You've launched your product with the flavours everyone loves. Chocolate, vanilla, strawberry, caramel. The safe bets. The ones that should guarantee sales.

So why are your numbers dropping? Why do reviews keep mentioning the taste isn't quite right? Why are customers buying once and never coming back?

If you're a food and drink brand watching your sales decline despite choosing popular flavours, you're not alone. And more importantly, this isn't about picking different trendy flavours or going back to your flavour house for more samples.

The real issue? You don't have a proper flavour strategy.

This is exactly what my Fix package addresses, diagnosing what's wrong and rebuilding your flavour profile from the ground up.

The Plant-Based Protein Brand That Changed Everything

I recently worked with a plant-based protein brand facing exactly this situation. They'd launched their protein powder range a few years ago with six flavours: chocolate, vanilla, strawberry, caramel, banana and blueberry. The ones everyone knows will sell, right?

They did what most brands do. They went to their flavour house, asked for samples of vanilla flavouring, strawberry flavouring, all the popular ones. The flavour house sent them one or two samples of each flavour. They tested them, picked the ones they liked, and launched.

For a while, it worked. They got into retail, customers were buying. But few years down the line, the market changed. So many more plant-based protein brands appeared. So many more competitors. And customers suddenly had choice.

Here's what happened. A few years ago, it was okay to have a very functional product with lots of benefits even if the taste wasn't really good. Customers were focusing on the functionality, what the product delivered. But nowadays, when you have dozens of products offering exactly the same benefits, it's about the taste.

Obviously, they went back to their flavour house. More samples, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. As you can imagine, nothing really made any difference.

This brand felt stuck. They had popular flavours. They didn't want complex flavour profiles. They couldn't understand why it didn't work.

What They Didn't Realise (And What Most Brands Miss)

Here's what they didn't realise, and this is one of the biggest mistakes I see with food and drink brands when it comes to flavours.

They were focusing on what flavours are popular, which flavours consumers want, what's trendy in the market. But they never asked the most important question: What flavour will actually work with my base?

Because your base is going to dictate the flavour that you can work with and your flavour strategy. Not the most popular flavours. Not the trendy flavours. Not what the competitors are doing. Not what you personally like.

Why Plant-Based Proteins Are So Challenging

If you're working on a plant-based protein powder, especially if you want it to be more natural without added sugar, you're dealing with challenges. If it's made from pea protein, rice protein or hemp protein, you are definitely dealing with off-notes. These ingredients can have earthy, bitter or beany notes that are really hard to mask.

You can't just slap any chocolate or vanilla flavour on top and expect it to work. 

That's what's happening when you taste the product and it still has that beany taste at the back. Or the bitter aftertaste that just doesn't go away no matter how much flavouring you add.

The reality is that plant-based proteins are not dairy proteins. You can't approach them the same way. Each plant protein behaves differently. Pea protein is different to rice, which is different to hemp. And even within pea proteins, there are different grades. Some are more refined, some have stronger off-notes.

Your flavour strategy needs to be built around your actual base, not around what the trends are.

If you're launching a functional or plant-based product and struggling with which flavours will work, my Choose package helps you identify the right flavour direction before you waste money on samples that won't work.

The Four Classic Mistakes This Brand Made

For this brand, they made all the classic mistakes, and you will probably recognise some of them too.

Mistake #1: Assuming popular flavours equal good flavours. Chocolate might be the bestseller in another brand, but that doesn't mean it will work with your product.

Mistake #2: Asking for generic samples. "Send me one vanilla extract, send me a few vanilla flavourings" without having a flavour strategy behind it. Flavour houses have hundreds of different flavour profiles. How are they supposed to pick the one that you want? They don't have a crystal ball. They'll just send you maybe the most popular one that they have, their core flavours, but there's no guarantee that it's going to work.

Mistake #3: Giving up on a flavour too quickly. When you try a vanilla extract or a vanilla flavouring and it doesn't work in your product, most people think "vanilla is not working." No. It just means that specific vanilla flavouring or vanilla extract with that specific flavour profile didn't work in your product. But there are hundreds of different flavour profiles for each flavour. Maybe the two vanilla profiles you tried don't fit your base, but maybe a more creamy one will work better.

Mistake #4: Trying to replicate the real fruit exactly. I see food and drink brands trying to replicate exactly the same taste as the real fruit. First of all, it will never happen. Even if you use extract, essences or oleoresin, it will rarely taste exactly the same as the real fruit or the real veg. And secondly, it doesn't mean that it will fit your product. Sometimes, like in our case with this client, a custardy vanilla works so much better than a vanilla extract.

How a Flavour Strategy Fixes Everything

So how do you fix this? How do you identify the right flavour profile for your base?

This is where a proper flavour strategy comes in. Without one, you're shooting in the dark. You're guessing. You're wasting time and money on samples that were never going to work because you haven't done the foundational work.

A flavour strategy starts with understanding your base. What are you actually working with? Is it earthy? Bitter? Fishy? What off-notes are you fighting against? Once you understand that, you can start identifying which flavour profiles will complement your base, not fight against it.

Then you need to understand your target consumer. What are their expectations? What flavour profiles resonate with them? 

For this plant-based protein brand, we fixed all six flavours in their range. It took about seven months and 150 trials, but we got there. Yes, I'm a bit of a trial addict, I can do up to 200 trials if that's what it takes to get it right.

We created products that everyone in their team was so proud of. Everyone started thinking, "I'm actually going to buy and drink our product now."

The journey isn't finished because we've just launched. We're waiting for consumer feedback, and we may have to tweak a few things in the future. But the feedback so far has been amazing.

This foundational work is what I do with every client, whether we're creating a new product, choosing the right flavours, or fixing underperforming ones.

Stop Shooting in the Dark

This is possible for you too. If you've tried everything, if you've done a lot of back and forth with your flavour house or your contract manufacturer, if you're confused why popular flavours don't work and which one to choose, you just need a proper flavour strategy.

It's not that vanilla doesn't work. It's that you haven't found the right vanilla profile for your base yet.

Even if you're experiencing declining sales, even if your products just aren't performing the way they should, a flavour strategy will give you the framework to fix it instead of guessing.

I've created a free resource called the Flavour Blueprint that walks you through the exact process I use with my clients in my Fix package when we're fixing their underperforming products. You'll learn how to diagnose what's wrong with your current flavours, how to brief flavour houses properly so you're not just getting generic samples, and how to identify the right flavour profile for your specific base.

Download your free Flavour Blueprint here and stop wasting time on flavours that were never going to work.