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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 Flavor 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 flavor blueprint. If you want to create food or drink products that actually taste amazing, get the repeat purchases and see your sales go up.
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You need the flavor strategy. I'm Manon Galizzi, food scientist and flavor 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 flavor direction or fix the flavors that are not working. Welcome to another episode of my 30 days podcast challenge.
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If you're food and drink brands, I want you to understand how long product development is. So for that, I'm gonna take my current packages to give you some real idea of how long a product development can be.
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And these come from a lot of questions I have when I have a, food and drink brand coming at me and asking me for my services. And we always have this sort of conversation. And the question always comes is, how long do you think it's gonna take?
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And most of the time it's actually a surprise to them. Really, do you think it's gonna take that long? And then we start the project together and sometimes it's even longer than I expected. So then they look at me and they understand why everything takes so long.
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I mean, don't get me wrong, you can have a product development done just like that, very quick. But then down the line, you may make a lot of mistakes. You may realize that it's not good enough. I mean, you can do everything very quickly, but just to have a good enough.
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But is it good enough to be on retail shelves, to stay on retail shelves? It's not just about creating a product very, very quickly. You also have to think about long term. How much retailers are going to ask from you and this product, how can stay on shelf.
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So if you want to create great or amazing product, then of course there is no surprise here. It takes time. So let's come back to my packages to give you some ideas. The first one I have is the Create package.
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This is when I developed a, food and drink product for my client. I do all of the product development. I can also Find suppliers and contract manufacturers for them if they need needed and link with them.
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So this is when I create a food or drink product from scratch. These can take from 12 to 18 months. My two other packages that are more focused around flavors, the first one is choose.
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This is when I help food and drink brands choose which flavors they want to go for their product. They already have developed the, the product but they have a lot of challenges. So mainly when it's plant based, when it's very functional, they have a lot of struggle finding the right flavors for this product.
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So this is where I help them choose the best flavors, not only that fit their product, but also their target consumer. And the, the last package is the fix package. This is when food and drink businesses have launched their product on the market for a while, but they are really struggling to see repeat purchase.
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They are losing sales. People may buy their product once and that's it, they stop buying again. They have quite negative reviews online and mainly around taste and flavors. So they need to fix the flavors of the product very, very, very quickly.
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These two packages, choose and fix can take six to 12 months. So it's a long, long, long, long time. But let me explain a little bit of the timeline and the milestone. The first milestone for my packages, but which is most of the product development in any food and drink industry you will find is defining the product brief.
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This is when I will have a look at the product market trying to find benchmark product. And we do a workshop together to understand all of the characteristics the clients want for the product that they want to create.
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So this needs a lot of research because this kind of workshop, I always say, is as good as the product you select. I've been in many of these workshops where product were thrown on the table and they tasted like nothing.
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So what does it tell you if a product doesn't taste anything and it's supposed to taste strawberry? Well, the answer, is it doesn't bring anything on the table at all. So that's why it takes time for me because I actually buy the product before I try them.
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And if I'm satisfied that the flavors are strong enough and there is a good flavor profile to understand, then I buy it again for the workshop. But I do this pre selection myself before I want to be sure the product is actually like, is supposed to taste like.
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And it may take time because I do a lot of shopping online or I have to go to some artisan somewhere. So all of these things take time to have this pre selection of the Best product to have the best data for the workshop.
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So then we need to find the date for this workshop. So again, it may take a few weeks until we actually find the date. We, we have the workshop, we have all of the characteristics and then we have the product brief. The second milestone is the kitchen sample validation and that again can take few weeks to few months.
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Not only it takes time for me to receive the samples from the supplier. Sometimes I need to find new supplier. So it may take time back and forth, the email sending me the samples, all of the trials I do. Sometimes I can do, I count them, I can do up to 200.
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That was one of the highest number of trials I've done for one project. Okay, this is what I do. When I talk to other food scientists, they look at me like I am absolutely mental. But I am a perfectionist.
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I try to find as much differentiation and selection for the tasting with my clients. Something that is different, different enough, something that I think will interest them. So for that I do a lot and a lot, a lot of trials, trying different ingredients at different dosages, looking at the interaction between them.
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But I have to say I do enjoy a lot doing all of these trials. I love the learning that also bring to me. So I'm a bit of a, trial addict in that regard where every time I say, oh, this is this is trial number 51 and people look at me like what?
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But yeah, I love the learning not only for me, but for my customer. So I can always share the learning of these trials with them. So we are learning together along the way. So I do the pre selection. Then again we have to find a date for the testing and then it's going to be few iterations or a lot of back and forth until we finally finish validate the kitchen sample.
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The milestone number three is scaling up. If it's a food and brand that have the production internally, that will take time. But if, for example, I have to find the supplier or the contract manufacturer, or if they already have the contract manufacturer, the lead time to actually run the product on the production line may take itself few months.
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And then again we have tasting together. We need to do some tweaking and running the product on the production line again. And this step can't be avoided. I had a conversation, with one of my customers recently and she was very surprised.
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She asked me, do you really think, are you sure we need that scale up, time in our timeline of having all of the tasting and the tweaking? I thought I would just stand the kitchen sample that we validated to the contract manufacturer and that's it, that's the end.
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No, no, no. Scaling up a product will have a lot of effect on the sweetness, the saltiness, the fattiness, the mouth feel, the flavors, everything. You always have to have some tasting and some tweaking after the first production run and you may need to do another production run and another production run until your scale up sample is the same or very close.
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Sometimes it will never be the same as your kitchen sample. That's it for this episode. As always, I hope it was helpful. I thought you can understand a little bit more all of the work that goes behind a food or drink. We never imagine how much work it is for a biscuit or just for a drink.
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It is a lot of work, a lot of back and forth, a lot of trial and errors. In a few days, I'm actually wrapping up my 30 day podcast challenge and to thank you for your support and for listening to the podcast, I'm doing a special Q and A episode where I will answer all of your questions.
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So drop your questions in the comments or message me on Instagram or LinkedIn. I would love to hear from you and I will see you tomorrow for another episode. Bye.
