hello everybody and welcome to another episode of food put in our tasty tales of climbing up and down the form a food chain and i'm so happy to present our guests for today it's going to be a great learning experience and i'm here with ernie samantha skee who is a good scientist and trained pastry chef and is the owner of his own consulting business new product development services based right here in lovely new jersey and your focus is both on starting and working with startup companies and established companies to develop new food products and improving insisting products so i think it's going to be great to hear what you do and for audience to learn you know up to now i've had a number of guests who have their own food companies and products out there and many of them have used the services o workers food science art and i don't know if ever shared this with you but when i first started at rutgers i'm a graduate of douglas college i started off in food science k because i had a passion for way back then but i wasn't so much for the science i switched over to communications but always maintained my love for food and you know here we are today so thanks for having me thank you did a great great job with people start up thank you it's really it's funny how that happened because i don't mention it so much but because of the meet up group for a few guests out there actually are audience members there's a meet up group for anybody who's working or has any interest in food beverage or product development or five yes and at that time i was five years old ok and there was a big display we make people making taffy so there's this taffy polar and making batches in there wrapping it and i stood there and i was exciting to me so i think i would go back that far but i want to play ok cool cool so then were you because you also have a degree and as a pastry chef so were you like the person who made meals a know i always cook ok i always cook my mom showed me lots of things i cook and i watch my grandmother cook i bake and i even when i was really young i like the cookie when i was in the boy scouts ok there was a time when in summer camp where high school as well so why don't you tell our audience what in the world is a food scientist even do you know well you know food science is really science you know so when i went to school it was you know chemistry organic chemistry ok microbiology physics engineering but it's all you know after get through the basics now it's all based on you know how how it relates to food right so the food scientists can be a lot of different areas they can be a quality control company they can be in marketing they can be in sales prog development is you know mainly what a lot of food scientists do but you know you've really you know what you have that back or you go a lot of different ways i would say you know of course all the major food companies have food scien i've been very fortunate because you know sometimes you'll get into a job or work for a company and they work on the same thing the whole time but i started out in chocolate was where i started out at nestle and so work for because i think i and then i went to lifesavers and i worked in confectionary sets church confectionery ok and then it was great because i was able to transition not into the flavor industry ah so i worked for a long time in flavor industry flavor flavor industry and you know  ok which means there's lots of different products to work on that was really great there's a lot of trial and error with there how do you actually get to the point where you say that that's it that you know that that's the flavor profile that that's the one that you think is going to work and be appealing to the consumer well you know work in a vacuum you know you have a team of people you know at the labor company of flavor chemists who really understand how it interacts with the product and you have to present to your customer there  get the greatest thing in the world but you know once you go to that you present your products to the to the consumer which is you know could be a nestle or whatever it might be they decide you know maybe go to the consumer test they like that's going to ask if there's a lot of products i mean a panel testing or sensory panel testing that's involved with that was you know consumers trying to you know trying to figure out how you kind of gels down to what is the right or if you have a labor company itself they do some internal sensory work ok so for instance if you want to match something that you have to do like a test to see if that product actually matches you know another product or if you're trying to prove a product with the sleeve or maybe the flea ray that really like that would make a better right so they would do some internal work like that but depending you know the pens on the size of the company ok we talk a little bit about that because it's different sized companies have very different you know ways of doing things some  companies spend a lot of time on consumer research a lot of money so do you think at the end of the day those that do spend a lot of time and money that the outcome is they have a better chance of predicting a winning product or even the small guys who are starting out who don't have the budget for that could end up having a winning product is there any rhyme or reason that you've seen over your career path but i would say though i don't i mean of course you know for a big company the risk is so much greater and so there's so much investment they have to put into advertising and bring it into stores and the sales force of making product and it's a lot of money and so they don't want to make a mistake but their products fail all the time to yes in the matter how much money they put into research the products fail order on the shelf for a year and they're gone so you know it's really you know you depends on the pins on your objective  small company if you you know if you think it tastes great and just put it out there and see what happens because a big company won't do that but that's the advantage of a small company a small startup can kind of be still they kind of get in there and see  grew rapidly in the end so and we have some photos actually