General Mills Gets Ready to Yumble
At G-Works, General Mills’ corporate venture studio, teams are creating innovative solutions to consumer-related food problems. School lunches for kids ranked high on the list of parental pain points observed by G-Works trio David Bloom, Chris Damsgard, and Varun Poduval. That inspired this fall’s launch of Yumble, a home delivery service that offers shelf-stable, customizable lunch kits.
Available online at yumblefoods.com, the service offers ready-to-go lunch bag options or build-your-own lunches for $5.99; prices are discounted with a subscription. The options include chicken salad and crackers, a peanut butter and jelly croissant, veggies and dip, and freeze-dried fruit crisps. Many General Mills brands are represented on the Yumble menu, like Annie’s Cheddar Bunnies, Honey Nut Cheerios, and Lärabar. G-Works director Hillary Balma said Yumble will leverage several tactics to generate awareness for the new online service, including social and paid media and influencer marketing.
Yumble is the fourth launch since G-Works’ 2019 inception. Operating under a “fail fast” startup mentality unusual in a Fortune 500, two G-Works products have been discontinued. But the first brand introduced by G-Works, Good Measure, has seen “tremendous growth over the past year,” Balma says. Following successful pilots in the Midwest and Southwest last year, Good Measure’s blood sugar-friendly, nutrient-rich snacks aimed at people with diabetes are now rolling out to more than 7,000 stores across the country. Balma says several new concepts are in “early stages of learning” at G-Works and expected to launch soon.
