The Food Lab Episode 0
Introducing The Food Lab: Helping You Build Better Food & Drink Products
00:00:00
Hi everyone and thank you for tuning into this episode of the Food Lab podcast. I'm your host Manon Galizzi and I wanted to introduce myself, unpack what EPICSI is all about and what you can expect from this podcast. So let's dive in.
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Are you a food or drink business owner struggling with negative reviews, decreasing sales, or the overwhelming task of product development? Join me as we dive into the science of crafting exceptional products. With a decade of industry experience, including a deep dive into the world of flavours,
I will help you perfect your flavour profile, streamline your product development, and unlock the path to retailer listing and exciting customer reviews. Stop wasting time and resources and start creating amazing products that are good for the people and the planet. If you enjoyed the podcast and would like to hear more from me, don't forget to follow the podcast and leave a positive review.
00:01:09
Okay, so a little bit about me, I don't want to overextend who I am and things like that, but it's just for you to learn something about me. Start learning about me and my quirk and my French accent, just in case you haven't noticed. I'm from Marseille, so...
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Strong French accents, alright? So I apologize in advance if there are a few words that you don't understand because of my French accent. I apologize in advance and I will never get offended because of that. Just for you to know. So my background is food science.
00:01:51
I got completely passionate when I discovered research and development when I was doing all of my studies. So I've started as a nutritionist, a dietitian to be precise. And so it was really interesting. I love learning about the human body and everything like that and how food can help and influence our body, all of our nervous system. It was absolutely incredible. But
00:02:21
It wasn't quite right for me. I just wanted to find something with much more creativity. So you can imagine when I discovered a job where you can create new products and you eat or drink the product and you repeat and repeat and you can create something that is completely new and never done before. I just thought, oh my God, this is incredible. My passion for food and my creativity in the perfect job.
00:02:47
So this is how I learned about food science and when I came in the UK through different internships I completely fell in love with the country, the people and the culture. So I came for a job and I decided to stay ever since. So I've been in the UK for
00:03:09
Almost 10 years now. Feels scary to say it. So I've been in the food industry for more than 10 years. I started in the UK in a flavour house called Synergy Flavours. I don't know if you know them or work with them before. So always have to say that disclaimer. I am not a flavourist.
00:03:30
Okay, because I had this. Oh yeah, “I worked in a flavour house”. “Oh, you are a flavourist then?” No! The most challenging thing when I was working in a flavour house was when customers were asking for a strawberry flavour.
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Or a vanilla flavour, that's it, that's it. Flavour houses, just so you know, have hundreds to thousands of different flavours. So they will have hundreds of different strawberries. Each of them will have a different flavour profile. They will be made for specific application at certain dosages, but they have hundreds of choices. So someone like me,
00:04:10
I was going to the flavour library, smelling different strawberry flavours and trying them in the application. Of course, there's always a little bit of a flavour pairing involved. So you will always know that trying to have a very fresh and unripe strawberry would never work in a biscuit or a muffin or anything that is baked. It's just it's never going to work.
00:04:34
Because all of these green and grassy notes come through and you want something that pair well with this cooked and brown note from your baked goods. So you want something that is more jammy, for example. So we had this understanding, but even a jammy strawberry will have different other descriptors. Some of them will be
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quite floral more than others and juicy and all of this kind of a little bit confectionary as well. So even just a jammy strawberry will never be a jammy strawberry. You can still find hundreds of different flavour profiles. But anyway, so yeah, when you start when I start talking about flavours, I can just talk about flavours for hours.
00:05:16
I just love flavour science so much. I find it absolutely fascinating. So then I wanted to see the bigger picture. So I worked at a brand I'm sure everyone knows in the UK, which is McVitie's.
00:05:33
There actually is a brand which is called Pladis and they own certain brands like McVitie's, Jacob's Carr’s. So I was working at Pladis and I was helping all of the different R&D team with my flavour knowledge. So I was their sort of
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I'm a flavour specialist and I put in place a lot of tools and training to be able to make them understand the same thing that a strawberry is never a strawberry and what may work on a chocolate hobnob may not work on a chocolate digestive and why. So we've done a lot of work around that which was very fascinating.
