Choosing which free-from food ideas belong on a roadmap

The question

A free-from range has to serve two audiences at once: people who must avoid certain ingredients, and people who choose to.

The brand had plenty of ideas. What it needed was a clear way to decide which spaces to build in, which ideas to develop and which concepts deserved a place on its roadmap.

Our approach

We ran the pipeline as a funnel, and brought the client team in at every point where it narrowed, so each choice was made together.

It opened wide, with a map of where the free-from market offered room to grow and a documented bank of product ideas across several categories. Where the bank ran thin, we filled the gaps deliberately.

The most promising ideas became full concepts, screened with people who avoid those ingredients. Each concept was shown only to shoppers open to its category, so every reaction came from someone who might buy it.

Volume estimates set each concept against products already on sale, so a new idea was compared with the real shelf as well as with the other concepts, under the conditions of the test.

What the team came away with

Innovation leadership had a pipeline roadmap built on one body of evidence, from the growth map and the idea bank through to the concept screening.

The idea bank was organized by category, so the team could come back to it as the roadmap moved on.