2022 flavor development recap

December 26, 2022

Here's our year in pudge flavors --

2022 flavors

# of new flavors: 6
# of updated flavors: 7
total flavors: 20

Here's the ranking based on average sales --

Notables:

- Although cornflake pudge is not for everyone, it fared quite decently (read: it didn't flop). If you missed it, it's a very modern sweet-salty cookie with tons of complexity. We'll absolutely bring it back.

- Batchero Deucer (our take on Ferrero Rocher) never got the time of day. We released it for Valentine's day, but it should've been a Fall release. We tried to see if we could launch it in the fall, but there was too much going on. Either way, we're going to tuck it away for a while. This flavor's crux is the wafer texture. While I was able to nail the milk chocolate & hazelnut-forward flavor, it was nearly impossible to achieve that delicate yet crisp wafer mouthfeel.

- Didn't expect pumpkin spice to be so unloved this year. I tested the recipe before launching it, and it was DELIGHTFUL as usual, needing no changes. Perhaps just a lack of marketing on my part.

- Last year, the top requests were for fruity flavors, and you guys received it well! Pink lemonade, key lime, strawberries 'n cream all ranked decently.

- SO much love for gingy pudge. While it doesn't show up in rankings, it seems to be the cult favorite this year - thanks for rallying for the newest flavor in the lineup!

Most Difficult Flavors:

Gingy pudge: spiced cookies are not to be taken lightly. Here’s what was critical: spice selection, spice ratios, and sourcing.
Red velvet: updated again for the 3rd time - a notoriously tricky cookie due to its high moisture content (buttermilk & vinegar are responsible for that “red velvet tang”).
Cornflake: composing a sweet-salty cookie that’s not too over-the-top was incredibly tricky. It took a long time to find the right mix of ingredients. Still, I’d like to update the cornflake crunch next in 2.0 so it stays crunchier for longer.
Ube dulcey: finding the right match for ube in dulcey chocolate took a long time. I had tried dulcey chocolate (caramelized white chocolate), but it wasn’t until later that I put the two flavors together.

Failed pudges, in no particular order:

black sesame w/ pb center (will continue testing in Q1 2023)
apple (will continue again later - we’ve tried & failed 2-3x already)
peanut butter w/ black sesame filling (will pursue black sesame w/ pb center instead)
peach cobbler (peach flavor doesn’t come through well in cookie format)
orange cream (flavor was over the top; might consider in the future)
reverse pb&j (grape outer, pb center - would only consider pb&j in the future)
milo java chip (didn’t like this combo)
chocolate & vanilla malt milkshake (milo outer; horlicks center - beautiful cookie, but sadly the flavors weren’t a perfect match)
hojicha brown sugar (would try again, but maybe as hojicha latte)

count: 9

Looking forward to 2023:

We spent a lot of time updating flavors this year. Updates are typically optimizations rather than deal-breaking features. I’d like to spend less time making updates, and more time on new flavors.
In particular, I’d like to work on new types of fillings - jam, cream fillings, etc.
As the menu is skewed towards the fall, we’re looking to change the cadence of the menu changes so that we have a completely different menu every two months. We're (tentatively) planning for chocolate chip pudge to be the only year-round flavor, and keep everything else as a seasonal item - and have most flavors get on the menu twice a year (except, of course, for things like coal pudge, which is designed for the fall).
My fear is that we'll only be putting out a few new flavors a year as I'll commit to more difficult flavors, but thankfully we have a solid lineup of flavors to fall back on.

Thank you as always for reading and supporting us! We really love tinkering with the pudges :) We've sent out a survey over email & Instagram stories to get your input on flavors, menu cadence, etc - we look forward to your feedback!