late last year @Anastasia asked What do you want JimmyJoy to do in 2022? in the General Discussion and it’s received a nice amount of replies. I suggested a protein powder and to my very delight they are working on just such a product.
This sparked my curiosity and I was wondering if JimmyJoy (JJ) could open their doors so to speak and let us know how they come up with a new product. I am mean from the idea to ready product. What is needed? who is involved (what kind of specialists)? what do you actually do?
I’d really appreciate it if you shared some of your research and development practices. And don’t worry, I am not a mole from a JJ competitor
Happy to give you a little sneak peek into our development process! The first and foremost thing we try to do is listen to our customers - which is why we’re regularly in touch gauging new ideas through the forum, our newsletters, social media etc.
Whenever a “new” idea pops up, this is usually something we’ve already been discussing for quite a while internally as well. Multiple departments are involved in this:
our R&D team that consists of food technologists/nutritionists/dieticians → how can we get the new product in a nutritionally complete format with all the right health claims etc.
our Marketing team → market & competitor analysis, marketing strategy etc.
our Operations team → production timeline / stock distribution etc.
After these ideas have been confirmed by the initial interest of our customers, we usually follow up with a more in-depth survey to gather more data from our customers on a larger scale to verify the idea.
When successful, we start development and planning production - which can be anywhere from a few months for a new flavour, to over a year for a completely new product. For some flavours we nail it the first or second time (very rare though), other flavours or new products need 10+ iterations before seeing the day of light
Once everything’s produced and we’re happy with the final product it’s marketing’s turn to come up with some mouthwatering content and cool campaigns for the actual launch and voila, a new JJ product is born!
this is great insight I like the way the process is split up between departments, it makes sense.
Maybe one follow up question. Could please describe what guides the R&D team in their research and work? What do they consider? What is a no-go or tabu of sorts? Where are the ethical boundaries.
I like the way the process is split up between departments, it makes sense.