need. Oatmeal immediately came to mind and this simple idea could actually bring more utility to this increasingly popular kitchen appliance.
“Many consumers spend $2 to $3 for a cup of oatmeal from the drive-thru with their cup of coffee in the morning,” says Strehlow. “This product would make having coffee and oatmeal more convenient, more affordable, and bring more utility to a kitchen appliance many consumers already own.”
Once the team started to think outside the box, realizing this machine is not just for coffee — the ideas starting flowing.
Strehlow explains, “With more and more people using single serve brewers, it only made sense for us to start looking at how consumers could use this appliance not just for beverages, but for food, too.”
Using the company’s open innovation network and tools, Strehlow connected with a leading flavor developer to create the optimal spice and flavor recipe, and external supply chain partners to initiate conversations about packaging options.
The team quickly came up with an oatmeal prototype and decided to go out and learn from its consumers.
General Mills set up a “Lemonade Stand” in two Minneapolis-area retail outlets to demo and sell the product. This would help the team gauge consumer interest in a great-tasting oatmeal made with a single-serve brewer.
Strehlow and the team knew they were on to something when huge crowds started to gather around the demo stand. “It truly felt like a ‘state fair moment.’ Shortly after that, the store manager pulled me aside and said, ‘We have to carry your product’,” says Strehlow. “The success of the Lemonade Stand is a huge part of why the product went on to launch.”
The results of the “Lemonade Stand” armed the team with early experimentation data, better consumer insights and huge learnings that helped direct packaging, flavor offerings, price and product placement. The team was encouraged by the positive results from the product demo and was very motivated to bring this idea to market quickly.
General Mills launched the product on Amazon.com and quickly gained distribution with other major retailers.
For a large company like General Mills, this consumer interaction represents a paradigm shift. While entrepreneurs and smaller companies often rely on face-to-face consumer feedback to drive their new product launches at every stage of development, larger corporations like General Mills typically follow a traditional, gated process and use analytic or qualitative tools to determine which new ideas will be pursued and which will be tabled.
“Being first to market certainly has benefits, but it also comes with the responsibility to educate consumers,” says Brian Tockman, senior manager for New Business Models with General Mills 301 Inc. “Having our team interact directly with consumers in a real-word environment greatly improved our insight and intuition on the project — that’s how we prefer to work because we feel we can be smarter and deliver products that better match what consumers want.”
General Mills was the first company to launch a food product for a single serve brewer and Nature Valley Bistro Cups is still the only hot oatmeal available for the Keurig. The product proved to be a natural fit for the Nature Valley brand. That, partnered with the growing business and adoption of single serve brewer machines, resulted in a successful launch of a product that was an instant hit with consumers and sold out on Amazon the first day.
General Mills had dabbled in hot oatmeal products in the early 90’s with Undercover Bears and Total Oatmeal Swirlers. The products were simple and convenient — just add hot water and enjoy. Fast-forward 20-plus years and the need for a convenient and nutritious breakfast still exists.
According to Dena Strehlow, a 20-year R&D Technology manager and Innovation entrepreneur at General Mills, the time was right to revisit the possibility of bringing back hot cereal to the product line, this time in an entirely new and relevant way.
Research showed that more than 20 million U.S. households use a single serve beverage brewer, which busy consumers were using in order to maximize their mornings and make their coffee on the fly. However, consumers still desired a healthy breakfast, which was still often going by the wayside due to the morning rush.
With the popularity of single serve brewers and a solid understanding of the consumer’s rushed morning, the innovation team knew there could be an opportunity for a food product to meet this consumer’s need. Oatmeal immediately came to mind and this simple idea could actually bring more utility to this increasingly popular kitchen appliance.
“Many consumers spend $2 to $3 for a cup of oatmeal from the drive-thru with their cup of coffee in the morning,” says Strehlow. “This product would make having coffee and oatmeal more convenient, more affordable, and bring more utility to a kitchen appliance many consumers already own.”
Once the team started to think outside the box, realizing this machine is not just for coffee — the ideas starting flowing.
Strehlow explains, “With more and more people using single serve brewers, it only made sense for us to start looking at how consumers could use this appliance not just for beverages, but for food, too.”
Using the company’s open innovation network and tools, Strehlow connected with a leading flavor developer to create the optimal spice and flavor recipe, and external supply chain partners to initiate conversations about packaging options.
The team quickly came up with an oatmeal prototype and decided to go out and learn from its consumers.
General Mills set up a “Lemonade Stand” in two Minneapolis-area retail outlets to demo and sell the product. This would help the team gauge consumer interest in a great-tasting oatmeal made with a single-serve brewer.
Strehlow and the team knew they were on to something when huge crowds started to gather around the demo stand. “It truly felt like a ‘state fair moment.’ Shortly after that, the store manager pulled me aside and said, ‘We have to carry your product’,” says Strehlow. “The success of the Lemonade Stand is a huge part of why the product went on to launch.”
The results of the “Lemonade Stand” armed the team with early experimentation data, better consumer insights and huge learnings that helped direct packaging, flavor offerings, price and product placement. The team was encouraged by the positive results from the product demo and was very motivated to bring this idea to market quickly.
General Mills launched the product on Amazon.com and quickly gained distribution with other major retailers.
For a large company like General Mills, this consumer interaction represents a paradigm shift. While entrepreneurs and smaller companies often rely on face-to-face consumer feedback to drive their new product launches at every stage of development, larger corporations like General Mills typically follow a traditional, gated process and use analytic or qualitative tools to determine which new ideas will be pursued and which will be tabled.
“Being first to market certainly has benefits, but it also comes with the responsibility to educate consumers,” says Brian Tockman, senior manager for New Business Models with General Mills 301 Inc. “Having our team interact directly with consumers in a real-word environment greatly improved our insight and intuition on the project — that’s how we prefer to work because we feel we can be smarter and deliver products that better match what consumers want.”
General Mills was the first company to launch a food product for a single serve brewer and Nature Valley Bistro Cups is still the only hot oatmeal available for the Keurig. The product proved to be a natural fit for the Nature Valley brand. That, partnered with the growing business and adoption of single serve brewer machines, resulted in a successful launch of a product that was an instant hit with consumers and sold out on Amazon the first day.