Our Taste Testers RULE

Cameraphone picture by Susan Dziadosz.
Despite the backlighting, I couldn't
resist taking a picture of one of
our taste-testers holding 3 lollipops in her
hands. That's dedication!

Yes, Kate and I could just make candy in a vacuum, but we’d rather make candy that lots of people will like. That’s why early feedback – and lots of it – is a way of life here at This Charming Candy.

We’re very fortunate to have access to many willing and eager taste testers who give honest and critical opinions. It’s incredibly helpful to know which flavor combinations are on the right track, which ones need a little work, and which ones need a LOT of work or should just be abandoned.

Here’s a little peek behind the scenes at the first round of feedback we got on some of the candidates for our upcoming Fruit Basket.

Flavor combination A elicited mostly negative remarks like

a few more licks and I was done. Not for me. –Joyce

one of the few of your lollies I didn't finish –Eric

Flavor combo B got mixed reviews, including

Something about (flavor 1) fit well with the (flavor 2) – Kris

Don’t care for it, tastes medicinal. Too much (flavor 2), not enough (flavor 1). A bit sour, not in a good way –Simon

Flavor C was a single-flavor lollipop, not a combination, and it just didn’t seem to be engaging enough for our tasters:

A bit boring and simple. – Justine

good base, but much simpler than I'm used to from This Charming Candy – Bill

Still another combination, D, garnered raves, such as

My favorite. I loved this combo. PERFECT. I could have eaten ten of these. Not too sweet and very flavorful. – Bay

LOVE that this SMELLS (of flavor 3) when you take it out of the wrapper. This tastes great. – Jen

So what did we do with all this feedback?

• Combination A has been shelved. We might come back to it in the future and see if it can be improved at all.
• We made adjustments to combination B for the next two rounds of tasting – and unfortunately the feedback stayed mixed. It’s shelved for now. But sometimes we offer polarizing flavors such as Tangerine-Clove and they find their fans. We might still offer combination B for sale sometime.
• We turned flavor C into a flavor blend and suddenly it was almost everyone’s favorite. We’ll talk more about this one in another blog post.
• I couldn’t resist tinkering with combination D for the most recent tasting round to see if it could be even better. Feedback on the update has been positive, but not at the level the original recipe received, so we’ll probably leave that one alone. I guess it was perfect on the first try!