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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 review. Keep mentioning that the taste is not that great. I have created something to help you. It's called the flavour Blueprint. It's a free guide that based on the process I use with my clients to fix their underperforming products.
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If you're tired of guessing and you want clarity before another batch, download your free flavour blueprint. If you want to create food or drink product that actually tastes amazing, get the repeat purchases and see your sales go up.
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You need a flavour strategy. I'm Manon Galizzi, food scientist and flavour expert. And in this podcast, I share what I've learned from helping food and drink brands create new products from scratch. Choose the right flavour direction or fix the flavours that are not working. Welcome to another of my 30 days podcast challenge.
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Why is it important to train your brain to taste properly for your food and drink business? This is what we're going to see today. In this episode, the first thing you have to know is our brain is not designed to describe precisely what we taste. So this is completely normal.
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Most of the time when we try a product and we are not trained to describe it properly, we just go instantly to our, preferences. I like it. Oh, it tastes nice. Oh, oh, oh, that doesn't taste. I really don't like this one. So this is because our brain is designed for our survival and survival only.
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This is the only thing he focus on 100% of the time. So the only thing he think of is, is it safe to eat? He will not go instantly to, yeah, it tastes a little bit woody and citrusy with some floral notes.
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So the first thing is it's completely normal. So that's why even if you go by a coffee shop, you will smell coffee. It would be very hard for you to describe what sort of coffee is it light roasted beans?
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Is it dark roasted beans? Is it a little bit fruity? None of the things will matter. The only thing that your brain focus on will be smell of coffee. I like it. I don't like it. It smells safe. It doesn't smell safe. I want some awful food.
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It will be more like a survival mechanism of I really want to eat this muffin because I can smell it. It smells so good. That's why none are equipped to describe precisely flavours without a training.
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We all need to train our brain to describe accurately flavours and that's why we have flavour lexicons. And this is What I teach my customers when they select one of my three packages, either create package, the choose package or the fix package.
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So whether you want to create a product and you need me to do the product development, either you need to choose the flavour that go for your product or you need to fix a product that is not working on the the market. There is always a bespoke flavour lexicon that is involved.
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I won't be able to train you on all of the flavour lexicon that exists because it can be very granular. You can go into chocolate, vanilla, strawberry, raspberry, apricot. You can go in literally every flavour. Or I tend to gather them into for example red berries, baked note, plant based and select the main one.
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Sometimes I combine two together. So for example I combine for the plant based berries, Tamil like I'm working on, I combined a little bit of coffee with the main characteristic of the plant based lexicon.
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So it's not overwhelming either. It just have the main descriptors for the training. And the purpose of this flavour lexicon is for all of us to have the same neutral language and to remove as much bias and personal preferences as possible.
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So once we have this flavour lexicon training, the purpose is to smell a reference and to write down every associations that we have. It can be a memory, it can be, it reminds me of this product, any association linked to this reference.
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So it's very, very personal. So we write them down, we discuss between us to help us out. Oh yeah, it reminds you of that. Yeah, I didn't think about that. Now you said it. So we help each other out. Then we go through all of the smelling references and the purpose is you have to remember.
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So if for example green is always a good example that always enjoy having green for me reminds me when my dad is cutting fresh grass in the garden that there is a technical word for that in English.
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Apologize. Right now is the only thing that comes to mind is just cutting fresh grass in the garden. But for other people it will remind them of a green tomato or if we remind them of something specific.
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So rather than me during a tasting, say it reminds me when my dad was cutting the grass in the garden. Oh, it reminds me when I have, if I say it tastes a bit green because we all been trained on the same reference, we don't necessarily have the same perception, the same memory or the same association.
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But everyone knows what we are talking about. It can be something completely different for another person. But if I say green then they will know, and they'll be like, yes, it's green, but my association is X, Y and Z.
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So then when we do a, tasting, we come back to the references as much as possible. And you need practice. You have to practice your brain constantly because this is a new skill you can imagine it's like learning a new language if, for example, you learn few words in Spanish.
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And if you don't practice for the rest of the year, you can be sure two hours later you have forgotten all of the learning you've done during that training. Practice is being more mindful first of what we eat and what we drink. Because of course eating and drinking is a survival thing first of all, but it's also a pleasure thing.
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It can be a stress, release, it can be a pick me up. So the primary function is not of course to describe how a food or drink tastes like, but you just have to be a bit more mindful. First of all, in your day to day life, whatever you drink, whatever eat, close your eyes and focus on what you taste.
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Just focus on describing as much as possible just by doing that every day. Everything you try, even if you're cooking, rather than just throwing all of your ingredients in the saucepan, smell them first. I didn't realize oregano was a little bit lemony.
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Oh, this olive oil is a little bit fruity. And then you mix them all together and after you do the same one, you eat the meal. And one of my customers, employee, he said something very friendly. If I close my eyes, my son is going to think I'm crazy.
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And I said, you should do that with your son. That can be something you can even do, with your kids. And it's even more important to practice mindfulness when you eat and drink with the little ones so they can practice that later on and they can appreciate even more all of the flavours coming from their foods and they drink.
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So it starts with mindfulness. And it's not easy because sometimes we eat very quickly without even realizing we are doing something in the same time. Maybe we are watching tv, we are calling someone, or we, we are working while we are eating something.
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So this why it's so important to I, always say close your eyes, take two seconds, five seconds, a minute to just try to describe. Even if nothing come up, it doesn't matter, just practice, practice, practice.
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So when you're in an official tasting for your food and drink business, then it will become much more automatic, much quicker for your brain to go straight to, okay, I know what it is I need to describe as much as possible.
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This is the end of our episode. As always, I hope you find it helpful. If you don't forget, you can find all of my tips around tasting, flavours and product development in my newsletter. So don't forget to subscribe and I will see you tomorrow for another episode. Bye.
