Case Study: Caribou Coffee achieves rapid, consumer-driven beverage innovation with GutCheck

How Caribou Coffee Got Insights Fast By Leveraging an Agile Qual and Quant Solution

Caribou Coffee, amid six years of traffic and sales growth, needed to accelerate brand innovation—especially in non-coffee beverages—while keeping the business moving. Their small insights team faced costly, time-consuming in-person research, limited resources, and pressure to validate ideas quickly for senior leadership, so they sought a research partner that could deliver fast, affordable, high-quality qualitative and quantitative work as an extension of their team.

GutCheck provided an integrated agile solution: a 5-day quantitative prioritization that narrowed 30 concepts to 6, followed by a 5-day Instant Research Group (IRG) qualitative refinement to optimize the finalists. The approach produced consumer-backed winning ideas, faster decision-making, reduced travel and cost, and an ongoing partnership that gives Caribou quick, actionable consumer reads to drive future innovation.

Caribou Coffee

Mauricio Loria

Sr. Director of Product Innovation & Insights