I can honestly say that I can make just about any product that a customer wants to sell. I can also say that not every product a customer asks for is commercially viable. As a food product development person, you are not a chef you are an industrial environment and therefore a commercial manager.

HOW to design to cost.

Simple, start of by coping, before you have left the sales office, you should be asking what product is similar to this that you want. I.e. is the product similar to a strawberry cheesecake already in production. If it is but they want it 10% cheaper than the current product you have your starting point. Just take the existing recipe and see how to reduce the cost.

That’s easy for me too products for brand new concepts, you should work extra hard to make them commercially viable, (because a lot of the time these products end up costing the business). Fundamentally, the product you are designing, fits into an existing market sector. IF so, your sales person can give you target RSP(retail sales price) , they should also be able to provide you with Margin aspirations for both customer and company. Your production team should have a good idea on OH. Do the maths to get you to a dollar price that is left to pay for ingredients and labour.

Before you go in the kitchen, at this stage you can identify is it commercially possible to make the product? I was asked to make a product the other day, which after doing the above calculation (took 10 mins). Resulted in me identifying, i could make the product but i couldn’t afford any packaging or labour.  The Expensive ingredients the customer had asked for quickly became off the shelf cheaper alternatives.

Over the years, I have seen lots of projects fail, or customers disappointed because half way through the project when everyone is committed the numbers don’t stack up. I strongly recommend using commercial assessment as the core to your development, as it leads to happy customers and business.

When it comes to sample making there are a few tricks you can use.

1.Production Samples

if it is a simple product that is very difficult to get wrong, Use you production colleagues, BUT ensure you provide them an idiots guide on how to make the sample, how many and how it should be packed. However Easy you think it is they will make it complex. But once you build a working system for sample generation this can save you alot of time.

2. Sales Requests

If you have been in development long, you will have come across the “dont you remember I asked for” quote from your sales person, or ” I’m sure I emailed you the address”. To save on arguements I suggest you have a sample request form so that anyone wanting samples provides the following information.

Date required, What is the sample, how many are needed, who it is being sent to, what presentation is it for.is costing, ingredients, cooking instructions needed with the sample.

By forcing people to fill out this document it will do two things, 1. give you all the information you need for the samples, 2. it will reduce the amount of samples they ask for, rather than being a quick discussion item, they will have to go to the trouble of filling a form.

3. Make samples in batches

As we all know it takes time to gather/make the components for a sample, it is just as easy to make 5 samples as it to to make 1. I strongly suggest you make 5 or use up all the ingredients it might take a few minutes more but can save hours. When the sales person asks for a sample to send to the customer. I suggest labeling up the sample and storing it.

4. Move to trial stage early

When you are confident that the product is finalised, move to trial. There is a commercial cost to this decision but if you know there is a heavy sampling period coming up. Move to trial and get a quantity of products available to you. I also suggest an early trial to help identify any major issues in your product before you launch. A £200 trial early can save £1000’s later.

In Summary, samples can take a lot of resource from your department and it is a semi-unproductive process. I strongly suggest minimizing its impact on your time.

Definition In dictionary:

“Food processing is any of a variety of operations by which raw foodstuffs are made suitable for consumption, cooking, or storage.”

 Simply it is the conversion of any food based raw material into a sellable item.

 This could be as basic as putting carrots into a printed bag. Or as complex as making a frozen chocolate cake that uses multiple ingredients and requires different processes to create the final product.

 Ultimately, 100% of the food you have bought as been food processed. The least processed product is from your own garden. Yet you will still carry out food processing actions on this yourself.

 The Food Processing industry encompasses a wide area of product sectors. You see them every week when you go shopping.

Food Processing Sectors

Drinks sector – Alcoholic, non alcoholic

Dairy sector – cheese, milks, yoghurts

Frozen sector – Orange juice to frozen fruit to pizza

Ambient sector- dry ingredients – flour, spices

Chilled sector – chilled meals, meats, fish meats

Fresh Produce – vegetables- fruits

Canned – Fruits, meat, fish

Confectionary – chocolates, sweets

Savory snacks- crisps, tortillas

Predominantly the sectors are determined by processing method, as different types of product are produced through the same technology.

