At Small Batch Learning, we spend a lot of time understanding how frontline teams learn and how brands can solve product training at scale. Two clear insights consistently surface.

For staff, every second counts. Product training needs to fit around real-world demands: service, operations, interruptions, and limited time for learning. In most scenarios, teams need a quick, accurate solution – enough to help them recognise a product, understand its style and communicate its key benefit to customers.

For brand partners, not every SKU requires a deep-dive. Some products need a lighter, more flexible format – whether it’s a new flavour variant or a launch that needs rapid share of mind on a crowded shelf. And for bigger ranges, brands also need options in how they structure training investment.

Shorts were designed to meet both needs. A stripped-back lesson format that delivers high-impact product awareness in under two minutes.

Why Shorts?

Pro lessons remain the gold standard for full product knowledge: production details, flavour and structure, differentiation, serves, objections, and more. They build confidence, not just awareness.

But alongside Pros, our partners asked for a second tool – something faster and easier to deploy for SKUs that don’t require the same level of detail. Shorts fill this gap. They enable brands to train more products, more often, while giving learners essential information without the time commitment of a full lesson.

Shorts are particularly suited to:

• New SKUs entering a competitive shelf
• Flavour variants and range extensions where the flagship is already covered
• Products with one clear selling point

For brands, Shorts offer greater flexibility across a wider range of products. For learners, they mean time pressure doesn’t have to compromise product knowledge.

What’s inside a Short?

Each Short follows a consistent three-page structure designed to deliver the essential information teams need to recognise and recommend a product.

1. “One thing to remember”: A defining message about the product. This anchors the lesson and guides the MCQ that follows.
2. “The essentials”: A concise snapshot covering category, origin, taste and price – the minimum effective content required for clear product recognition. 
3. Signature serve or “Who’s drinking it & when”: Brands choose one of these two options – both keep the lesson anchored with information teams can use on when talking to customers.
4. One multiple-choice question: A fast check to reinforce the one thing to remember. 

What Shorts mean for brand partners

Shorts give brands an additional training format that complements Pro lessons rather than replaces them. They provide a practical way to:

• Support new launches quickly and consistently
• Reinforce a single key message across different retail and hospitality channels
• Extend training coverage to SKUs that don’t need a full deep-dive
• Introduce more flexibility into how training investment is structured across a range

Put simply, they help brands match the level of training to the needs of the product and the realities of the environment it’s sold in.

What Shorts mean for learners

For teams, Shorts deliver fast, functional product awareness. They acknowledge the practical limits of shift-based roles and make learning easier to fit into short windows of time.

Shorts help learners:

• Build product recognition in minutes
• Understand a product’s style and suitability
• Explore more items across more categories

Shorts and Pros work together: one builds awareness; the other builds confidence.

Training that adapts to the way people sell

The launch of Shorts marks the next step in making product training smarter, faster and more adaptable – for learners, retailers and brand partners.

If you’d like to explore how Shorts can support your next launch or range review, we’d be happy to walk you through the format.