Soylent, the complete meal in a bottle, is partnering with WHSmith to put their ready-to-drink bottles, RRP £3.99 in the fridges of 100 travel stores UK ensuring that people can access better nutrition on-the-go.
Ian Rankin, WHSmith Category Director says, “Soylent has had particular success in the US by targeting busy commuters who have typically skipped a meal (often breakfast). Given that we are the leading retailer in the travel sector of the UK with 240M people visiting railway stations and airport stores every year, the Soylent ready-to-drink bottles seemed an obvious choice for us to stock as they are just so convenient.”
Additional 2019 activities will include a London-focused out of home advertising campaign to further support the retail expansion on the UK high street.
Plans for 2019 don’t stop there as the Silicon Valley sensation will be attending a number of key industry events including Seeds & Chips Milan (6 – 9 May) a global food and drink summit, Edie Live (21 – 22 May) the UK’s no. 1 sustainability summit, Future of Food Tech London (17-18 Oct) a food technology networking event and Food Matters Live London (19 – 20 Nov), a future of food, drink and sustainable nutrition event at the Excel. To supplement their retail strategy, Soylent will also be appearing at Lunch! one of the leading food industry event in the UK (19-20 Sept)
As part of Soylent’s UK expansion plan, the brand is also bringing over the product that started it all, its meal replacement Powder, on Amazon UK, RRP £24 for 245g (10 servings). Versatile and convenient, their pouches of Original and Cacao contain five meals per pouch, each with 20g of plant protein and 36 essential nutrients.
Melody Conner, Senior VP of Sales said: “Our brand is rapidly expanding in the UK. To supplement our WHSmith partnership we are in detailed conversations with multiple bricks-and-mortar retailers as look to get our ready-to-drink products into 1,000 stores and into the hands of urban on-the-go consumers by September 2019.”
“Our UK expansion plans don’t stop there as we have an ambitious events strategy in place which is set to showcase our brand on the European as well as UK stage. All of this is supplemented by an out-of-home advertising campaign and the launch of Soylent Powder. All of these efforts with our global strategy which looks to help make people more productive, healthily.”
Soylent, one of the top grocery products on Amazon in the US, took the UK market by storm when it launched in September 2018 through Amazon UK. Targeting gamers, students and successful millennials, the brand has since partnered with an esports team as well as sampled over 5,000 products through seeding and key events.
UK activities supported by ongoing marketing communications from the agency TASTE PR in addition to retail & distribution strategy from their partners Red Star Brands and US brand agency Ignite.