A prime example of this is the canning industry, a canning plant costs a lot of money to setup and is relatively inflexible. There are only 4 can sizes. Due to this a canning plant will can everything, from seafood, to fruit, Milk to tomatoes.

 Processing Methods

The main Processing methods in the food industry can also be broken down.

Dairy sector – Lots of pipe work to convert raw milk into pasteurized, then processed products

Cold- Freezing or chilling of products predominantly frozen or chilled food industries

Fresh – Sorting, washing, polishing, packaging of vegetables and fruit,

Canned – Big steam retorts that sterilize the cans plus the amazing high speed canning and filling operations.

Confectionary- Large sugar and chocolate vats, machinery to press and set both chocolate and sweets.

There is Frequent competition in the food industry typically between two major competitors who produce the big branded products then a few smaller business’s that produce the own label products. A good example of this is Coke cola and Pepsi.

In this post I will describing the process of making Chocolate.

There are 3 steps:

1. Preparing the chocolate nibs
2. Making a chocolate liquor
3. Making the chocolate bar.

Step 1 Preparing the chocolate nibs

The original material for chocolate is the Cocoa bean originally harvested by the Aztecs. This cocoa bean is harvested similar to coffee.  To make cocoa nibs the beans are washed sorted and prepared for the food factory to process them.

Like Grapes there are different type and flavours depending on where the plants grow and species of plant. The experts in the food factory will take these different beans and blend them to the correct level for their chocolate. (very similar process to the coffee, tea, wine industries)

Once the mix of cocoa beans has been generated, it is roasted, this is predominantly for removing the water from the bean. Water may cause flavour/quality issues so it is removed at the start of the process. Control of the roast also improves adds or improves the flavour profile of the beans.

Similar to other grains, the hard outside of the grain has to be removed. The food factory grinds this outside part of the bean off, then crunches the middle part into small pieces of cocoa. This part is called the cocoa nibs.

You might be thinking yummy at this stage, unfortunately the nibs are extremely bitter and need further processing to make the nice chocolate.

2. Making a chocolate liquor

The chocolate nibs have a high percentage of Fat which contain the oil soluble flavonoids that make chocolate flavour. The nibs are ground down, which make a thick paste of chocolate.

The Food Factory will take this material and separate out the majority of the Cocoa Butter for use in Chocolate bars. The remaining material still has a chocolate flavour but not enough fat to solidify into a bar. This material is predominantly used to make chocolate drinks through a spray drying application.

But it is chocolate bars we are targeting today. This chocolate paste at this stage is bitty, very fatty and bitter. It needs further processing to make the chocolate you are used to.

3. Making the chocolate bar.

The Process so far will be carried out in different Food Factory ’s, the production of the chocolate nibs is normally produced very close to the fields. These nibs are then shipped to the food factories in various countries to be made into chocolate bars.

So we have the very dark bitty, and bitter chocolate paste, which needs processing into smooth chocolate.  The paste is mixed with Skimmed milk powder, sugar, milk, cocoa butter. Heated up and stirred to blend all the items together.

The secret of chocolate making both in a food factory and at home, is the fat crystals have to be heated to a melting point. Before controlling the temperature to a lower point where they are allowed to reform. It is the controlling of this recrystallization that is the key to good chocolate. Done correctly the it is smooth and melts on the tongue, done poorly it is grainy and feels like sand on the tongue.

At this point you have large vats of melted chocolate, to really add that final quality to mix is “Conched”. This is a process where the chocolate mix is swirled in the tank allowed air bubbles to form and dissolve. This adds more softness to the chocolate by making tiny air bubbles in the mix.

The last stage is to pour this mix into any number of molds and cool the chocolate until it sets.

The food Factory will then take this bar and wrap and pack before distributing to your shop shelf.

Food Factory – Each week I plan to reveal how everyday food products are made.

Is one of the major factors of a succesful buisness.

With Retailers wanting to increase their profits year on year but still give their customers cheaper products compared to the competition. There is only one place the savings can come from.

