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There is one crime that is committed more often than any other in the food and beverage industry, and these often come down to one surprisingly simple oversight. Welcome to the first episode of the Food Lab podcast. I'm your host, Manon Galizzi, and today we are diving into the biggest mistakes food and drink businesses make around flavours. Stick around if you want some juicy tips you can apply to your product.
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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.
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Ā One of the most common mistakes I see and I heard all the time when I speak with my customers, they have issues with their products or they can see, for example, that their sales are dropping. There's something that is not working. They can see negative reviews about their product, but they don't really know what is going on and what to do. And most of the time is always linked to the flavours.
00:01:44
Ā There's a lot of different researches that have been done on customers and flavours is one of the most important things you have to focus on your product because you have a lot of things, you have convenience, you have the packaging, you have the price, you have the texture of course, but people will be willing to pay a little bit more if their product tastes amazing.
00:02:07
Ā If it tastes disgusting but is cheap or the packaging is convenient or it has an incredible texture, they will never buy it again. So this is so, so, so important and this is so often overlooked by the industry.
00:02:24
Ā So many times I heard, oh yeah, it's just a strawberry, and just my blood is just boiling. It's never just a strawberry. There's a lot of things to understand, but let's start with where the mistakes come from. And the mistakes always come from this belief that the most popular flavours, like strawberry, chocolate, and lemon on the sweet side,
00:02:52
Ā because they are so popular and easy like you can imagine vanilla is inoffensive sort of flavour so it will work despite the product despite the ingredients they will work and because they are the most popular I need to have them in my product range and this is
00:03:13
Ā This is a big, big, big mistake. And I've worked with clients like that. They had a huge range of flavour for their vegan product. And the most difficult one, believe it or not, to work with was vanilla.
00:03:31
Ā Followed by strawberry. So my purpose with that client was to help them improve their current vegan range and improve the flavours. And so they had vanilla, chocolate, caramel, strawberry, banana. And again, the most difficult ones, I probably spent 50 trials on each of these two flavours was vanilla and strawberry.
00:04:01
Ā And it was because the base was so strong, it was so nutty, so earthy, it tasted like a rye bread. So you can imagine having something that is so strong, a delicate flavour like vanilla is going to struggle.
00:04:23
Ā the purpose was to have like a Madagascan vanilla as well and we never succeeded to get to that because vanilla Madagascan is very complex you can imagine it has about 300 or 500 aroma compounds so it's a very very very very complex
00:04:44
Ā flavour profile and it's quite dark brown and you can imagine you can compare a vanilla extract to a Mr weepy ice cream sorry I'm French and I always forget no no I think it's Mr I never know if it's Mr or Mrs weepy is weepy something um so this is a very vanillic, full of vanillin type of product. So very creamy and very sweet. When you take Madagascan vanilla extract, it is so much more complex, very boozy, it has some dried fruits notes, some woody notes, some earthy notes, it is very complex. So like I said, it is never just a flavour, it is never just a vanilla. So we had to abandoned Madagascan vanilla and focus on something that fit the base.
00:05:33
Ā This is the main thing that you can do if you are creating a product or if you are improving a product is always to understand first what is going on in your base.
00:05:57
Ā So especially if you have a vegan base, or if you want to go for something that is very functional. So we all know like ashwagandha, lion's men's mushroom, they are such a popular ingredients because they're meant to be good for our brain, good for us.
00:06:15
Ā But they come with so much challenges. They come with earthiness, some bitterness, some woody notes. It's very, very, very, very complex. Some nuttiness as well. So by thinking in a more marketing point of view. So if you think marketing point of view, you think I'm going to go for the most popular flavours. And then you try to apply it to your product.
00:06:42
Ā And it doesn't work, you have negative reviews, that's something that is not quite right. And I always say you have to do the other way around. You have to start from your product. Again, like I said, understand all of the differences in your base, all of the flavour notes, all of the sweetness perception that you have. Maybe your product is going to be a bit salty, a bit bitter, a bit astringent. So it is important to have that vocabulary as well.
00:07:12
Ā Is it bitter? Is it sour? Some people confuse the two. What is astringency? And things like that. So you have to understand the basic tastes of your base, but also all of the flavour profile that already there.
00:07:28
Ā And then you think about flavour pairing and you think, okay, what will match well? So for example, an example that is very easy, everyone knows that chocolate and hazelnut work really well together. Chocolate and mint, chocolate and chili, if we take chocolate as an example. So if your base is a bit nutty, then something like chocolate or caramel
00:07:53
Ā That already have these roasted notes, would pair much better than a strawberry or any other fruits for example. So it is very important to have this proper understanding of your base.
