How do corporate chefs influence new product innovation? Prepared Foods profiles refrigerated foods giant Reser’s Fine Foods, Beaverton, Ore., and interviews Chef Sean Dwigans, Culinary Business Development Manager; and Chef Todd Ketterman, Culinary Manager. In this installment, Dwigans and Ketterman discuss the new product development process, timelines, and interactions with customers and their own food scientist colleagues in R&D.
Cell-based meat—real meat created without involving the animal—is closer to reality than you think. A food technology company in Israel, Ever After Foods, Ltd., has passed the tipping point in overcoming the barrier of scale-up in cell-based meat production. And they’ve done so by shifting the paradigm. Ever After CEO Eyal Rosenthal went into cell-based meat cultivation with recognition that “innovation is needed to drive a production of cultivated meat that is more similar to the traditional meat.” Ever After’s technology eschewed the industry standard and is able to produce a high volume, so-far comparatively low cost product. The company already has proven its methods to be able to drop the cost of production of meat significantly and expects to have the technology refined to market scale in as little as the next year or two.
Prepared Foods Chief Editor Bob Garrison talks food and beverage innovation strategy, topics and trends with Mario DiFalco and Kim Lopez-Walters, co-founders of Illuminate Growth Partners in the San Francisco Bay area.
Prepared Foods talks clean label snack trends and technology with Simon Sacal, CEO of Solely Inc. Since 2018-2019, this La Jolla, Calif., company has converted upcycled fruits and vegetables into a growing line of snacks (bars, jerky, dried fruit), confections (gummies) and even meal/side dish offerings (pastas). Along the way, it has earned numerous supplier awards and Prepared Foods gave it a 2022-2023 Spirit of Innovation award for its Solely Fusilli Pasta made from just one ingredient: organic green banana.
Prepared Foods chats with Fred Scarpulla, Chief Culinary Officer for Amy’s Kitchen, Inc., makers of healthful, organic prepared foods that include pastas in all shapes and formats.
The plant-based meat analog explosion started out as a disruptor in the prepared foods field and is currently going through some serious growing pains. But the idea of crafting meat, poultry, seafood, and dairy replacers derived from plants and other non-animal sources goes back centuries. Think: tofu. While there’s no argument that the main driver of the consumer love affair with meat-free options has been the technological boom that allowed for meat, poultry, and seafood mimics that have become increasingly close in flavor, texture, and other organoleptic aspects of their animal-based counterparts, the catalyst was also the demarcation between meat analogs and meat replacers.
Prepared Foods speaks with Susan Guerin, CEO of World Finer Foods, Inc. and Cutting Vedge, Inc., makers of burgers, meatballs, crumbles, and sausage replacers from artichokes.
In an interview with Prepared Foods, Kantha Shelke, PhD, CFS principal of Corvus Blue, LLC, a Chicago-based food science and research firm, shares effective ways to lower sugar content in RTE and heat-&-eat cereal products through both technical means as well as using alternatives to the refined sugars still predominant in these most popular breakfast products.