Four Tips for Developing Flavorful Foods and Beverages

There’s a lot that goes into developing a successful food or beverage product. Everything from the cost of ingredients to packaging needs to be carefully considered. This includes keeping abreast of the trends and delivering products that consumers want. Take flavor for instance. Whether its traditional flavorings produced by a flavor chemist, spices and seasonings, fruits and vegetables, or even cooking methods, there are plenty of options to use flavor to entice consumers. Two experts from Kerry, Beloit, Wis. (kerry.com), offer advice on using flavor in product development efforts.

1. Know your consumer. Product developers need to focus on answering consumers’ desires instead of formulating products that simply meet a trend, says David Banks, director of market research and consumer insights. “A critical piece of creating a flavor is breaking down consumer behaviors and developing a product specifically for them. The perception and expectation of how flavors will taste is dependent on who the consumer is.”

2. Work holistically. “As flavors become more nuanced, it’s important for technologists and marketers to work together in order to deliver a specific flavor tailored to a particular consumer group,” says Elsa Howerth, principal scientist/senior flavorist. “Marketers need to educate the developers [about] for whom the flavor is being built. In turn, the developer may know nuances of flavor notes that the marketer isn’t aware of, enhancing the performance of the end product by delivering a unique and desirable taste.”

3. Know the occasion. Consumers are conscious about what they eat in the morning, at noon, and at night, so Banks advises product manufacturers to develop flavors based on the daypart and usage of the food and beverage.

4. Know your limitations. “Knowing what the consumer wants is important, but having the technology and capabilities to bring that need to life is critical,” says Howerth.

Keeping these tips in mind should help you to incorporate what is known about flavor trends into your product development efforts. “At Kerry, we find that having this knowledge allows us to better meet the needs of the end consumer and ensures we’re aligning with consumer trends because, in the end, how we define something needs to align with how consumers define something,” says Banks.