Jelaia plans to start up the launch of its line of jelled desserts with three fruit flavors.

Offering a minimum of three flavors was decided on purpose:

• Substantial offering gives brand more depth ;
• Choice empowers consumers.

Finding the right flavor is a critical task for a food start-up. A brand must ensure the flavors will be accepted by the merciless market. A market study and some research can determine the most popular flavors.

We found that strawberry and raspberry are the most preferred flavors according to a recent national survey of 1500 consumers. Further market research helped find out that sweet cherry was also a top flavor amongst US consumers.

Since exotic flavors are also prized, we decided to spice-up our cherry flavor with pomegranate.

Based on this, Jelaia will first launch a strawberry, a raspberry and a dark sweet cherry-pomegranate jelled desserts. We can’t wait for you to try it!

After weeks of our own trial and error in the kitchen, it was time to put our jello out for real-world palates to taste.

We wanted this tasting to be professional, and respect the time and comments of our panel. Only after the tasting did we turn the event into a wine and pizza party :)
So we set this up nicely. We printed out forms to fill, with comment boxes for flavors, sweetness, texture, and others for packaging, logo comments. We used the office space as a quiet island of reflection for our guests. Yet each group of three was allowed to talk to each other to foster ideas.

The participants were extremely interested in this product development, and all gave some very insightful comments. If we take the 80% of the bell curve (excluding people who have extreme tastes and requests) we got a very good idea of what we needed to tweak to get:
-          A soft texture
-          A strong flavor
-          A balance of sweetness/tartness

I believe we now have a very compelling jello product. It is a very tasty dessert, and its all-natural properties will be a hit with the organic/vegan seekers. Thank you to all who could attend our New York debut, we’ll make sure you receive a case when we are in production!

Next up: onward with the packaging…

Jelaia held two focus groups this Fall 2008.

To understand how important focus groups are, let’s first share the Wikipedia’s definition of it: “[...] a form of qualitative research in which a group of people is asked about their attitude towards a product, [...] concept, idea, or packaging. Questions are asked in an interactive group setting where participants are free to talk with other group members.”

The Jelaia desserts’ recipes were first made according to our own taste. But how can we make sure it meets the market’s taste? Because the market is unmercifully right as it either adopts or rejects products outright, we have to listen to it.

We gathered a group of people who were asked to try our samples out in small groups of three, isolated in a room to prevent any outside influence.

The result of those focus groups, being held one month away one from another to have time to tweak the recipes, was critical to help us get the “market formulation”.

We of course made sure to gather a group of tasters of various ethnic backgrounds representative of the American market. Also included were a few Chefs (from the Daniel Boulud kitchen…) and food writers.

We listened to everybody to a certain extent to avoid common pitfalls: We received a few “extreme” feedback and we know that participants can also tend to be “too nice” so as to encourage us in our endeavor.
So market feedback must always be taken with relativity. What does matter here is the precious direction which the market clearly gave us in terms of fruit flavoring, sweetness, texture, color, aftertaste, as well as pricing, packaging, and logo.

We are doing our best to develop the recipes in a professional manner, and ensure that the resulting product will always reflect this high standard.

Fred told me very early about this new idea of jelled fruit juice product. I think he wanted to get my opinion both on the food aspect as well as the business side, as I also have a natural bend for entrepreneurship.

I met Frederic last year in 2007, as I was launching a gourmet web-store called Savorique.com. At that time it was started with chocolate products: confections, truffles, hot chocolate… I needed to convince the first partners to believe in the concept of a online marketplace. Chefs are very protective of their products, and don’t like their brand to be next to their competitors. But Frederic, then at MarieBelle, is forward thinking and saw that customers were moving to comparison shopping on the web. He allowed me to offer the company’s products in this new sales channel for them, and this was a major push in getting the store up and running. It was a good move since MarieBelle became the #1 selling brand on Savorique, and Savorique was MarieBelle’s #1 independent online account. This was the beginning of our collaboration.
We’re both very interested in food. I am from Lyon, France, which is a haut-lieu of French gastronomie and cuisine. It is full of traditional and modern restaurants and produce is locally grown in that region. I didn’t realize it as I grew up, but it did provide an innate respect and understanding for good, natural food.

When I heard about Jelaia, I was really interested in helping out. So we started working on testing recipes. We contacted the Chefs we knew, organized tastings with friends, and gathered what I call “public opinion”: What is the market’s taste? How do you feel about the textures, the colors, the flavors? What do you think of the packaging, the logo? If this was in a store, would you buy it? Tell us what’s good, tell us what’s not…

That’s also the philosophy behind our blog here on Jelaia.com. We will be as transparent as possible, and only ask that you do the same. We’ll continue to post our findings and questions, our rants and raves, our news and challenges. You are welcome to comment back as we’ll always welcome the opportunity to discuss and share.

Bonjour, Hello, Hola, こんにちは,

Born and raised in France, I moved to New York to better fulfill my career 4 years ago. I have always been into food and even became a light vegetarian at 15 of age. I say “light” because I still love fish… and chocolate. How rebellious of me.

I felt lucky to work in Manhattan as MarieBelle’s VP Sales & Marketing. Not only did the Owner inspired me with her wonderful packaging creation [really], I also got to review many products for market monitoring and research & development purposes and it opened my eyes to quite a few good foods I had not encountered before. In November 2007, I stumbled upon a fantastic Japanese jello. Why fantastic? It really tasted like fruits because it was all natural (a key criteria) and it was nested in a very cute and unique glass packaging. This day was a turning point in my career…

So I began buying the ingredients to make it myself in the kitchen. I managed to come up with a great, refreshing fruit juice-based jelled dessert which my gourmet friends tasted, helped me tweak, and finally loved!

The main lesson I retain from this whole experience lies in the power of observation which triggered a great deal of inspiration in my head: The product, the packaging, the brand name and the logo are all the direct result of what I learned from observing things carefully: a Japanese creation, my ex-boss’ talent, great marketing campaigns and strategies and so on. Business answers are often surrounding us.

Merci de me lire, Thanks for reading, Gracias por leer, ブログを読んで下さり、ありがとうございます。これからも、どうぞよろしく お願いいたします。

Fred
PS: my thanks to Cory, Sue, Reiko, Raquel, Najwa, Kiko, Simone, Maribel, Toyoko and Stephan