I gave up waiting for RTD Chocolate and RTD Berry to restock, and I grabbed 8 boxes of RTD Vanilla, and some of the bottles appeared to be shipped in new boxes with “stick on” Best By dates.
The new RTD boxes aren’t brown and inkless like the new RTD Soylent boxes, these new Huel RTD boxes still use a lot of ink, but the design of the boxes is much harder to open. The top flaps now overlap each other by 100% – hard to “unglue” with your bare hands, and the bottom of the boxes are now “twisted” and glued, and there’s also a new an inner bottom liner you have to deal with in trying to unbox your RTD Huel. Upside down box openings are now impossible, it seems, though the friendly “Oh Noes!” imprint still exists there.
Overall, the new RTD boxes are sturdier than before, but there’s more box to deal with, which makes it appear to be less environmentally friendly than the previous box.
Delivery was amazingly fast. Ordered on Thursday. Shipped on Friday. All 8 boxes arrived early Saturday morning.
I’m assuming you’ve been consuming more Soylent in the absence of Huel RTD? If I remember correctly, you only drink RTD (which I also did for quite some time as well before Black came out). Can you compare one with the other? Never tried Soylent…
Well, I stocked up on RTD Huel before the pandemic really hit, and now I know that was a smart thing – even though it burned my bottom line – since both Soylent and Huel are pretty much out of RTD for months now.
Briefly, Soylent, when you can get it, is sweeter and thinner than Huel. It’s quite delicious. Huel, in comparison, gives you more, fills you up longer, and tastes healthier.
Here’s a previous conversation I started on this topic:
That was very smart of you. I unfortunately didn’t stock up but on the plus side, have been able to try Black and absolutely love it. From a time hack perspective, I pre-pack my servings for the week in advance in order to save on time. Otherwise, it’s great. Nonetheless, I can’t wait for the rest of the RTD flavors to come back.
Our new RTD boxes have been designed to be more enduring during shipping to avoid receiving or delivering damaged boxes. We do understand that the opening of the boxes may be a bit harder than our previous boxes and we will take that into consideration for our product team.
We can assure you that our boxes are still below it being environmentally dangerous but there is always room for improvement and we are always working on finding better ways to be as environmentally friendly as we can!
Right. The new boxes may be better for shipping, but they are not user friendly. Now you need some sort of tool to pry open the boxes. There’s no edge to slip your fingers under to open the top of the box.
As well, breaking down the box for recycling is also much more intensive. You have to pull out the bottom of the glued box, tearing it open, and then push the inner liner upward out the top of the box.
Then you have to try to flatten it all with all that glue and twisted box origami construction. You have to tear the inner liner to flatten it because that glue is stuck some good.
We understand how this could be a bit challenging when it comes to breaking down our boxes and opening them as well and we do appreciate your feedback as it is helpful for us to think about other innovative ways to keep our products ship-friendly and also easy to open. At the moment we want to make sure they are being delivered safely but we are working on other improvements as well.
In our building, we get fined for not flattening and binding our boxes. It’s a big job. Stomping would feel good, but then I’d have to re-bend the boxes anyway to actually make them stay flat.
