The collapses of Jnck Bakery and Urban Legend have sparked a wave of debate about whether there is genuine demand for “better-for-you” treats.
For me, that’s the wrong question. Health is the single biggest consumer driver of our time, not least with more than 1.5 million people in the UK already on weight-loss jabs. The appetite for healthier indulgence has never been stronger.
We see proof across categories. Halo Top reshaped the ice cream aisle by combining indulgence and permissibility in one tub. Grenade made protein bars feel like chocolate bars and became a household name. Surreal is winning in cereal.
At Neoh, we’re building one of Europe’s fastest-growing confectionery brands by offering chocolate that looks, feels and tastes like the real thing, but with no sugar. Our growth is not despite consumer demand for health, it is because of it.
So that then raises the question: why are brands like Urban Legend and Jnck failing? Without knowing the backstory, funding situation or operational capabilities of these brands, I have a hypothesis hinging around the number one rule of fmcg development – “start with a consumer need”.
What do consumers really want?
When I look at success stories, the consumer pull is clear. The brands winning are obsessed with their customers. We run one of Europe’s biggest TikTok accounts, where we spend as much time listening to our consumers as we do talking at them. This addiction to listening to what our consumers want and creating products for them is what has led to Neoh outperforming Mars, Bounty and Snickers in certain retailers on the Continent (and quickly earning our stripes in the UK too).
I wonder if the problem is that too much of the innovation in some categories has been driven by retailer requirements and HFSS box-ticking rather than by what consumers actually want. Developing products in countries where regulation isn’t shaping the category allows brands to focus entirely on what matters to shoppers: products that look, feel and taste delicious but also deliver on health.
Both Jnck and Urban Legend built highly innovative, scientific products designed to meet nutrient profiling and planogram targets. Urban Legend’s doughnuts hit all the calorie and sugar thresholds for HFSS compliance while Jnck’s cookies carried a super impressive Nutri-Score of 0. But when you focus on regulatory compliance as the number one USP, is there a risk that the consumer’s role in all of this is forgotten?
Incoherent HFSS regulation
The overall regulatory landscape in the UK certainly hasn’t helped. The UK’s HFSS implementation has been disjointed and incoherent – with location bans in 2022, delayed multibuy bans, advertising restrictions still not fully in force – leaving challenger brands to gamble on rules that may or may not arrive, while the big players can afford to reformulate slowly and hedge their bets.
Startups who banked everything on regulation changing the market have found themselves exposed when the goalposts moved and unfairly penalised with high barriers to entry that simply don’t exist for market leaders.
But this isn’t just a small business problem. Lots of brands have succumbed to failure when they have developed new products to meet retailer needs rather than consumer pull – just look at Mars’s Triple Treat bars and Mondelez’s 30% Less Sugar Cadbury range, both disappearing after only a few years.
Ultimately, Jnck and Urban Legend should be recognised as bold innovators in what has long been a stagnant category, and they each achieved impressive milestones along the way along with some of the most amazing innovation we’ve seen in fmcg in recent years. In many ways I wish the market could be more supportive of brands doing something so valuable, as we’d be a much healthier nation.
My takeaway is simple: healthier innovation will only stick if it starts with the shopper, not the shelf. If we pair great nutrition with genuine indulgence and build products people fall in love with, then the next wave of ‘better-for-you’ brands won’t just survive, they’ll transform the aisle.
Richard Wilkinson, UK managing director, Neoh
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