🧘‍♀️Our First Flea Market

You Need a Reset Update #2

Week 2 Summary: 50 samples shared. Overwhelmingly positive (but potentially biased) feedback received.

When Rachel and I started talking about the idea of Reset Bar, I set some goals and testing phases for us. Last week I wrote about the Initial Feedback phase, and this week I’ll share how Refinement is going.

A screenshot of our testing stages. The blue highlight shows where we are today as of this writing.

Our First Flea Market!

Today was the annual flea or free market in my community - such a wonderful event! It was fun to spend time outdoors and meet some neighbours.

I used the market as an opportunity to achieve the goal set out for our Refinement Phase: Share the product with 30 - 50 people.

I thought I would give out 30 samples over the course of 5 hours. I gave out 50 samples over the course of 1 hour and a half hours.

Thank you to everyone who gave their feedback, and to those I met today who are reading this now. A summary of the overwhelmingly positive feedback:

• “I like that it’s not too sweet”

• “I like that it’s healthy”

• “It tastes so good!”

“I like that it’s not too sweet, but maybe it needs to be sweeter for kids?”

I heard from from multiple parents today, and I have wondered this myself.

But the kids themselves? They said it was sweet enough! One even said, “Usually I love everything super sweet. But this is sooo good!” That kid was so sweet :)

This is why giving out samples is such a great opportunity to learn!

But I made one fatal mistake today (that you can learn from)

I’ve learned through my time in tech startups that when talking to users and customers it’s important to give them space to give negative feedback.

If I say “Hey, I made this bar, wanna try it?” it’s unlikely someone will say, “Wow, this bar sucks because XYZ.” They’re far more likely to be nice to my face.

But if I say “Hey, my friend made this bar, wanna try it?” then they will be more likely to say how they really feel. Maybe it does suck! And if it sucks, I want to know!

TL;DR When showing product to a customer, remove yourself from the situation.

People are more willing to share negative feedback if the product creator is not there.

TL;DR of this TL;DR People are nice. We don’t want to hurt each other’s feelings!

Maybe that’s why the feedback was so positive. But I’ll remember next time. Either way, it was a lovely day meeting people and being in the sun.

This is weekly update #2.

Thank you for reading!

— Serena