“The flavour challenges that once felt impossible are now solved. Manon guided us through a clear process that made decision-making much easier, removing a lot of biases, and always rooted in what was best for our brand”
Salvatore Notaro, Managing Director @ Vivo Life
Read the full Vivo Life case study →
Bonjour!
I am Manon Galizzi. French by background, based in the UK, and the founder of EPICSI.
I trained inside a flavour supplier, worked as a flavour specialist at some of the UK's most iconic food brands, like McVitie's, and left the corporate world to do something more useful:
Help established food and drink brands increase their repeat purchase rate.
Book Your Free 30-Min Call →My Approach
Everything starts with your target consumer.
Before I touch a recipe, I want to understand who is buying your product, specifically. What their palate expects, what flavour complexity they enjoy and what the experience should feel like when they open it for the first time.
From there, I map the flavour characteristics of your specific base and apply flavour pairing science: finding which profiles naturally complement what you have, rather than fighting against it.
Then I go to my lab and run as many trials as it takes, up to 200 per project if needed. Not samples from a catalogue. Trials built around your specific product, your specific brief, and your specific consumer.
I guide you through structured tasting sessions using objective language so your team can make decisions with confidence rather than opinion.
And I stay with you through the first production run, because taste always changes at scale and most brands find that out too late.
See the full process step by step →
What Working on Hobnobs, Digestives, and Jaffa Cakes Taught Me About Why Good Products Fail
At McVitie's, I watched the same pattern play out on every project. Marketing would survey consumers: "Which flavour would you like in your chocolate Hobnob?" The answer was always chocolate, vanilla, caramel, strawberry.
Those answers went straight into a supplier brief. Samples would arrive, sometimes twenty from different suppliers.
When I asked how the team planned to evaluate them all, the answer was: "We will smell a few and pick randomly."
Predictably, the results were not good.
Flavours that consumers said they wanted on paper did not work with the actual product in their hands. Projects ran over schedule. Consumer testing KPIs were missed.
Nobody had asked the two questions that matter most:
Does this flavour actually work with this specific product?
And does it match what the target consumer's palate actually responds to?
Read how I answer these questions for my clients →When the Right Process Changed Everything
When I put the right tools in place, training the team in flavour language and creating precise briefs for suppliers, the results changed completely. Consumer testing KPIs improved dramatically. Some projects exceeded their targets.
The difference was not the concept or the ingredients. It was whether the people developing it understood who they were making it for, and had the right tools to brief, evaluate, and refine properly.
See the results I have achieved for my clients →Why I Left the Corporate World to Start EPICSI
The food industry works in silos. Internal teams rarely bring in external expertise, even when the product is not working.
I spent months battling to be understood, hearing the same things I still hear today: "We have an internal R&D team." "Our flavour supplier handles everything."
And yet 76% of products still fail, largely because of taste.
I also wanted to work on products I actually believed in. The brands I wanted to help were doing something genuinely different: functional nutrition, clean-label ingredients, products that were good for people and for the planet.
The corporate world could not give me that.
So in 2023 I founded EPICSI to fill the gap I had seen everywhere: someone who starts with the consumer's palate, diagnoses the actual problem, and stays with you until it is right.
Ready to work with someone who does things differently?
Book your free 30-min call →
EDUCATION
EXPERIENCE
SPECIALIST AREAS
“The quality of Manon's work was second to none. We were thrilled with the data, the detailed research and recommendations, and the final product. We look forward to working with her again.”
Joshua Burgess, CEO and Co-founder @ KISSD
Ready to Work With Someone Who Has Seen This Problem From Every Angle?
If you are an established food or drink brand whose product is not getting the repeat purchases it deserves, or you are launching something functional and need to get the taste right before it goes to market and get that repeat purchase rate to 70%, let's talk.
Just an honest conversation about what is going on with your product and what needs to happen next.
Typically 2 to 3 slots available per week.
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