Friday, December 12, 2014

Soylent: Manufactured Food. Now Improved Soylent 1.3

I ordered my Soylent on 27 May 2014 and have not received my order as of 12 December 2014. I knew at the time of ordering that the wait time was long due to the product was just in launch mode. Any current customers were at the start of the queue for replacement Soylent and new customers had to wait until the production capacity caught up. The estimated timing meant I should have received my Soylent in 12 weeks/3 months, around the end of August, roughly.

On 28 July 2014 I received this note:
  • Based on early customer feedback, we paused production (now resumed) to make some changes to our packaging to make it even easier to integrate Soylent into your life. 
  • This unfortunately caused a delay in production, which pushed your order back by up to an additional 8 to 10 weeks (beyond the 10 to 12 weeks lead time we anticipated when you first purchased).
This meant that the order would be shipped 3 months after the original end of August estimate. Roughly: end of November 2014.

Sept 19 2014 I received this message:

  • Thank you for your patience and understanding as we have worked as quickly as possible to meet the overwhelming demand for Soylent 1.0. We have shipped over 300,000 days of Soylent 1.0 so far and are excited to ship your order within the next few weeks!

As of 12 December 2014 I have not received my Soylent order and have no further updates.
I do know that the Soylent team did some formula changes that were announced 10 November 2014 that could have delayed them further:
  • Announcing Soylent 1.2
  • Development of the Soylent formula is ongoing as we work to engineer the most healthy, affordable, and convenient staple food ever produced.
  • Today, we take another step towards achieving this goal with the launch of Soylent 1.2. All shipments leaving our facilities now contain the updated formula.
  • Soylent 1.2 no longer uses fish oil as a source of omega 3 fatty acids. These essential nutrients are now provided by algal oil, which results in a formula produced with increased efficiency and without the use of animal products.
  • After further evaluation, the enzyme blend introduced in Soylent 1.1 has been removed from the 1.2 formula to increase satiety.

Soylent 1.3 was announced on 11 Dec 2014:
We are pleased to announce the arrival of Soylent 1.3, the latest milestone in our development of an increasingly efficient and environmentally-friendly staple food. With the inclusion of dipotassium phosphate and a reduction in the size of our shipping boxes, we have incrementally improved both your Soylent experience and our distribution efficiency.
The last Soylent 1.2 shipments left our warehouses yesterday, and starting today (11 Dec 2014) Soylent 1.3 will be the only version shipping to customers.

So I await Soylent 1.3.  I am wondering what the behind the scenes manufacturing launch has been like.  Demand has exceeded capacity.  Design changes to both the product materials and packaging have occurred on a regular basis.  I am sure the manufacturing team has struggled with other typical launch issues withing the manufacturing process itself and with the supply chain. It has been a heck of a 2014 for the Soylent manufacturing team.

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