From insights to action: How Oats Overnight puts data & customers at the center

The most successful subscription brands are built into their customers’ daily routines. Each one aims to craft products and experiences so essential that customers reach for them again every single day. And with many customers starting their days off with breakfast, the morning meal could be the perfect foothold for the right brand.

Oats Overnight recognized that opportunity early on, which was step 1 of their growth into one of the DTC industry’s leading food brands. Forming the idea was the easy part, though—their subsequent explosion into the breakfast of choice for hundreds of thousands of subscribers took years of meticulous product development and smart scaling.

Brian Tate, the founder and CEO of Oats Overnight, recently explained how listening closely to customers, using data to spot trends early, and making their subscription service easier and more personal helped grow the brand into a big success across both online and in-store shopping. Here’s an inside look at one way a brand can scale from an idea to an enterprise, without ever losing sight of the customer.

2016-2020: Big things brewing

All in: Former poker pro bets big on breakfast & finds a gap in the market

A quick scan of Brian Tate’s résumé might surprise you. Before he leapt into entrepreneurship as the founder of Oats Overnight, he spent 12 years on professional high-stakes poker circuits—long enough to see the game make the leap into the digital world and transform into a strategic, data-driven venture.

At the time, Tate began most of his days with a mason jar of overnight oats. Ever the problem solver, he optimized his breakfast over time: swapped the clunky jar for a portable shaker bottle, added protein to round out his macros, increased the milk ratio for texture, and so on.

During his latter years at the poker table, as he considered his next move, he wondered if there might be a way to blend easy eats with big data. After some late-night tinkering and tasting in his kitchen, he created Oats Overnight.

Meet the flavors: Launched online with 3 SKUs, turning first-time buyers into loyal fans

Oats Overnight officially launched in 2016 with a lineup of three flavors—a far cry from the 33 currently on the brand’s site. With a team that included Tate’s own mom, the scrappy young company operated out a small production facility/warehouse/office combo.

Despite their small size, Oats Overnight employed sophisticated, data-driven strategies. Some early efforts at optimizing marketing campaigns, for example, resulted in 2% gains in retention. Not bad! But when taste-enhancing recipe tweaks resulted in retention gains closer to 10%, it became clear that Oats Overnight would be a product-led brand. They put R&D front and center and have kept it there ever since.

A perfect pair: Subscription-first business model powered by Recharge

The company’s early evaluation of their customer cohorts revealed that subscriptions would be critical to their retention and growth: Customers valued low-hassle replenishment, which would translate into reliable revenue for the brand. The search for a subscription platform landed Oats Overnight on Recharge in late 2016.

At first, the brand’s first-time subscription rate (FTSR), or the portion of first-time customers who opt to open a subscription, was just 30%. Searching for ways to boost uptake, ecommerce director Thomas Keller suggested replacing the brand’s product sample offer with a first-order discount for subscribers. It was a daring move, since the samples drove most of the brand’s orders; eliminating them would remove their biggest entry point into customers’ routines. On the other hand, just 20% of sample orders resulted in subscriptions, making their long-term value questionable.

The team decided to play the odds, end their sample program, and launch the first-order discount. Keller’s call paid off—the FTSR jumped to 90%. Oats Overnight was officially and quantifiably a subscription-first brand.

2020–2023: Rising to the occasion

The MV-est of P’s: The pivot from acquisition to retention

2020 presented brands around the world with a slew of new challenges. For Oats Overnight, COVID lockdowns meant that one of their biggest advantages—convenience—nearly evaporated overnight. A nutritious, prep-free breakfast had been an easy sell to commuters with busy mornings, who comprised half of the brand’s customer base. But with most commutes paused indefinitely, and many customers even filling their time with slower meal options, speed was suddenly less compelling.

Tate was used to changing tack in a fluid situation. It was clear that customer acquisition would be more difficult for now, so Oats Overnight pivoted to maximizing relationships with the customers they already had.

Product innovation powered by the people who eat it

Getting customers to continue wanting more from Oats Overnight, it turned out, was simply a question of offering them more. The brand launched the Flavor In Development (FID) program, which would grant customers priority access to upcoming products in exchange for their feedback.

The initiative had all kinds of benefits. For subscribers, it delivered a novel experience and something to look forward to—both of which were in short supply in 2020. But the feedback that FID members provided on experimental flavors was invaluable to Oats Overnight too, helping them guarantee that each new launch would be a hit—a huge win for a brand built on R&D.

After the FID program’s success, the company immediately set out to source even more product intel. They launched a Facebook group to grow their community and collect real-time feedback from customers. The group generated over 2,000 comments each day at its peak, making it a goldmine of customer insights.

Oats Overnight had always let those insights guide its product development. With customers more open and accessible than ever, the company was able to fine-tune its recipes even faster.

Raising the stakes: Securing funding for expansion

Though Oats Overnight eventually emerged from 2020 intact, they still needed ways to safeguard their growth. As they evaluated their options, the online-only brand realized they may need to look a little farther afield. 85% of all oatmeal in the US was sold in stores; that was where the opportunity lay. Oats Overnight would build its future with brick and mortar.

A novel approach to traditional retail

Entering retail stores offered huge potential, but plenty of risk too. Undeterred, the company secured $2 million in seed funding with an airtight entry plan backed top to bottom by customer insights. No consideration was off limits if it would provide a better experience—even the product’s form factor.

For online orders, Oats Overnight packages each serving in a pouch, intended to be poured into the brand’s signature shaker bottle and mixed with milk. A shaker bottle is included for free with each customer’s first order to minimize the packaging required for refill orders.