In relatively saturated markets, sales increase doesn’t always come the required saving. Hence the need for cost reduction projects.

This is one of my favorite areas in Food Processing industry, as such I will be doing a few posts on techniques and Ideas in the future.

Definition

The dictionary has the definition as “Decision or action that will result in fulfillment of the objectives of a purchase, at a cost lower than the historical cost or the projected cost.”

My definition, is “an action that improves final profitability”

Cost Reduction Techniques.

This falls into the following process

• Identify the Saving
• Make your prediction on saving
• Measure the process prior to adjustment
• Make the cost saving change
• Measure the process after
• Confirm saving has been made and it hasn’t impacted other areas to make a loss.
• If YES move onto next project.
• If NO go back to the beginning and start again.

Break Down of the above process.

Identify the saving.

Go through the financial sheets to identify which products, ingredients, packaging or areas, that you need to target. This is different for each buisness. I will review this in a later article.

Write down your prediction of saving

This is critical document at the very beginning how much reduction you think there will be. I would also put into this the success factor and the time frame. I often use a document like this as the sites cost saving template. It allows you to review previous success’s and prioritise the next work load.

Measure the process prior to adjustment

To really understand if you have made a saving you have to measure the process beforehand to set the baseline. This then allows you to measure your improvements. I also find this stage critical as it allows you to confirm stage one before spending time or money

Make the cost saving change

Simple make the change. Ok so its not that easy but you implement the change that will save you money. You also need to decide how long to keep the change in place. You may test it for 15 mins or 15 months before making a final decision. Length of time of trial is often determined by Risk factor, or size of reward. Yup trade off between risk and reward. There may also be a training or settling in time for the new process.

Measure the process after

Now you make the exact same measure as before and see if there is an improvement. With luck your initial numbers were on the conservative side.

Confirm saving has been made and it hasn’t impacted other areas to make a loss.

Talk to people and review other process’s impacted by your change. This is crucial as your change may have started a chain reaction further down the process. I have seen cost reductions of cents result in dollar losses.  Please take the bigger picture into consideration at this point. Validate you have achieved your cost saving.

If YES move onto next project

Well done, you have made your saving, before moving onto the next stage, write down your saving in your original document. Ensure the saving will continue to be measured, then review the process you took to achieve the cost reduction before moving to the next project.

If NO go back to the beginning and start again.

Ok it didn’t work, unfortunately you will come across this step more than all the others combined. At this point i quote Micheal Jordan “I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life and that is why I succeed.”

Review your numbers, review your initial idea and see what went wrong, it might need a minor tweak, it might need adjustment of risk factor. At this point you have hindsight on the cost reduction project, this means your more likely to succeed next time.

Basic Principles of Cost savings

Produce it faster, with less labour, for less weight and with lower costs and you have saved money.

I will post later on how this is achieved.

We all know that those resources are employed 100% of the time and often are challenged to make further business improvements.

When it comes to technically challenging improvements, this becomes even harder as you are relying on an even smaller group of your employees and these people often don’t have the skills/training to make further improvements.

I am often surprised at how little companies look outside their business for support in these matters.

For a longtime educational institutes that have food courses as part of their curriculum have provided industrial support. This often duel benefits the institute gets a boost in monetary terms and the business gets a wealth of targeted skills.

I have used institutes on a few occasions in my time, and found that once a connection between the two has been built it generates improvements in other ways.

I find the best use for educational institutes is

1. training, technical training for staff, this can usually be crafted specifically for your requirements, and comes cheaper than other professional training sites.

2. Skilled projects, either degree projects of adhoc ones could benefit from a heavily science based focus.

I find that this gives the optional benefit of potentially hiring the students during their gap year or holidays and ultimately as a cheap way to measure them as a potential future asset to your business.

If you are interested in using an educational institute please review the Links 101 at the top of the page.

If you are an institute and want to add your sites link to my page please email me at webmaster@proceesing-food.com

Cornflakes, Drenched in milk first thing in the morning, we’ve all eaten them at some point.

Theresa at Sleeping Kitten – Dancing Dog asked me how breakfast cereals are made.

