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Quick thing before we start. If you're a food and drink brand and your product isn't performing the way it should, maybe the sales have slowed down or the reviews keep mentioning that the taste is not that great and you don't know where to start. I have created something to help you. It's called the Flavour Blueprint.
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It's a free guide that based on the process I use with my clients to fix their underperforming products. Inside you will find the five most common reasons product don't sell plus a simple three step flavour strategy you can use straight away to get your product back on track.
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If you're tired of guessing and you want clarity before another batch, download your free flavour blueprint and I've put the link in the episode description. If you want to design food and drink product that tastes perfect for your consumers, hit those repeat purchases and see your sales go through the roof.
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There is no luck or miracle involved. You need a flavour strategy. I'm Manon Galizzi, a food scientist and flavour Expert with over 10 years in the food industry. In each episode I share with you what I've learned from helping brands create new products from scratch, choose the right flavour direction or fix products that are just performing.
[01:08.6]
Because flavour is not just nice to have. It's the number one reason people buy. Welcome to another day of my 30 day podcast challenge. Today I answer a question that I very often have when I meet food and drink businesses and from some of my clients and it is what do you do as a food scientist?
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And I really love that question because when I start explaining what a food scientist is and what I do on my day to day basis, people usually have big eyes and they ask even more questions and they always, they always say I never knew that your job existed.
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And it sounds so interesting, it sounds so much fun. And the answer is yes, I do love, my job, but it also comes with some challenges. So basically as a food scientist mainly you have to do a lot of trials.
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A lot and lot of trials. And this is where sometimes he gets frustrated. I guess it's the same for every scientist or any product developer outside of the food and drink industry is you have 90% chance of failure and 10% chance of success.
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So you really have to be resilient, you really have to think outside of the box and you have to keep on going and going and going until you have the results expected not only from you, but for your business, for your customers, etc.
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So on my CREATE package, this is where I help Food and drink businesses create a product from scratch. So I worked for example on a plant based barista milk and I never worked on the plant based barista milk, before barista or not, the plant based milk never worked on it.
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I said milk, but you know what I mean. I'm not supposed to say that a drink, but you know what I mean. So I had to do a lot of research, read a lot of scientific paper to understand not only how I can make it, but how it can be industrialized as well.
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I always try to get as close as possible as the industrialization process. I'm not making a recipe for kitchen purposes. I'm making a recipe thinking is going to be scale up 10, 100, 200 time with specific machine specific temperatures and process.
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So the closer I get on the lab scale, the easier it will be, later down the line with the proper equipment, it will change for sure. I'm not saying that it will never change. Every time you scale up it will change the texture, the flavour, everything will change.
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But if I already start getting closer, then it helps the process down the line. So is having the scientific equipment is understanding is pasteurization or sterilization the right option? Why is understanding the packaging is having all of this element straight away to be able to do all of the trials and to give you an example with this plant based barista milk, which is a project that is still ongoing, I'm on trial number, I think 182, something like that.
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And now we are in the industrialization stage and using pilot machine to really understand how the product react in the bigger scale. So it's a lot of research, it's a lot of tasting and as a food scientist I have to understand all of the characteristics of the product that my client wants.
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In this case it was anything of mouthfeel, sweetness, saltiness, aftertaste, creaminess. It was also the functionality. So we had to work with actual barista for them to use our different milk samples and seeing the foam, having their feedback.
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Because I am not a barista, I don't have that skill. So he was asking professional their opinion on can they make a latte very quickly and very easily with this milk, can it stay, how stable the foam is, how stable it is with the coffee.
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And that was one of the main challenges I had, was to find an acidity regulator because the protein of the barista milk react very badly with the acidity of the coffee. So it creates degradation of the protein.
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It looks like mini scrambled eggs, Rather than having something that is very homogenized. So that is for create. The second package I have for my client is to CHOOSE. So to choose, I have to use a little bit of flavour pairing and my flavour experience on top of my food scientific background to be able to understand which flavour goes with this product.
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Does it mask, does it enhance, does it complement? So it's very much the flavour science with the product development mixed together, finding the right flavour, the right flavour profile that fit the product and the target audience for my customers.
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And then the last package is FIX, which is mainly around flavours, but can also be around the other basic tastes, like the sweetness, the saltiness and understanding why your product on shelf is not working and how to fix it.
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And the answer 90% of the time is actually the flavours. It's not the branding, it's not the packaging, it's not the cost, it's what it tastes like. If a product tastes amazing, people will be willing to sacrifice, their money, thinking, okay, I'm a bit tight this month, but this product is so good, it's not for me, I will be so happy to offer it to someone else, etc. Etc.
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So rebranding is not necessarily the solution. Always look at your product first. Look at the review. So this is why I come in to help understanding the consumer feedback with my client and decide on the best routes.
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If it's too sweet, understanding the type of sweetness, what can we use instead? If you're using stevia, if you're using monk fruit, if you're using other type of sweeteners, the sweetness perception, the saltiness perception is as important as the flavouring itself and the flavour profile and everything like that.
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So we deconstruct everything, we understand which direction we want to go based on the consumer feedback. And again is trials and trials and trials and trials until we reach the sweet point.
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Until the consumers are happy with the product. So is very much understanding all of the ingredients, understanding the process, the packaging, the shelf life. So it's not just about now is understanding the life cycle of your product, how long is the distribution going to be, how is it going to be stored, how the flavours and the basic taste react to everything like that.
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So this is what a food scientist does, is again understanding every aspect of the, the product and I combine it with my flavour expertise as well, understanding the science of flavours and how flavours react with all of the other ingredients over shelf life to guide my clients and making them take the best decision possible for their product, for their target consumers and their business.
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So it basically involves a lot of tasting. So every trials I mention there is a tasting associated with, so to avoid putting on too much weight. I always do a lot of exercises. I'm very conscious of what I eat outside of my tasting.
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When you have 200 tastings and that is only one product, you can put on weight very easily and very quickly. So having everything else balanced in my diet, having always a lot of exercises.
[10:26.9]
For the ones that follow me on Instagram, you know that I also do self-defense and I also teach self-defense so that definitely keep my exercises up. I hope I've answered your question about what a food scientist is and what basically I do in my day to day job.
[10:46.0]
I'm looking forward to see you tomorrow for another episode of this Food Lab podcast. See you tomorrow. Bye. Thank you for listening. If you got value from this episode, follow the podcast and subscribe to my newsletter for more tips and knowledge about food and drink product development.
