November's Company update: a busy month.

What did we do last month?

Ready launch - At the beginning of this month, we announced the start of the Ready “Berry Good” pre-sales. For almost four weeks, people interested in the newest complete food innovation were able to pre-order Ready instant oat meal at a reduced price. Once we had reached 5.000 meals sold, we would also launch a second Ready flavour: "Carrot Break". And yes, we did reach this goal! Moreover, we pre-sold 7.677 meals to 222 complete food enthusiasts. What about you, are you ready for Ready?

Improving our love letters - We have been working on our current email system to provide you with the most relevant and also nice-to-read information. One of the emails we sent out automagically is the tracking email. Most of you appreciate the pop-culture themed emails telling you we’ve received your order and that we’re working hard to get it to your doorstep. You’ll probably find some new and enjoyable iterations on this email in your inbox once you’ve placed a new order.

The return of Spectacular Speculoos - For the past two years, Spectacular Speculoos made its return around the time of Sinterklaas (Dutch Santa) and falling leaves. Also this year, we’ve decided to make this - quite popular - Limited Edition available again. At the time of writing, we have about a week’s worth of inventory before we sell out again. So head over to the product page if you’re interested in trying out (or stocking up on) this festive flavour.

Why bulk packaging? - We received many questions about the motivation behind our 3-meal packaging instead of single serve or bulk packaging. Our explanation can be found here, but in short: we’re not going to change our packaging-sizes in the near future. Since most of the respondents on the forum preferred bulk packaging we’ve investigated what the main motivation for bulk packaging would be.

Most of our customers assumed that it would be cheaper, 25% would want it because of the environmental impact and almost 20% thinks it’s more convenient to use. We’ll still look at the possibilities but we want you to know that bulk packaging won’t necessarily result in a cheaper pricing. We’ve got a very well-optimised production set up with our 3-meal packaging, of which the packaging is a very low part of the total product price. So a bulk packaging wouldn’t really translate in a ‘bulk discount’.

Single serve gifts - Another question published on the dashboard was to find out if customers would be interested in gifting single serve pouches to friends or family, besides our current gift system, Since the majority of you answered ‘no’ to this question, this isn’t something we are going to implement.

Venture Café - Health, Wellbeing and Food - Thursday the 29th of November we were participating at Venture Café Rotterdam. A weekly hosted networking event at CIC, the Cambridge Innovation Center. This evening guests were able to hear everything about Ready and its benefits. Also, we were handing out tickets for our Ready Ride - an offline promotion for Ready on the 20th of December.

If you happen to be living in the Netherlands, then quickly hop over to the Facebook Event, let us know you’ll be there and a freshly served Ready will be waiting for you that morning, free of charge!

Pricing update - We've updated the pricing of Queal. Our goal for the update is to make the pricing more transparent and easier to understand. We've updated the shipping prices (lower for many countries), removed the confusing bulk discounts, and increased the subscription discount to 15%. In this blog, we explain each of these changes and add some examples to highlight what it would mean in different scenarios. In the near future we’ll be working on improving the communication of this pricing, as well as shipping costs and -times throughout the website.

What are we currently working on?

Go bar Dark Chocolate - The dark chocolate Go bar is currently out of stock, only subscription holders will receive the last of them in the coming days. As you might have seen on our socials on World Vegan Day, the Go bar Dark Chocolate will make its return next year, completely vegan! We’re currently eating some test-samples at the office, and are happy with the results. It’s very hard to give a definitive estimate for when we might have them ready to go and sell, but we’re tentatively putting it at April 2019.

Ready production - Both “Berry Good” and “Carrot Break” are being produced this week. Our estimated time of shipment for the pre-orderers of Ready is the end of this week, or early next week. We’ll keep you updated on the production and shipment to make sure you know what to expect. If you pre-ordered, you should have gotten an email to ask you about your flavour-preferences!

Developing a new dashboard - Behind the scenes we are hard at work to make a new and improved dashboard. The dashboard is a unique feature of Queal that comes up a lot in customer interviews as being a really great addition to our services.

There are some problems with it, however. It doesn’t really work well on mobile. It can also be annoyingly slow to load if you have a larger number of orders. The look of the dashboard is also not really in line with the rest of our website and branding, and there are some UX design issues that could use improving. We’re looking to solve all of the above with a complete overhaul of the Queal Dashboard. The new dashboard will have the same functionalities you are already familiar with but also some exciting new functions that we’ll announce when we have a bit more of an idea of the timeline to implementation.

Improving website performance - Through live-testing and interviews with customers, we’re improving our website usability and performance bit by bit. One of the things we’re currently working on is a (new) company page, this will be live by the end of 2018. We’re also working on a new Queal shop page, which will replace the current overview page, and the individual product pages. You may already start seeing some bits and pieces of the improvements live on the website right now.

Do you have any feedback to share about the website? Don’t be shy and leave us a message via email or through the dashboard feedback system.

Queal Ready Ride - On the 20th of December, early morning, a yellow Queal tram will drive through the city of Rotterdam. During this tram ride, it’s possible to try our newest product: Ready for free. Head over to the Facebook Event to let us know if you’ll be there and make sure to claim your free breakfast!

What are our future plans?

Improve Limited Edition line-up - A year full of Limited Editions has passed by and it’s time to think of another round of interesting flavours. We’re aiming to launch one Limited Edition per month every month and this will probably be a combination of new variations and old favourites. Via the dashboard or forum, a poll will appear to pick your favourites or to make some suggestions for new flavours.

Run product pilots - We’ve got some awesome new product ideas and we thought it would be fun to launch these ideas among some lucky customers first. The beta test of Ready showed us how valuable (and fun) it is to get the product tested by some enthusiastic Quealers and thereafter make some final changes. Keep an eye on your inbox and find out if you’re among the lucky few to try out something new!