This isn’t an area I have had much exposure to so had to look up some of the details.

Step 1 -Processing the grain

Cereals such as Corn (in the case of cornflake) is sorted and cleaned. It will then pass through a breaker roller to remove the hard outer shell. This is a similar process to that of flour manufacture.

At this point the grain is mixed with flavour’s and enhanced with vitamins and minerals. Before being put into a large steam kettle that starts to cook the Grain. It is this stage that the starch within the grain starts to swell and hydrate. The mix is poured out of the kettle in its cooked state.

The grains pass through a drying oven that removes most of the water, leaving the grain in a formable state.

Stage 2 – Making the Flake

The hot cooked grains are then cooled to the correct temperature. They pass through large heavy rollers that press the grain into a flake. These rollers use tons of pressure to squeeze the corn into a flake. The temperature is critical too hot and it will stick to the rollers, too cold and it won’t form a flake.

Final Stage.

The moist flake passes through a hot air blast, that drys out the flakes which makes them crispy.

If further flavour is needed it is added at this stage, i.e. sugar coating is applied.

To maintain the crispness of the flakes, it uses a a packaging film that doesn’t allow moisture to penetrate.

Technology/Science

The main science that this type of food relies on is moisture control. At each stage of process moisture is measured and processed accordingly. This is normally carried out using a NIR scanner.

Food Factory – Each week I plan to reveal how everyday food products are made.

In this series I will cover: Fish and Chips,Frozen Pizza, Frozen Cheesecake, Hamburgers, Fish Sticks, Frozen Chips, Baked Beans.

The first in my Series will be Fish Sticks.

The Fish

The first component is the Fish, this is a frozen block about 2 ft by 1 ft by 3 inches. It is made from fish mince (cheaper end of the market) this tends to be all the left over pieces of fish. Or it can be made from whole fillets that are layered on top of each other(the expensive end of the market).

To be honest nutritionally there is not that much difference between the two. The type of fish can be COD for the expensive end or pollack for the cheaper sticks. These blocks are made within hours of the boat landing, which means the fish is about 6 hours old when it is frozen.

Making The Stick

Using a food processing band saw, skilled operators cut the block into slabs, then cut it again into fingers. The more expensive the thicker the finger the cheaper the thinner. Typical a good fish finger will be about 1cm thick, whereas the cheaper one can be 0.5 cm. These sticks are then separated and passed to the coating stage.

Adding the Breadcrumb

Similar to what you see in restaurants or TV shows, the fish is coated in a batter then breadcrumbs. BUT this is truely where the cheapness is added. If your buying cheap fish sticks they will add a layer of water, a layer of flour, a layer of batter, a layer of crumb. In the trade this is called a 4 pass and can add upto 70% bread crumb to the stick. This type can often be identified as it is extra crunchy and has almost no fish.  The high end fish sticks will have a 3 pass system and often have fish contents around 60%.

So in your 300g packet of fish sticks you could have 90g fish (cheap) or 210g (expensive)

This whole process is carried out through a production line of automatic coating machines. Typically a line can produce 100-200 fish fingers a minute.

Fry Time

Up to this point the fish stick is quite healthy with almost no fat….. Howeverthe stick  passes through a industrial fryer that has hot oil . This makes the coating extra crunchy, this is due to the water in the coating being replaced with very hot oil. Typically all the water in the coating is replaced with Fat.

This means the more coating the more fat, now typically food processors use vegetable oil or rape oil. Neither of which has saturated fats

Frozen and sent to the freezer

Within 30 mins of frying the product has been frozen, and grouped together to then be put into the packaging before sending to the shops.

Considering the speed of the Fish freezing process and the Packaging process,  you cant make a fish stick fresher if you tried.

Final Verdict

Fish Sticks or fish fingers, when compared to other coated products like chicken strips, are healthier, fresher and have fewer additives. So I would definatly put Fish sticks first before other coated products.

If I’m picking a Fish stick try to get ones which have a high fish content, this is typically shown as a % in the ingredient Declaration.  This often means it is made with whole fish not mince and has a lower fat content.

