Woolworths says it’s trying to better understand what shoppers want from the supermarket giant’s own branded products by offering free food in exchange for reviews.

About 4,000 customers have taken part in online tasting club The Bunch over the past six months, which allows people to taste Woolworths own brand food products for free, sampling items including soups, lamb shanks, crackers, brie and ice cream, and provide unfiltered reviews.

Woolworths senior brand manager Gemma Howells said customers are given full-sized portions to test and are allowed to give unfiltered reviews on The Bunch website.

“We have spent so much investment in making sure we have the right quality in our own brand range and what this does is get people testing those products on a much bigger scale and giving us feedback,” Howells said.

“In exchange, we want them to cook, experiment and test them with their family and friends, then decide what they think of them and share their honest ratings and reviews on ‘The Bunch’,” she said.

“We are capturing the feedback and we can do something with it and improve our product.”

The supermarket giant has been reducing the number of its own branded products, including dumping the Home Brand label for Essentials, to improve its private labelled offering.

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