Claire Saffitz tried to make a gourmet Skittle from scratch. Thirteen million people stuck around to see if she could.
A Bon Appétit series where a trained pastry chef takes on gas-station candy, and the candy usually wins the first round.
Who was watching
People who were never going to make Skittles at home and were thrilled to watch somebody else attempt it. The appeal was the struggle, and the struggle took a while.
What we made for them
The same setup every episode: one junk-food icon, one pastry chef, no shortcuts. I worked with the on-camera talent on the shape of each episode, where it gets stuck and where it finally turns, and on keeping new ones coming without sanding off what people loved about it.
What they did
They stayed for the whole thing. By late 2019 the series had passed two billion minutes watched, and more than 30 episodes had cleared five million views.
More episodes
If you have a channel nobody is watching yet, I would like to hear about it.