00:08:10
Ā For example, if your base is very salty, because maybe you had some minerals or things like that, these will dull the flavours. So you really have to understand all of the characteristics of your product and then have a think about what sort of flavours will pair with it.
00:08:28
Ā And yes, you may have to sacrifice the most popular flavour, but at the end of the day, what do you want? Do you want the most popular flavour that tastes not very good on your product? Or would you like to have selected, thought through flavours
00:08:43
Ā that really shine through your product and they taste great. It is a choice that you have to make. Once you get that first feeling of which flavours may go well with your base, like we said, if your base is nutty and earthy, chocolate may be a good flavour to go with, then the second layer is to understand which flavour profile. Like I keep saying, a chocolate is never just
00:09:11
Ā a chocolate. You have hundreds and hundreds of different type of flavour profile for chocolate. Just the basic, if you want a white chocolate, a milk chocolate or a dark chocolate, right? But then, do you want it more creamy? Do you want it more milky? Do you want it caramelic? Do you want it... I did a chocolate tasting course.
00:09:36
Ā And it was fascinating. I would never thought chocolate can have olives, some woody notes, some floral notes. It is amazing. So you have to imagine the flavour profile that will go well again with your product.
00:09:54
Ā So for example, anything that is vegan sometimes can struggle with sulphurous notes from mango or any tropical fruit. So maybe you want a mango that is a little bit more candy, confectionery, rather than having something that is
00:10:12
Ā very sulphurous. And when I say sulphurous, you have to imagine a very very ripe mango or a very ripe passionfruit, this is the first sniff and you think āright it is very ripeā. You have it in different fruits, that sulphurous note, in a very ripe, almost mouldy strawberry.
00:10:31
Ā This is the perfect example when you look at the the kitchen and you have a fruit that is very unripe to like almost mouldy you can see how different the smell is and how different the taste is that is the different flavour profile so it's a little bit like that in your product do you want a strawberry that is
00:10:58
Ā green and very unripe or very very ripe almost mouldy, or do you want a jammy strawberry or do you want something that is fresh and juicy, something confectionery? Look around, even when you do your shopping, see every item that has chocolate or strawberry in it and taste it so then you can see and have a feel of the flavour profile that can apply to your product.
00:11:27
Ā So then, once you have the idea again of which flavours will go well with the product, then you narrow down a little bit more with the type of flavour profile, then you have to understand your target audience and your brand identity.
00:11:45
Ā So for example, one of my customer was very focusing on something that was natural. So it didn't have any sugar in it, it was all coming from stevia because it was more natural and all other things like a lot of plants, a lot of roots.
00:12:00
Ā It was, the brand image was naturalness, with some ingredients and things like that. So when we were talking about flavour profile and we tried a few things, one of the flavour profile that came up and tasted quite nice with this product was a candy strawberry. So like a strawberry laces or things like that, or you know, like all of the Haribo type of strawberries and things like that. So
00:12:29
Ā it worked really well but then we had to ask ourselves the question if the brand identity is having something that is very very natural and try to get as much closer as possible to something that comes from nature even though the flavouring used was natural just the perception of naturalness would be very weird.
00:12:55
Ā Having something that is very natural and having a very very artificial candy type of strawberry flavour profile. it just clash, this is not where the product has to go.
00:13:10
Ā So you have to think about that. Who is your target audience? Why are they buying the product? They are buying the product because they want something that is natural because they're fed up with all of the big brands going for very artificial flavours, artificial sweeteners and things like that. They coming for you for something that is much more natural.
00:13:32
Ā So then you have to be careful on the flavour profile that you are selecting. So I know you narrow down, you narrow down, you narrow down, you're left with little options. But these options will be perfect, not only because they fit your product, but because they fit your brand and they fit what you want to vehiculate to the world in terms of your image,
00:13:54
Ā What's important for you, your values and making a sense that we are different. We are selecting this flavour because it's really natural because this and this and this and this and this. If we summarize our episode, the first thing is to not think about your marketing strategy for flavours and do not go for the most popular flavours like chocolate, vanilla and strawberry, and then try to apply it to your product.
00:14:19
Ā Instead, do the other way around. Start by understanding your product flavour profile and basic tastes, and then try to find the flavours that fit your product. Do a little bit of flavour pairing exercise. Then go deeper and understand precisely which flavour profile go with your product, like a strawberry jam, fresh, green, unripe, etc, etc. Then,
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Ā Understand your target audience and your brand image so you can select the best flavour that fits everything and tick all of the boxes. In the next episode, I will be talking about the complex world of functional ingredients and health claim. And what can you actually say on your label? 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. And I will see you in the next episode. Bye.
