At Club Coffee, in my role as Chief Innovation Officer, Pearl supported the launch of the award winning PurPod100, the world’s first compostable coffee pod. Pearl led our product testing and brand positioning research with consumers. I would highly recommend Pearl Strategy for innovation strategy and pipeline development projects where deep consumer understanding and insights are critical.

I have had the pleasure of working with Pearl Innovation & Strategy Design Inc. on several projects while working at both Tim Hortons and Bacardi. During my tenure at Tim Hortons, Pearl was our lead Innovation research and consultancy firm managing many strategic innovation projects including our Lunch Re-positioning, Food & Beverage Concept validation, Innovation Consumer Sensory Validation, Competitive Validations and Consumer Ethnography studies. Pearl’s work was invaluable in helping Tim Hortons re-establish itself as a Lunch destination for Canadians, surpassing McDonalds as #1 for Lunch.

We engaged John and Susan to work with us on a project that we had identified as an opportunity over the last few months. The Pearl group have consistently exceeded expectations by always being prepared, organized and providing thought leadership at each intersection of the project. would recommend working with Pearl Group for any projects that are in consideration.

My team recently had the opportunity to work with Pearl Strategy on an innovation project using the Facilitation for Innovation framework. We brought together 20 cross-functional team members for an intense session with the objective of generating brand new innovative ideas. To say the session was a success would be an understatement! Under Susan and Donya’s skillful leadership and complete understanding of the business issues, the team developed an array of platforms and positionings that could potentially make a strong impact on our category.

Following the session, the team’s feedback was overwhelmingly positive. We are looking forward to working with you again.

Working with Pearl was a pleasure as they brought a disciplined approach to uncovering consumer centric trends and insights, a strategic process and an integrated innovation plan that was new to the organization. Their experience in connecting consumer insights to platform opportunities was valuable in providing a roadmap to the innovation pipeline for the future. Not only did they lead the team in the process, they coached the team to replicate the process. I highly recommend them.

We recently worked with Pearl Strategy on an innovation and positioning project, which was an absolute pleasure. We initially came to Pearl with a business problem and purpose, to reignite an existing category, but with little direction on how to best involve the customer in testing the innovation and positioning areas to explore. Pearl brought a level of strategic leadership to the project and immediately recommended a workshop and online qualitative approach that worked within our tight timelines.

Throughout the workshop, Pearl helped us refine our innovation platforms and develop positioning areas with alignment from key stakeholders. The outcome was a clear consumer insight driven recommendation on how to proceed with specific innovations, recipes and positioning territories. Further to the planned outcome, the project identified a new framework for the team to use for future innovation work. Boston Pizza would highly recommend Pearl Strategy for any innovation or strategy work where consumer insights are integral.

Pearl Strategy is a trusted innovation research partner for our company as we focus on bringing the right consumer products to market for Canadians. Pearl’s strategic, consumer-centric approach enabled us to uncover key insights and opportunities that directly address our specific objectives, while their business perspective and experience gives us the assurance that they can work within our timelines and that they have our best interests in mind. That we are able to leverage Pearl for both concept development and validation allows us to move quickly and confidently in our rapidly changing market.

In the development of new product innovation platforms, Pearl Strategy and Innovation Design helped us align our retail brand strategy with overarching business objectives, ensuring that our innovation and marketing investments would generate the highest returns and reinforce the corporate brand positioning. Pearl led the project through opportunity development, concept development, idea validation process and strategic recommendations.

This work helped the team navigate a new retail landscape and created a framework for prioritizing volume-driving initiatives. Their work helped establish a path for consumer-led product development to ensure our innovation is differentiated and meets customer and category needs. We were pleased with the client service and engagement in our business Pearl acting as an extension of our team. I look forward to working with them again in the future.