00:06:12
Working in a corporate world wasn't my thing, I just wanted to find something that was much more meaningful and I think with a huge scandal around UPF recently, this is how I felt when I was in the food industry and having feedback from all of my friends who were also working in the food industry, I wanted something that was much more meaningful and
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I have chosen food science because I wanted to create memories with the future product I was about to create. I wanted to have this. When you talk to me about some certain biscuits from my childhood, I can still just remember where I had this biscuit, with who, and sharing like, oh my god, this biscuit is amazing, you have to try it.
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And this is what I wanted to create, so that's why I came in the food side, and that's why I came in the food industry, for that, for creating memorable product that people are just so happy to buy, even though it's a little bit more expensive maybe, but it doesn't have to be.
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And sharing with their friends and family and creating these moments, these memories like, oh my God, this is just incredible. And when I came to the food industry, well, let's say that didn't live to my expectations and it wasn't about that at all. So I am not going to extend on that. I just wanted to find my purpose and my calling. And I realised my calling was actually to help
00:07:43
Food and beverage people, individuals, owners, businesses, whatever their stage is, to perfect their product. Help them understand what food science is, understand what flavour science is. So this is what I'm creating with EPICSI, is be able to help someone who wants to create a food and drink business, but completely lost with the food legislation, so I can help them around that.
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I can help a little bit more established but still new start-up that want to create new product or want to improve their current product but they don't know how, they don't know what is going wrong with their product to much more established food and business start-up that want to revamp a little bit their offering and their flavouring or their product or want to create a new product. So I can work with
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any stages that you are, individual to establish food and drink businesses. And what I like is the diversity and the challenges, because, what I found out talking to a lot of prospects or start-ups I am talking to events or some of my clients, there is a growing, amazing
00:09:07
focus on finding something that is creating something that is much more natural that is much more sustainable that is good for the planet and for the people removing the additives so if you say that to a food scientist “I don't want to use any additive” this is the nightmare of any food scientist of like “what??” “but why??” because we've been trained on using hundreds of different additives for every single problem
00:09:33
So every single problem has an additive. Yeah, easy, I can use that one. Yeah, I can use that one. So saying that, I was talking to some food scientists about it and the look on their face was just like, “that's not possible!”. That’s make me laugh. It's like, well, it is possible. Yes, it's blooding more work
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and research and it is not easy and it can take more time to develop a product but it is so worth it, so rewarding, I love that! I love that I am working with start-ups and established businesses, individuals that want to make a difference, they want to make something that is different from what you can find on supermarket, so this is my calling. I want to help them.
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Yes It's going to be tough having no additive, but we have to find compromises. We have to educate your consumers and we're going to be able to. Sometimes you can't, there is no other way, but trying to minimize it as much as possible. Again, trying to find the best
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Additive, if ever you have to use one. I just find it absolutely incredible. I love having this conversation with you guys about your goal, your vision and what drives you. I just find it absolutely insane. And I think the food industry has to follow this path and have more and more to build and promote food and drink businesses that want to do good things for the people and the planet and create very, very good, very, very good products.
00:11:10
So, what to expect from this podcast? Well, I'm going to try to share as much tips, mistakes to avoid, where to find the right information, because we know how complicated the food legislation is. Anything around flavour, product development, food legislation, how to scale up properly your product, what to expect, anything that can help you guys of
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creating or improving your product. And of course, you can always contact me if you need any help directly where the podcast is. You can go to my website and contact me there. I'm also on Instagram and LinkedIn if you want to connect with me and ask me a question and see how I can help you.
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That's it. I think that's it for this episode about me and about EPICSI. I really, really hope that you're going to enjoy this podcast. And again, if you want to leave a positive review or constructive comments that can help me improve the podcast, if there is any topic that you want me to cover on the next episode, please feel free to do so. And I will see you in the next episode. Bye.
