‘Candy counter’ for functional drinks: New personalised beverage service seeks to mimic sweet shop excitement

Daile Food claims to be one of the first companies in the personalised beverage space, and allows consumers on its website to choose from a series of products ranging from superfoods, skin food, weight control, health tonics, adult and children nutrition, and sports performance.

Within each series, consumees select a base which can range from milk, coffee, tea, fruit juice, and yoghurt. For each base, there are also options for plant-based and flavoured versions.

After this, consumers choose the functional ingredients they want in their product. Daile Food offers a variety of ingredients including vitamins, minerals, probiotics, prebiotics, DHA, collagen, ginger, chia seed, fiber, and pea protein isolate just to name a few.

Candy counter for beverages​

According to project director Jinn Lim, the idea for Daile Food came after seeing Nourished Asia gaining traction, which growth of 30% to 35% expected this year.

Nourished Asia​ mainly sells powdered functional ingredients as an a la carte model, but also has a personalised nutrition service where the firm’s professionals develop a plan for the consumer based on a questionnaire.

The company says the new ‘pick and pack’ beverage shopping experience was inspired by the candy counter concept where consumers have the freedom to scoop candies from a counter and pay for what they want.

“As a child, the excitement I received (from these candy counters) was memorable and I wanted to offer a similar experience for adults now in a health food form. That is the luxury of being able to tailor something for yourself and receive only what they need​,” said Lim.

Dosage​

To ensure the right dosage, Daile Food references research studies from online databases.

“For children, we will tailor the dosage. It’s the same process across all our series, only ​the ingredients and the serving sizes differ, depending on the activity and the function that we intend to use it for​,” Lim explained.

The personalised beverages sold by Daile Food are in powdered format, so consumers can mix with water, smoothies or even milk

They are sold in 30 packs (900g) for a month’s supply, or 2.7kg and 5.4kg for three and six months’ supply.

The company sources all its ingredients overseas, mainly from the EU and US.

Besides Malaysia, it also serves consumers from Singapore, Brunei, Australia and Hong Kong. So far, about 65% of its business is domestic.

Daile Food is exploring a subscription service in the future, as well as expanding its base range, and markets.