Drink your biotics: Bright colours and visual appeal crucial to deliver healthier beverages to children – Tummy Buddies

Tummy Buddies specialises in the creation of healthy synbiotic-enriched flavoured waters for children, and although the firm has put a lot of research and investment into the health benefits of these beverages, it believes that visual appeal is key to bringing in their target consumer.

“We actually nailed the flavours quite quickly, but we knew that the key or the important part of what we wanted to offer was the packaging and the look of the product was really, really crucial to us,”​ Tummy Buddies Co-Founder Rita Sellars told FoodNavigator-Asia ​in the most recent edition of our FNA Trailblazers podcast.

“This was probably the hardest part of our development, and a lot of our first year was spent in market research on how we wanted our product to look, as we wanted parents and children to pick it up and we needed the parents to read the bottle.​

“So we knew that the taste was a no brainer [but] it was more around the visual and the physiological aspect of the product, as we needed those parents to buy in on the way that the product looked before getting to how it tasted.​

“For the kids, because our product looks like a fun juice in bright colours and fun logos on them, it doesn't look like a ‘healthy drink’ and this [minimises resistance] as it’s hard to get children to take probiotics or prebiotics or almost any supplement in this day and age.”​

This need for visual appeal is in addition to multiple other factors such as shelf life, pricing, mouthfeel and more, which ultimately calls for a unique overall balancing act.

“As this is for children we had to reduce the sugar used, so we had to really balance that and then the flavours and all of that, but the brightness was key as we needed to make sure the product was bright enough for the children to look at it and go ‘Oh, wow, that looks cool!’”​, she said.

“Whether the colours were green or red, it was a big challenge for us to make sure that we had that brightness and this was also reflected in the flavour, and that the consistency of the mouthfeel was right, which is even more challenging when removing sugar as this would thin out the product, so it is all about getting to that right balance.”​

Tummy Buddies is currently concentrated in the Australian market, but its use of synbiotics has enabled it to make ambient functional beverages, which has opened up the potential for it to expand to more overseas targets.

“We are looking at exploring overseas markets in 2025, and because the drink is stable and does not need refrigeration to maintain the synbiotics, we have a good advantage there,”​ she added.

“We have a huge focus on the APAC region because the feedback that we have is that this product is very needed in this region.​

“One of the things that we have noted include some notable cultural differences in taste preferences - some markets like sweeter flavours and that's more appealing to them, whereas other regions prefer a more natural and less sugary flavour. ​

“So when it came to the symbiotic drink, we want to make sure that we cover off on all of these different markets and needs.”​

Listen to the podcast above to find out more.