The type of fish really doesn’t matter, some will argue that a cod fish finger is the best but be honest, you’re going to dip it in Ketchup. Once you have done that I doubt you can tell the difference, except that your wallet is a little less full.

Food Factory – Each week I plan to reveal how everyday food products are made.

Well, it is a sad fact but people do leave business, I find this happens more often with product development/R&D departments than others. Probably because the demand is so high, and after a while the creative juices get a bit stagnant.

So what should you do in preparation for someone leaving your department.

1. Check what your time scale is? is the person planning to take the rest of their holidays before they leave.

2. Split that time into the following areas.

• Try to finish any projects
• Collate information for transfer to another colleague
• Train replacement
• Make needed samples for after they leave (useful to be done with replacement)
• Tidy any storage locations, included in this should be labeling of materials being left.

3. Finish projects,

Where possible these should be finished prior to departure they could be cost saving projects, improvement projects. These tend to be the more difficult projects to handover as people approach them in different ways.

4. Collate information for transfer,

Tidy up those notes, depending on the system you use, typically the best way to do this is to review the active projects you have and make a seperate file for them. This is then given to the replacement, within the file you should have

• recipes
• contact information
• specifications on materials
• comments on assembly
• people within the business you have dealt with on the project
• location of samples or materials

5. Train replacement

This should involve training not a transfer of information, show them the products whilst talking through each recipe. If the trainee is not asking questions are they engaged in the training? Where possible get the replacement to make some of the product, see next section.

6. Make Samples

To take the pressure of the replacement and the business during the transition, a quantity of samples that are likely to be needed should be made prior to departure. This allows customer requests to be filled, it generates a library stock of items for reference.

7. Location of samples of Materials

Depending on leavers time within the business and their tidiness level it is inevitable that they have some materials stored away. This is likely to come in the form of Finish products, competitors samples, raw materials, shelf life, packaging etc. I am always surprised how much I build up over time to the point of Pallets of material.

Prior to the person leaving this should be tidied, all not essential material for transferred projects should be dumped. This prevents confusion later. Where possible materials should be identified to match the handover file. I.e. Box 29 is the Sausage project.

8. Check impact on team

Depending on the person and the role, this change could make a significant impact on the team dynamic. Spend time thinking about this as you may need to take actions short term to support the team. My suggestion always provide a format for the team to say goodbye, if the person provided a core leadership role, talk to other team members to help fill this void.

9. Prepare for the new person in the team.

I will write more about this in another post.

The above steps should lead you to a successful changeover of persons and should result in the minimum impact on your department

They can also be a minefield of issues when it comes to delivery.

This is the first in many posts about the R&D/Food product development process

Trial Stage

the trial stage is one of the most critical as it determines, the cost, quality parameters that you can produce the product to.

What to trial?? the easy answer is everything, and i do mean EVERYTHING!!!

But that has its own cost to it, so i guess i have to revise that to “Trial EVERYTHING that’s NEW!!!”

For the parts of the product that are currently being produced their should be existing data about its performance.

Primarily the new items are the unknown and should be tested.

It is my experience that anything, however small when introduced to a process changes it. That means modifying a recipe sightly  will change how it performs on the line. This change  may have a major impact or not. Until you carry out a trial you don’t know.

So if you ever start hearing yourself or others saying the following beware.

1. Its very similar to that other recipe

2. the thickness on the carton is only 5um less, it shouldn’t effect it

3. we made it in the kitchen and looked ok

4. (after the launch) we really didn’t think about that.

the above can lead to the following.

1. the recipe doesn’t behave the same through the depositors resulting in an increase of scrap by 25%

2.The carton runs through the machine but it isn’t supported enough resulting in the carton crushing when the product is pushed in.

3. My favorite – A chef with a wooden spoon and a pan CANNOT mimic a 1000kg steam injected sauce kettle, with the pumping that follows it.

4. TRIAL ALL NEW ITEMS, if your not currently doing it trial it and make sure everyone sees it, otherwise this statement is always their.

Food Product development -I will post more on this topic in future posts.