Phalbee | Product Journey

Rajat Jain
Nov 6 · 5 min read

Phalbee Smoothie Cafe Pvt. Ltd. was a startup by four IIT Roorkee students including me. Just to give you a basic idea what Phalbee is :

About Phalbee

Phalbee was a “Healthy Lifestyle Brand”, or you can say “Starbucks of juices and smoothies”. We wished to create a culture where people can focus on their health while having meetings, get-together, fun etc., by serving them with freshly made juices and smoothies. Our fruits were sourced from renowned fruit capitals of India which bring out the true Indianness and add a unique value to every glass of juice and smoothie we serve.

Problem

  • Packaged juice is an important concern because it contains harmful chemicals (Benzoic Acid), high sugar content and artificial flavours.
  • Lack of Awareness about Juices and Smoothies.
  • Unhealthy and Unhygienic juices from street vendors.
  • Absence of culture where juices and smoothies are integral part of daily life.

Solution

We were building the “Health Brand” of fruit Juices and Smoothies, a brand which people could trust:

Target Users

Upper middle class people were our main target users. This group of people are more health conscious and are ready to invest their money in trusted brands. These people are already one step closer to building a healthy culture around them. These people apart from taste, equally focus on hygienic food, which mostly lacks in street fruit vendors.

Brand Research and Brand Building

We did an extensive research before stepping towards building the brand identity. We Studies the effects on various colors on the hunger, design language of our target users, customer experience building and so on. From the design perspective, we defined a design language for the brand which we followed throughout. After enough research, we came up with brand colors, keeping in mind the interiors also. We started with designing our logo and we were all set to go.

Next, we started experimenting with the recipes. For days we would try and test various combinations of fruits and blend them together by ourselves. After a month we were ready with our recipes.

Finally, we stepped out in the real world by Launching Pilot Run of Phalbee in a restaurant in IIT Roorkee campus itself.

Pilot Run

To brief you out, in the entire two months of our pilot run, we used to sit in the restaurant after our classes and observe the users, their behaviors, the time they spend there, profiling users (group, families, singles, couples). Several times we used to interact with users to know their reviews about Phalbee. We used to give feedback forms along with the juices and smoothies.

At the end of first month we observed lesser no. of glasses sold than expected. We analysed the data from the past one month and found following major points:

  • Current quantity of glass was more than required. Some people found it difficult to finish it in one go.
  • We prioritized the favorite fruits of the users by analyzing flavor-wise sales, which gave us a new direction for recipe making.
Number of glasses sold flavor-wise

Product Improvements

Based on the following observations and feedback, we tried to increase our sales by doing following improvements in our product:

  • Introduction of smaller sized glasses with lower price.
  • Replacing not so favorite recipes (as seen in feedback forms) by coming up with new recipes of most sold fruit flavors. Also, we tried to bring varied colors in different smoothies through our recipes to add “Indianness” to it (Color along with flavor).
  • Introducing MAKE YOUR OWN smoothie, a customized smoothie where user can experiment with blending any 3 fruits of their own choices.
  • We also worked on the presentation of smoothie when it is served. Out of the various fruits in a smoothie, slice of the fruit with maximum content would decorate the glass.

With such improvements we saw an expected rise in the number of glasses sold in the next month. We dedicated the second month interacting with users, taking their interviews, finding what they want (and what they doesn’t) etc., so that we can make better customer experience for our own outlet in future.

User Research

Many times, taking interviews doesn’t provide you all the answers. As we were taking interviews, we couldn’t find answers that we were looking for. So, we tried card sorting which turned out to be very interesting for both users and us. We prepared several cards with little sketches on it, indicating several activities (loud music, soft music, dance, peace, games etc.), profile of users (elderly, married, young, child etc.) etc. We gave these cards to customers and they were more than happy to sort them into the listed buckets “things they like” and “things they don’t like”.

Card sorting activity at Phalbee

With the help of card sorting activity and simultaneous interviews, we prioritized the requirements list of the users.

  • Natural Ambiance
  • Outdoor Seating
  • Working seats
  • Peaceful and stress relieving environment — from the busy day to day life style
  • No loud music, inclined towards soft classical music

The inferences from user research had provided us enough information to design interiors of Phalbee Cafe for our target users in future.

Conclusion

By the end of two weeks we sold 3000 glasses of juices and smoothie combined, and generated a revenue of 2 lakhs. For some unavoidable reasons, we had to officially shut down after a year of Phalbee.

Thank you!
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