How we tested demand for frozen food in 4 days

Problem: A warehouse full of goods that no one knows

The client invested 214,300 PLN in a new production line and raw materials for venison dumplings. He had a product, but he lacked certainty whether sales reps should even offer it to retail chains in northern Poland. Often companies make the mistake of asking friends for opinions, which ends in a financial flop three months after the premiere. At Market Accelerator, we check facts in the field, because the margin counts, not the board's wishful thinking.

We agreed with the owner that we had exactly 96 hours to gather hard evidence from 14 points of sale in Olsztyn and Elbląg. We had to check if the customer would even notice the new packaging among the giants of the frozen food market. Time was running out because the printing house was waiting for the final signal to print 15,400 cardboard boxes. Every day of delay cost the company 1,240 PLN in machine downtime.

We check facts in the field because the margin counts, not the board's wishful thinking.

Action: 3 cities, 14 freezers, and 42 hours of observation

We sent three of our people to Olsztyn, Elbląg, and Ostróda. They didn't stand there with notebooks like officials; they observed the traffic at the freezers from 15:30 to 19:15, the peak hours for shopping after work. We analyzed the behavior of 387 customers who stopped by the frozen food section. No fluff—most people shop habitually, without looking around.

We noticed that the average decision time when choosing dumplings was only 11.4 seconds. If the packaging didn't show a concrete benefit in that time, the customer's hand moved toward a known brand. From idea to the first invoice, the road is short, provided you know what the average customer sees, rather than you as the company owner. By Thursday morning, we already had the first 47 honest opinions from people who actually held the product in their hands.

Results: Why 78.3% of people ignored the prototype

The data was ruthless but honest. Only 43 out of 387 people were interested enough in the new packaging to read the ingredients. The main problem? The text about natural ingredients was too small, which was noted by 64.2% of buyers in short conversations after leaving the checkout. People were looking for specifics, and they got a nice but illegible picture. Without any fluff, we told the client: change the graphic design now, or you will lose 87,600 PLN on product returns in the first quarter.

A quick correction of the front of the box on the third day of the test, which we did with temporary stickers, boosted interest to 21.7%. This was a signal that the product has potential but requires different communication. It also turned out that the price of 16.90 PLN was a psychological barrier. When we tested lowering it to 14.85 PLN (at the expense of a smaller margin but larger turnover), sales in the test stores increased by 38% in just 4 hours.

Change the graphic design now, or you will lose 87,600 PLN on returns.

Conclusions: Hard data instead of gut feeling

Instead of thick reports, the client received a spreadsheet with specifics on Friday at 16:45. He learned that the optimal starting price was 14.90 PLN. At the originally planned 16.50 PLN, projected sales fell by 34% compared to the market leader from Poznań. Thanks to this research, the processing plant avoided entering a dead end and adjusted the recipe to fit into a lower cost threshold without losing taste.

Since September 2016, we at Market Accelerator have been repeating the same thing: the market does not forgive mistakes based on gut feeling. The market loves numbers and facts. Our client from Dobre Miasto implemented the changes in 11 business days. Today his dumplings are available in 86 stores in the Warmian-Masurian Voivodeship, and returns do not exceed 2.4% of deliveries. This is a real result of our work in the field.