No chaos. No chasing. Just flawless fieldwork.
Sharp recruitment. Slick delivery. Real people who make things happen fast.
Trusted by global consumer brands, world-leading research agencies, and some of the UK’s biggest household names.
You brief us once. It gets done.
When a global consumer electronics brand needs thousands of products in real homes, tested, tracked, and reported on. They call us.
Products arrive at our Leeds facility where we receive, record, sort and prepare every unit, adding collateral, completing reworks, and organising tracked dispatch. During the trial we manage testers directly, chasing diary and survey completion and capturing video evidence of any reported issues. On close, we handle collection and secure destruction.
You get clean data, zero logistics headaches, and a partner who owns every detail from intake to sign-off.
When Kantar and Ipsos need flawless on-site execution, they trust us to run the room.
We handle every element of CLT delivery — recruiting the right participants, sourcing and booking venues, procuring products and all equipment down to glassware and refrigeration, and designing the physical session flow for maximum efficiency.
Every study. A senior project manager on site. No exceptions.
When it’s done, we manage all excess product — returning to client or arranging secure destruction.
Bring senior teams closer to the people behind the numbers.
Imagine recruiting a Morrisons shopper, preparing them to articulate their frustrations, motivations and lived experience, then putting them in front of 500 store managers, category directors and the CEO at the Royal Armouries in Leeds.
That’s what we do for Morrisons. Regularly.
Customer Closeness programmes only work when the people in the room are genuinely the right people — confident, articulate, and fully prepared for high-stakes environments. Our recruitment goes far deeper than standard qual. We use extended screening, additional conversations and video audition tasks to understand each participant’s world before they ever step into yours.
We embed ourselves into your insight function — weekly planning sessions, ongoing collaboration, and reserves built into every session as standard. Because when the CEO is in the room, a no-show isn’t an option.
From a single recruit to a single session with 100 participants — we’ve delivered it all, for the agencies behind brands including M&S, Tesco, BT, Costa, Primark, Bupa and more.
Hand-picked participants, sharp project management, and smooth delivery across focus groups, depth interviews, ethnographies, online communities and large-scale Big Qual studies that bring quantitative reach to qualitative thinking.
Every participant is quality-checked through direct conversation, not just a screening survey. Because the right people in the room is never something we leave to chance.
Two hours before a client’s groups were due to start, their products hadn’t arrived. Nobody asked us to fix it. We got in the car, drove to three local shops, and came back with the coffee machines they needed. Sessions ran on time.
That’s Zest.
It’s the same attitude that saw us receive, sort, blind, code and pack over 20,000 products for dispatch when a client needed it done at scale and with such accuracy and efficiency that when they ran the same study in another market, they contacted us to understand our process so they could replicate it.
We’re an 12 strong fieldwork team that ran 395 projects last year and we treat every single one with the same hands-on urgency. When timelines tighten or things go sideways, we don’t escalate, we act.
Our participant panel of 25,000 spans the entirety of the UK, not just the big cities, meaning a no-show never becomes a crisis and your sample reflects the nation. Our venue relationships mean a problem is a phone call, not a disaster. And when briefs change, which they always do, we move at the pace you need.
You won’t find us pointing at process.
You’ll find us getting it done.
Built on trust. Sustained by results
52 studies in year one. 149 in year four. A fifth year already taking shape. Zest has become embedded in one of the world’s leading consumer brands’ research operations, running IHUTs, focus groups, in-home interviews and salon days across their full product portfolio. This is what a long-term fieldwork partnership looks like when it’s built on consistently doing the work properly.
Putting Beauty to the Test
30 participants. One day. A testing process rigorous enough for Clearcast approval. We designed and delivered every element — recruitment, scripting, session management, and day-after follow-up — so i-BRATE had the proof they needed to take their product to TV.
Keeping a Finger on the Nation’s Pulse
330 consecutive weeks. Original members still contributing. Not because they have to — because they want to. Since 2020, Zest has managed Kokoro’s weekly selfie-video community, recruiting with intention, retaining with care, and delivering vox pops on time every single week. This is what long-term community management looks like when it’s done properly.