In stores, however, the brand’s own intel suggested that customers would be more amenable to overnight oats that didn’t require a separate accessory to prepare. So for physical retail inventory, the company opted to ship their product in a new disposable bottle that was ready for mixing—no shaker bottle required.

Sticking to your guns

When Walmart, the first retailer to explore stocking Oats Overnight, balked at the new bottles, Oats Overnight didn’t waver. They knew their intel was solid, so they found a more willing partner in Wegman’s, an East Coast supermarket chain. After customers responded enthusiastically to the Wegman’s launch, Oats Overnight carried their momentum back into subsequent launches at Walmart, who reconsidered the bottles after seeing them succeed, and at Target.

Tate says the saga held a lesson for any brand: If you’re confident in your product and have the research to back it up, you don’t need to cave to outside pressure.

Data bites: Launching the Flavor Command Center

Going omnichannel does more than expose a brand to more customers and revenue streams. One of the biggest benefits of the model is that insights from each channel can improve the other; shared learning makes each channel stronger than it would have been on its own.

In 2021, Oats Overnight tapped into that potential by centralizing their product R&D in the new Flavor Command Center. By then, the brand had added dozens of flavor options and was constantly experimenting with new ones. The Command Center’s role was to find the frontrunners that had the most potential to resonate with customers and drive LTV.

Insights generated at the Command Center were funneled back into both of Oats Overnight’s retail channels, delivering a steady flow of data that helped both improve continuously.

2023–present: Full speed ahead

If 2020 had been a speed bump for Oats Overnight, the following years were more like a launchpad. In 2021 alone, the same year they expanded into physical retail, the company quadrupled its subscriber base from 10,000 to 42,000. Sales similarly shot up 150% year-over-year to reach $25 million.

With the uncertainty behind them, the company began laying the groundwork for further expansion.

A recipe for growth: Scaling retail partnerships, manufacturing & DTC

In 2021, Oats Overnight had catapulted into multichannel success with just $2 million in seed funding. The sum was modest but crucial; Tate says the timely cash infusion saved the company.

By 2023, the company was breathing more easily. With their near-term survival secure, they shifted their sights to a more ambitious plan to scale production and sales across the board, with the budget to match: $20 million in Series A funding.

At the time, the company’s operations were distributed across four different facilities throughout Phoenix, which left lots of room for inefficiency: Product had to be transported between multiple locations, and coordination between functions could be difficult when they weren’t in the same place. So this time, Oats Overnight would use their extra resources to transform into a manufacturing and logistics powerhouse. 

Building a more efficient oat

The brand consolidated their separate Phoenix facilities into a single, sprawling 86,000-square-foot one. The new location combined functions like manufacturing, supply chain, fulfillment, and R&D into a single location big enough to meet needs for both the DTC and retail channels.

Centralizing these functions made it easier to coordinate between them, enabling faster feedback and more agile initiatives. Limited product runs, for example, were easy to launch with all teams under a single roof, whereas coordinating between external logistics and manufacturing partners would have complicated them significantly.

Built to deliver: State-of-the-art facilities ramp up production & innovation

Oats Overnight was on an optimization tear. Their next move would be to complement the new Arizona facility with a smaller one in Ohio. The idea had surfaced years earlier, but was shelved as the company focused on its main facility. Now, with the Arizona location complete and half the company’s customers located in the eastern part of the country, the time was right.

The 62,000-square-foot facility location opened in 2023. It immediately made shipping both faster and cheaper for customers in the eastern U.S., slashing a full day off of shipping times. The savings from shipping and process automation powered beefed-up marketing efforts for the brand—the new facility even doubled as a studio for behind-the-scenes video content. Oats Overnight had pulled the rare double feat of delivering a better customer experience while saving on costs.

Churn? What churn? Optimizing the subscription model

While they tamed their production and logistics, Oats Overnight remained a product-led company. The next item on their long checklist of areas to optimize: subscriptions.

With their menu approaching 60 flavors, customers often reported that they were resorting to tools like notebooks and spreadsheets just to track their favorite varieties. So the Oats Overnight team used Recharge’s SDK to build their “likes/notes” feature, which tracked each customer’s personal rating and impressions of each flavor. Their feedback would even make its way to the Flavor Command Center for further flavor refinement.

And with separate updates to their customer portal that customized and personalized it even further, Oats Overnight reinvented their subscription program into a retention machine. The results: 152% more recurring orders, 41% longer-lasting subscriptions, 13% higher AOV, and 29% less churn.

We’re obsessed: Future plans and innovations

Oats Overnight is almost as much a movement as a brand. 90% of their DTC sales come from their dedicated contingent of subscribers, who now number over 300,000. On the brick-and-mortar side, the growing list of stores sporting Oats Overnight products now includes wholesale giant Costco.

They’re not slowing down now, of course. They recently secured a $35 million round of Series B funding that they’ll use to keep optimizing their products and experiences. On the docket: AI-powered customer flavor profiles, mapping how receptive customers can be to different flavor components. They’re even making their first foray outside of oats with an instant protein coffee, expected to make a full launch later in 2025.

These initiatives are a concerted effort to build what Tate calls a “next-gen CPG company, powered by data and community.” Oats Overnight has leaned on both to guide its growth from a homegrown experiment into one of the DTC industry’s defining brands. Now, with new insights and ideas flowing in faster than ever, it’s not hard to imagine them redefining breakfast yet again.