General Mills is following consumer driven food trends with its line-up of products launching this summer around the world.
Many of the new products closely align with increasing consumer interest in wellness, convenience, and snacking including new Yoplait Greek 2% Whips!, Nature Valley Nut & Seed Crunchy Granola Bars, Annie’s organic cereal, Old El Paso Mini Taco Boats, Totino’s Pizza Sticks and Häägen-Dazs Stick Bars.
“We’re in a period of very rapid change in the food industry. And consumers are very clear about what they want – simple ingredient lists, free from artificial colors and flavors, free from gluten, less sugar, less sodium, more convenience. This translates into very a clear set of growth opportunities for us,” said Ken Powell, General Mills Chairman and Chief Executive Officer.
“We’ve challenged ourselves to go out and really understand our consumers, get into their homes, shop alongside them and listen to what they want. These interactions allow us to build greater intuition, which helps us move much faster. Our new product line up demonstrates our ability to listen and respond.”
To keep pace with the changing needs of consumers and to deliver new products to market faster than before, General Mills has disrupted its approach to innovation.
“In order to support the growth we’ve planned, we have moved toward a more entrepreneurial approach to new product development, which not only speeds innovation, but helps us put our consumers first and deliver exciting, relevant new products that meet consumer needs and drive topline growth,” said Peter Erickson, executive vice president of Innovation, Technology and Quality.
One of the ways the company is doing this is through “lemonade stands,” where product development teams go into business for a day with a product concept, setting up a table to interact with people – whether at a cooking school, a farmers market, a fitness center or even a traditional grocery store. Lemonade stands allow teams to more quickly test new product ideas with consumers and capture learnings earlier in the new product development process.
In many cases the company’s new development processes have increased speed to market from about 24 months to less than 12 months.
