Developing products can be a tricky business or can be straightforward. The key items to keep in mind is making sure the product is safe, making sure the product will look and taste great when the consumer eats it, making sure that the shelf life of the product is long enough, making sure that the product can be produced at a cost and price that people will actually pay, and making sure that the product is something that people will actually want to buy. Each of these is addressed below. PRODUCT SAFETY - Making sure that the product is safe is a matter of making sure the product does not contain any significant amount of bacteria, yeast or mold after processing and making sure that it stays that way through the eating process. In terms of formula design you generally want to make sure that the product either has a certain amount of acid, a certain amount of salt, and/or not too much water. For many products they will need to be cooked or pasteurized, which will change the flavor, texture, and/or look of the product. Items that contain significant amounts of meat or dairy have their own sets of rules that should be addressed on a case by case basis. TASTES GREAT - Making sure that the product looks and tastes great when they eat it is another matter. Many of the same factors in item #1 apply, but some other items should be considered here. Oxidation and the effect of sunlight may darken or bleach the product. Also, it should be recognized that flavor is not constant and some products have a peak flavor at 1 hour after production and some at 12 years after production. Additionally, some product are tricky to get and keep the correct consistently (white chocolate products for example). SHELF LIFE – Shelf life is affected by all the factors in item #1. Most people are familiar with the shelf lives of items from being consumers. Based upon this you need to see if your product will be refrigerated, or cooked/pasteurized and shelf stable. While we prefer that products be all natural, another option is to add preservatives to extend shelf life and possibly avoid some cooking. PRODUCT COST – For many products there comes a point where it is so expensive to produce that the shelf price is astronomical. This is always a judgment call, but something to keep in mind. Specialized ingredients should only be used when they truly make a big difference. Packaging that requires a lot of hand work should be avoided unless it makes a critical difference. Numerous tomes have been dedicated to the figuring out what consumers want to buy and how to design it. The Movement is not trying to find mathematical formulas to figure out what we can trick people into eating. We just want to find great products that our members love and share them with other food loving people. If you have a product that you love let us take a look. If we agree, then we may be in business. SOURCING – We buy packaging and ingredients from numerous sources in many places. When you design a formula remember that it is much better if the ingredients are commercially available. If it is not, it makes life much harder, so make sure that ingredient makes a huge difference. Also, many formulas we see over time are unnecessarily complicated. A formula may have 27 ingredients, of which 12 can actually make up 99.5% of the flavor. Simplify wherever possible. It makes it easier to make a delicious, cost effective product. PROCESSING – Commercial cooking equipment is incredibly expensive so that facilities tend to specialize in their cooking processes. This means that what one does in a kitchen is much harder to do to 500 gallons of product in a production plant. Does an ingredient really need to be toasted and then added to an item that needs to be seared? Simplify and substitute so that only truly important processes are included. WHEN IN DOUBT, ASK – These guidelines are loose so, if you are unsure just send an e-mail to info@davesgourmet.com. Some products may be good enough where we can break some of these rules. After all, we are a movement.