Q: What is your favourite food?
A: Spaghetti carbonara with black truffles. And of course, the Food for Life products.
Q: What are some of the challenges facing research chefs today, and the areas of culinary R&D in general?
A: The challenges facing chefs today in a manufacturing arena have many facets. Firstly, the R&D required to launch a new product line involves a lengthy period of time – mine took two years. Consumer research was conducted by physical surveys of customers’ needs and expectations. As you can appreciate, this involved numerous stores, manpower and different shopping times so as to get a good cross reference of consumers. Once this information was tabulated, I set out to produce products, have actual tastings, and then came the development of recipes for large production runs. Next came the packaging, getting the nutritional contents verified, labelling, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency approval letters, and finally, containers to hold the product. Of course the pricing component and produce sourcing was a huge undertaking and took well over four months. The final hurdle was getting the product onto the shelves – which involved setting up meetings with prospective clients, providing sampling for their tasting committees.
As a chef, you make food and it’s consumed – customer appreciation is instant. For a chef making food products for a grocery store chain, the process takes months and you have to not only keep focused on your goals, you have to have the support of a financial institution to maintain your business. And of course the most important ingredient is the skilled staff to produce it. Cooking food products that you sell frozen are not the same as serving it fresh from the stove, so it requires an entirely new mindset.
Q: What else can you tell us about your company?
A: My home meal replacement (HMR) products are on the cutting edge. They utilize locally grown produce, non-medicated proteins and have no added preservatives or MSG in their ingredients. Customers are becoming more informed about healthier choices while still wanting the home cooked goodness they grew up with. Another movement is the 100-mile diet – eating food within a 100 miles of your home. Here in B.C., food manufacturers have an abundance of food items to source from locally, and which provide convenient, tasty HMRs for consumers.
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