Here is a question I keep coming back to in conversations with food and drink founders. Does your product actually taste the way you think it does?
Not to unsettle you. But because of something I keep noticing, and I think it is worth talking about honestly.
Today, I want to talk about blind spots.
What happens to your brain when you taste something too many times?
Think about how many times you have tested your own product. Hundreds? More? You have lived with this formula through every version, every tweak, every iteration. You know it completely.
And here is what makes that a problem. The brain, when exposed to the same taste repeatedly, stops processing it the way it did the first time. It fills in the gaps. It anticipates. You are no longer tasting your product objectively. You are tasting your memory of it.
You care more about this product than anyone. You have put real time, money and belief into it. Of course it tastes right to you. But what does someone picking it up for the very first time actually experience? That is the question that determines whether they come back.
The orange and mango that wasn't
After a talk at a recent event, a founder came to me just before heading into a pitch with retailers and investors. They asked for an honest assessment of two products.
The first was an orange and mango drink. The orange was exceptional: fresh, juicy, genuinely impressive. The mango was completely absent. Not subtle, not quiet. Simply not there.
The second was lemon and raspberry. Again, the lemon was vivid and clean. Where the raspberry should have been, there was a vague fruit note that could have been anything. Certainly not raspberry.
This founder was about to walk into a room and invite people to taste an orange and mango product, and a lemon and raspberry product. If the people in that room noticed the same thing I did, the disappointment would have been immediate. Not because the product was bad. Because it did not deliver what it promised.
It is not always a missing flavour
Sometimes the issue is not an absent note but something more subtle. A balance that feels slightly off. A base that is pulling the flavour somewhere unexpected. A note that builds in an unpleasant way the more you consume.
I tasted a savoury snack at the same event, made from ancient grains with a strong earthy base. The founder had done exactly the right thing: they looked at what was performing in the category and matched the most popular flavour profiles. Some of them worked well and helped manage the earthiness. But the plain salted option let the base take over entirely.
With a snack, the whole point is that you keep going. It is meant to be moreish. But the earthiness was building with every handful in a way that made you want to stop, not continue. A small adjustment, moving away from a neutral profile towards something with more cut-through, would have changed the experience completely.
They could not feel it anymore because they had been too close to it for too long.
How to get the feedback that actually helps
The most valuable feedback comes from your target consumers, not your friends and family. The people who care about you will often soften their response to protect your feelings, and they may not even be the person you are trying to reach.
Find your target consumer where they actually shop: a market, a pop-up, a sampling event. And when you do, reframe the interaction. Instead of a sales moment, treat it as genuine research. Offer two or three versions of the product and ask them to help you decide. When people feel responsible for the outcome, the feedback shifts. They stop worrying about being kind and start being honest, because now it matters.
Involving consumers directly in your development is consistently where the most useful data comes from.
Awareness is always the starting point
If you have found yourself wondering what your product tastes like to someone encountering it for the very first time, that question alone is worth taking seriously.
The blind spots you cannot see are usually the ones doing the most damage, quietly, before a retailer raises them or a review makes it visible.
If you want an honest, objective assessment before you pitch, reformulate or invest further in development, the Flavour MOT gives you exactly that. Professional tasting notes, a clear breakdown of what is working and what needs attention, and practical next steps from someone tasting your product with completely fresh eyes.
Because the truth about what your product tastes like is always more useful than what familiarity tells you. Book your Flavour MOT here. And if you are a Tastebuds member you can get 25% off your Flavour MOT, in the offer section on your portal!
