Developing, of course, largely depends on the target consumer. Fran Lent, president and CEO of Fran's Healthy Helpings, knows this all too well after developing a natural line of children's meals. “Kids will only eat what they like, so we have always taken the philosophy of not trying to recreate the wheel and looked at McDonald's and our competitors. We are never going to taste like McDonald's, because we are healthier, are baked, not fried, and use all white meat. So, we have given that profile to product development and said try to make this taste as much like what kids already like as possible within the constraints of what we define as healthy and natural.
“Actually, kids like very basic tastes. They do not like spicy or really complicated foods. I think the key is to offer products that are very basic and not deviate from it—not to get complicated. We have a new product on the horizon, and once we simplified it, it became easier to comply and still meet our standards of healthy and natural.”