Sticky Situation

## Reto How might we expand honey's role beyond sweetening to fit the way younger consumers actually eat today? ## Proceso Sticky Situation began with a simple passion for food. Our direction narrowed down through desk research and a visit to the Alimentaria Food Conference, where functional foods emerged as a defining industry trend. This led us to honey: a healthy, minimally processed, functional ingredient that remained strategically underdeveloped, especially compared to the innovation happening in adjacent categories like sauces and condiments. With a target audience of younger, experimentation-driven consumers, we generated six potential new honey formats and narrowed to three: hot honey drizzle, bee pollen savory sprinkles, and honey butter. Over a dozen recipes were developed and tested in-house. Bee pollen sprinkles were cut early due to poor taste, but we found the pollen could be ground and folded into the honey butter and hot honey for functional benefit without compromising flavor, keeping it in the product line at this stage. From there, validation drove every major decision. A public taste test with 20+ participants in Spain narrowed our lineup from five flavors to a final four, two hot honeys and two honey butters, while also surfacing a critical insight: Spanish consumers were hesitant toward the word "spicy," prompting us to rename and reposition the products for clarity and appeal. In parallel, we designed a bold, approachable brand identity and began building a social following by documenting the process in real time. Meta ad testing validated audience engagement, and A/B testing specifically on bee pollen showed customers didn't value it enough to justify its cost or flavor tradeoff, so it was removed from the final recipe entirely. Commercial interest followed organically, including inbound outreach from a Madrid/Mallorca fried chicken chain and several retail stores. We closed this phase with two pop-ups: a paired tasting at an Egyptian cultural event using feteer, and a solo pop-up featuring six curated bites, both of which confirmed strong product appeal and real brand attraction beyond curiosity. ## Resultado Sticky Situation is a modern honey brand selling hot honey and honey butter with globally inspired flavors and locally sourced ingredients. Sticky Situation expands the use of honey from just a functional sweetener in your tea, to a condiment that can be used in all of your meals. We have two products: hot honey, and honey butter.