that tell about some of the various product lines which are actually quite varied that you worked on and actually here for audience we have a couple of the there we had really high expectations about growing the business there was a small startup they had some shops in new york ok it was called alun thomas at the time ok and then they decide they wanted to get into retail market line you know because popcorn and of itself really is low calorie but then it's all the other stuff that you can get on it but it looks like you're able to come up with some really neat flavors like sweet potato and  that they see that audience are going to open this up and sample well here so really cool so i mean obviously you had a lot of fun developing these new products is there anything else that i think in some cases it could be frustrating if you're working at a big company that's not that interested in launching new things and so i think besley was a little bit conservative that way we had million ideas but  they were good when it's a big company it's hard for him to launch so that's what's great about a start up a small company and that's the people you work with yes exactly that open they're ready to move fast you know and i think they really want to take advantage of changes in the marketplace what are the trends  devotion so why don't you talk about some of the difficult aspects then about developing new products you know some of the challenges and i you know i know even first hand from one of the folks i had you work with a little bit they had some you know kitchen and they're making up a batch of something and they have a great recipe and maybe from some things out of a they've got they feel like oh i've got it and i've got the best recipe but that is the fun part there's a lot of waste and you know it is so it is a big company it's drawing a lot of product away but it's you know it's long hours and it's that it's a year and it's frustrating because things don't work right when you're in a factory and those things you didn't think about it until you're in the factory situation that is that's the hardest part and you know you know speaking about a big company yes there's a lot of machinery it goes behind that but if you're a small company and you're going to be working with  very hard to lastly love looks ackley you sense so i think that kind of segues into another good question that aligns with that which is really for someone who is looking to start a food product or a beverage product you know what are some of the most important things they should be thinking about from a product development in gradient you know stamp point well you know i think i think they need to look at their numbers ok you know i think i think that's a long list of things that you add to that spreadsheet that your cost cost of goods that you really should be spend a lot more time on that than you would think if you think oh how much good discourse is you know popcorn but then now you have the packaging you have to put the package into a box you've got to shift it somewhere and you can talk you've got to pay a broker a brokerage fee and you had to have been the wholesaler once they were cut and then the the distributor once they're so i think that's you know be very careful about your pricing because you don't want to lose money on this page or to make it you know actually to talk about the food science side and i think these the now if we can talk about that yeah about some of the issues that people don't necessarily think about yeah so i mean one of the things that i think people don't realize how important shelf life is and you know that has to have a decent shelf life has to be able to get solved and and that sometimes they had to be very dry and the atmosphere is just regular humanity it will pick up the water because it wants to be the same voice or content as the environment ok and just like in so if you have a if you have pop word perfect example of something that understanding your your voice your content and then that's going to have a big effect on your shelf life too because you know you don't want to grow bacteria don't want to grow old in east so those are all related to the amount of water i can go into more detail ok so tell us what would be some of the things that if you were if i was a brand new food company sitting in front of you and i've got what i think is a great idea for a product what are some of the questions or some of the advice that you would be giving me in working with them you know us as a consultant because now now most of the time you you work as a consultant now to a number of companies large and small i mean you've actually been able to travel internationally ok it's been it's been nice it's been nice yes but yeah but if you could i'd your question about you know what do you what do you talk about two and first starting a business like i say i usually start out you know they talk about the you know those are the it really always comes down to the business and yeah you know it's a big step that i find a lot of times working with people they've started off in a small commercial kitchen and then maybe they graduate to larger commercial kitchen and then they're at the stage  do they invest in equipment or do they find a coal packer and i actually say find a coal power you know save your energy for working on your business and what co packer who's an expert at that but often it's very hard to give up that control it's also hard or that it's also going to say sometimes it's hard to find somebody who could really do the job at a price point that will work yeah and you have to figure it out into your cost to right you you thought you you figured out all your your numbers right profit before yeah so pay beat to do some trials yeah and i'll figure out what the tolling charge it will be right so you do that you've got to spend the money to do that and they come back and they say was going to be fifty cents a pack if you like wh true and that's usually the step that most take i have to tell you it's been really fascinating journey to hear a bit a small portion a little bite of your journey as a food scientist and one of things i'd love to be able to share with the audiences how can