Three Rounds of Product Development

You signed a contract with a food scientist having outlined the parameters and set expectations for new product development. What are the next steps? In this article, you will learn about the framework of new product development from concept to commercialization. The three rounds of development are to help guide you through the decision-making process from taking your concept or recipe to a commercially viable formulation. You will understand the methodology behind each round: concept development, formulation, and commercial viability.

Round 1: Concept Development

Concept development allows you and your food scientist to brainstorm and outline a process to create your product. You work with the food scientist in getting your idea into something tangible. If you have a recipe that you want to evaluate, it will be considered a protocept or a prototyping concept. All recipes are considered protocepts as the food scientist is evaluating different concepts and is prototyping from these concepts. 

What you should be able to provide to help the food scientist are samples of direct or indirect competitors and feedback on what you like or don’t like about the competition. This step is necessary to communicate what you are looking for and engage in dialogue on feasibility, priorities, and expectations. Set up communication expectations through weekly meetings for updates and allow the food scientist time to understand your market research, brand identity, and commercialization goals. Be open to discuss and learn what risks are involved, what issues to expect, and how to best provide feedback for development. 

This round of development is one of the longest rounds as the food scientist plays with different ideas which can easily turn into hundreds of iterations. The food scientist is translating all your ideas and feedback from your head to tangible protocepts. 

Communicating your needs and wants by prioritizing each parameter is immensely helpful in making a decision in choosing between protocepts. By the end of this round, your food scientist will have gone through hundreds of protocepts to present some viable options for you to evaluate based on the criteria you all have built.

Round 2: Formulation

At the end of concept development, you will have decided on which protocepts are viable options within your criteria. Your feedback will guide your food scientist in figuring out the next steps to creating a feasible product. 

The food scientist would be evaluating the following to create working prototypes:

• • • Ingredients intended for food manufacturing
      
    • Costs
      
    • FOB points
      
    • Nutritional analysis
      
    • Processing parameters that align with your co-manufacturer
      
    • Food safety steps,
      
    • Analytical tests (i.e. pH, aw, Brix)
      

All prototypes will be percentage based as that will help relate to the scalability of the product. This round of development allows the food scientist to try to achieve all your wants and needs into a single formulation. Knowing the priorities of each parameter helps the food scientist to focus on the functionality and feasibility of the prototype. By the end of this round of development, there will be fewer samples to evaluate to help you make a decision on how to move forward. Note that there are times where not all parameters in your ideal product are met. This round of development is the most critical in terms of feedback and decision-making.  

Round 3: Commercial Viability

The last round of development is to prepare the formulation for commercialization at a contract manufacturing facility. After evaluating the prototypes from round 2, this formulation is to be refined to about 90 – 95% viability. The reason the formulation will never achieve 100% is because scaling from benchtop samples to pilot plant or larger operations is not linear. For example, salt and acid do not scale linearly. Adjustments will be considered during your commercial trial, but will not be made until the trial is conducted. 

At this point, the food scientist will refine the formulation to align with your co-manufacturer’s procedures. Your last tasting is to finalize on formulations and wrap up on your packaging design which will include the nutrition panel, ingredient statement, and allergen statement. You will have the opportunity to evaluate all parameters and make notes for scale-up. Now, you are finished with product development on the benchtop and should be excited for the commercial run!

Brand Owner Responsibilities

In this article, you will have learned how to project manage with the food scientist for product development. Each round of development allows you to focus more on achieving product feasibility. To do so, you will have to be clear in communicating what your wants and needs are and be willing to prioritize or drop criterion that are not feasible. Your food scientist is going to put functionality over form of your product as they consider all moving parts in scaling the product. 

You are the brand owner with a vision and the food scientist is the translator of science and engineering to help create your vision. This process to focus on three rounds of development helps organize thoughts and allows everyone to focus on measurable items to achieve product design. Each round helps guide you through a process funnel from broad concepts to a refined, commercially viable formulation. Each round ends when both parties get to sample the prototypes and make decisions on how to move forward until there is a satisfactory product.

Brian is the Principal Advisor at Chau Time, his own consultation firm. He is the Co-founder of MycoKind, a food biotech company. He also sits as an advisor to food tech companies, food consulting firms, and food CPG companies. He is working on his first book, How to Work with a Food Scientist, to help founders understand a food scientist’s capabilities and improve the understanding of how to navigate the technical world of food and beverage consumer packaged goods.