Flava It! is at the core of The Flava People, it’s our oldest retail brand that’s been around since Grandad Roy made his first marinades. We’ve continued to bring the brand into the modern-era, with an existing re-brand and category-first brand collaborations.
THE BRAND’S HISTORY AND RANGE
Founded in Manchester by Roy Dixon in 1976, The Flava People initially led the butchery industry by supplying innovative seasonings and sauces with our MRC brand to traditional meat counters. As the butchery sector declined in the 1990s, the company pivoted, launching Flava It! in 1997 to spice up retail shelves. The first three products – Hot & Spicy, Chinese-Style, and Garden Mint 35g seasoning mix sachets were the first pre-cook marinades in this format, offering bold, new flavours inspired by Asian restaurants and US-style pitmaster rubs. Flava It! revolutionised the seasoning category by providing an affordable, convenient way to enhance everyday meals.
Flava It! has remained consistent in its ambitions to offer busy families with fuss-free, flavourful, and affordable cooking solutions. With 28 years in retail, the brand has developed a loyal customer base, doubling the category’s average repeat purchase rate. Today, Flava It!’s range of 8 offers trusted flava-ful solutions across retailers, with flavours including:
- Flava It! Chinese-Style Seasoning Mix
- Flava It! Smoky BBQ Seasoning Mix
- Flava It! Garlic & Herb Seasoning Mix
- Flava It! Garden Mint Seasoning Mix
- Flava It! Piri Piri Seasoning Mix
- Flava It! Greek Air Fry Seasoning Mix – New for 2025
- Flava It! Jerk Air Fry Seasoning Mix – New for 2025
- Flava It! Tikka Air Fry Seasoning Mix – New for 2025
Our homeland brand, Flava It! has continued to remain consistent and trusted whilst being agile in response to ever-changing consumer trends. With the brand remaining as a family-focused and fuss-free proposition, and understanding the importance of giving back, in 2024 The Flava People decided to partner Flava It! with a local social initiative, Community Grocery, which supports an estimated 1.2 million UK people living in food insecurity. As part of Flava It!’s ‘Give-a-Shop’ campaign, our ambition is to fundraise up to £30,000 each year, supporting the full cost of building 1 new store each year through donating 3p per Flava It! sachet sold (across our core brand and co-branded range).
Flava It!’s ‘Give-a-Shop’ campaign messaging has been incorporated in new packaging design, with a URL to a webpage that keeps customer up-to-date with our fundraising commitment. In addition to embracing a charity partnership on new 100% recyclable packaging, the new designs also include modern product call-outs, and incorporated QR codes on-pack that link the Flava It! range of recipe ideation.
BRAND COLLABORATIONS
As part of Flava It!’s 2024 brand refresh, Flava It!’s new strategy also included industry-first collaborations, drawing on insights from The Flava People’s successful brand licensing retail launches. With Flava It!’s core brand values remaining consistent to offer fuss-free, accessible, affordable and delicious meal-times, we set-out to approach strategic brand partners to bring our vision to life.
Since 2010, The Flava People have worked with Aldi, supplying their own-label ranges of seasonings. During a meeting with the Aldi buyer in 2023, we recognised a unique opportunity to collaborate with Mob, Aldi’s food media partner with over 3 million social media followers and a growing customer base. Mob, known for engaging younger consumers and offering accessible cooking content, aligned perfectly with Flava It!‘s values of affordability and flavour.
In January 2024, we launched a Mob x Flava It! co-branded range, incorporating Mob’s industry-leading recipe inspiration and translating those into four seasoning sachets – Triple Chilli Pasta, Creamy Halloumi Curry, Honey & Chorizo Chilli, and Pulled Chicken Tacos – across 1,000 Aldi stores. Acknowledging accessibility and convenience are key-drivers of in-store decisions, each sachet highlighted step-by-step instructions and a QR code linking to other affordable recipes. The collaboration was a massive success, with 720,000 sachets sold in a product drop through FSDUs in Aldi, an impressive social media campaign reaching over 10 million consumers and national press coverage. Consumer feedback was overwhelmingly positive, with many customers still contacting Mob & Flava It! for the products to be permanent (and products being re-sold on eBay for 4-5 times the RRP)! Our first launch was so successful, we continued on to partner with Mob and Aldi for another product range in September 2024.
After a success collaboration with Mob, we recognised the potential in this co-branded format and replicated the model with another strategic partners. We approached Pinch of Nom, a popular slimming-friendly cookbook brand with over 3 million social media followers. Known for its cult-like following and seven best-selling cookbooks, Pinch of Nom was the top-selling non-fiction book brand before Prince Harry’s Spare release. Like Flava It!, Pinch of Nom emphasises accessible, affordable recipes, with a focus on promoting healthier living. This alignment made it a natural fit for our next collaboration, which subsequently followed securing multiple retail opportunities with our Flava It! x Pinch of Nom range.
BRINGING THE RE-BRAND TO LIFE
Bringing cooking inspiration and help into the home was a must for us, so we focused on transforming our website into a brand hub with recipes for every occasion, skill level and price range. This was activated with a website over-haul in uploading recipe ideation bespoke to both our core and collaboration products, which was also linked and referenced on-pack for consumers to easily access.
Flava It! also began it’s social-era in 2024, creating visual content that captured how to create simple, affordable, accessible and delicious home cooked recipes with the existing and new product range. This was also supported by Flava It!’s brand collaboration partners, with Pinch of Nom and Mob distributing tailored content to their combined audience of over 5 million followers.
Flava It! also committed to increasing consumer trial through running consumer sampling campaigns with Degusta, working with our home-land affiliates and brand partner affiliates to push our message further afield. Furthermore, we’ve invested in POS in-store displays across retailers, including working very closely with Aldi’s marketing team to create content for in-store digital displays, as well as working with their affiliates, PR and social teams.
