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Gluten free WeetBix: the need, the factory and the launch

Catering for the gluten free involves a whole lot of research, investment, and for Sanitarium, crawling through air ducts with a toothbrush.

Last year, in response to changing breakfast habits and the rise of gluten free, Sanutarium launched Gluten Free WeetBix; a launch which would rank as one of the most successful product launches in Sanitarium’s history.

“We did some research,” says Alex Garas, Senior Brand Manager for WeetBix Australia at the 2015 Grains & Legumes Consumption Symposium. “We know that people who are on a gluten free diet, particularly those that are eating breakfast cereals, feel like they are compromising. They’re compromising on taste, because with exceptions, some [cereals] don’t taste as good. They have less variety because there’s less to choose from, possibly [less] convenience and they’re also compromising on cost because they’re paying more per serve than they would be if they were eating their gluten equivalents.

“Around one per cent [of Australians] are diagnosed with coeliac, around six per cent have a sensitivity to gluten and almost 25 per cent of people are actively looking to reduce the gluten in their diet.”

Gluten free: It’s here to stay

Sanitarium’s research revealed that a lot of consumers choosing to reduce the gluten in their diet (as opposed to being coeliac), saw the idea of a gluten free WeetBix coming to the market as a “normalising” experience. They appreciated that a big brand, would release a gluten free product and actually cater to these people.

“It was seen as actually quite an emotional thing,” Garas says.

“What was baffling for me and the turning point for me to go ‘this is not a fad’ was when…we did some research in Parramatta and we had tradies turning up, truck drivers and mechanics going ‘yeah my wife’s got me on a gluten free diet, I don’t eat gluten’ and wearing it as a badge of pride…it was an astounding effect and when you hear mechanics and tradies going ‘this is what I’m doing with my life,’ it’s no longer a fad or a trend, it’s here to stay.”

Developing gluten free WeetBix

Sanitarium then set about developing what Gluten Free WeetBix might be.

“We tested a range of gluten free grains and we ended up using Sorghum, and tried to make it as nutritionally similar as we could to WeetBix, certainly in terms of the fat, salt, sugar levels. We didn’t want to have that compromise that some gluten free consumers felt,” Garas says.

After a positive response from sensory research (taste testing), Sanitarium was faced with four options: build a new factory to only make gluten-free WeetBix, dedicate one of their existing factories to gluten free WeetBix, do a reduced gluten “half way house, where we put a line in our existing wheat factory and put in a Perspex wall and hope the wheat didn’t get over the wall”, or not do it at all.

“We didn’t think we could build a new factory because we didn’t think we could pay off our capitalist manager. We didn’t think that we would do a sort of half-assed attempt of putting a lining or a wall there and then it wouldn’t be gluten free, it would be gluten reduced and it would compromise the offer…we don’t want to not do it, so we took our factory over in Carmel and we dedicated that to now making gluten free WeetBix.

“The factory in Carmel has made WeetBix for the best part of four decades. You can how the wheat was embedded in the DNA of that building. So we had people, and I’m not exaggerating, crawling through air ducts, cleaning with toothbrushes, we had people burning the wheat off nuts and bolts on the floor, to make that such a sterile environment. There was no gluten there anywhere.

“We then sourced Sorghum providers. WeetBix is all Australian, we didn’t want to compromise on country of origin with gluten-free WeetBix, so it had to be Sorghum sourced from Australia, but we wanted to source it from a farmer in Australia, who didn’t also grow wheat, because there couldn’t be wheat in the silos, there couldn’t be wheat in the trucks, so we founded a partnership with a family grower in Northern NSW that grows Sorghum,” Garas says.

The launch

When launching Gluten Free WeetBix, it was vital to the company that it did not denigrate wheat.

“Our advertising campaign was ‘welcome back to WeetBix’ and it was very important that we couldn’t take a small part of our portfolio and say ‘that evil wheat, that evil gluten that’s making everyone fat, is our alternative,’ because that’s detrimental to everyone and not what we believe at all, we are simply offering people an alternative,” Garas says.

Developing and launching Gluten Free WeetBix involved millions of dollars investment and Garas says it was “one of the biggest bets we’ve made probably in a decades.”

But, luckily for Sanitarium, it paid off.

“To date, gluten free WeetBix ranks as one of the most successful product launches in Sanitarium’s history, something that we are incredibly proud of,” Garas says.

It started with a single Facebook post with the caption “it’s here” and a picture of the product. That reached 700,000 people.

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Gluten Free Weet-Bix is here! Tag a friend who misses Weet-Bix. More info: https://bit.ly/GFWeetBix #mynewgf

Posted by Weet-Bix on Tuesday, July 22, 2014

“We had people phoning us saying ‘is this an April Fool’s joke?’ we had people saying ‘I don’t understand, how can WeetBix be wheat-free?’

“We thought about changing the name, but Sorghum-Bix didn’t quite sound as delicious. About one in ten people had a problem with it being wheat-free WeetBix, the other 9 went ‘but it’s not ‘wheat’, it’s a brand, we can get over it,’” Garas says.

“Our launch campaign had reached around two and a half to three million people before we’d really spent a dollar on advertising. We had a TV ad that went above the line when we were national…but by that point, we’d reached almost three million people and that was due to the passion of which the gluten free shoppers or consumers felt that they were being looked after by a big brand. It was the idea that a big brand would no longer make them go to the ‘there’s something wrong with you’ aisle, but actually mainstream it and say ‘this is for those of you who want to reduce your gluten.’”

In the first 3-4 months, Gluten Free WeetBix had a repurchase rate of 50 per cent, meaning half the people were coming back and buying another box.

“This isn’t about fuelling the anti-wheat brigade and certainly not helping out the likes of Pete Evans, but this is about saying that every Aussie deserves to be raised a WeetBix kid,” Garas says.

 

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