Product Development
Clients
We work with everyone from individuals ready to pursue their passion projects to large public companies.
Most of our clients are in between—early stage startups who need to refine their formulations and are ready for a co-packer to mature startups who are ready to develop and launch those products that have been lying in wait in their innovation pipeline.
Products
We work across categories and can develop any food or beverage product that’s meant to be tasty and consumed by humans.
Be it high or low pH beverages, bars, snacks, baked goods (sweet and savory!), complete meals, ferments, sauces, frozen food, soups, spice blends, perishables, and everything in between.
We’re a creative team who loves a challenge and the diversity of working on vegan cheese in the morning, cookies midday and an alcoholic beverage in the afternoon.
Specialty
Our specialty is first-of-their kind, organic and natural products.
We love pushing the boundaries of what’s possible and utilizing whole ingredients to make delicious, clean label products that meet your label and brand requirements. We’ll always be the first to tell you when an idea defies the chemical and physical laws of our planet.
Short of that, we’re game!
Our Process
We work on a bespoke basis and craft our scopes of work to meet your needs. In general, our product development scopes follow this process flow:
Phase 1
During Ideation, our goal is to see the world through your eyes to the greatest extent possible. We want to understand your vision for this product—how it will look, taste, smell, and feel, and what ingredients and nutritional requirements are important to you.
We’ll discuss all the opportunities and hurdles to get to the finish line, and then we’ll craft a development plan to get us there.
IDEATION
Phase 2
SOURCING
Throughout Ideation and Benchtop Development we repel down the rabbit hole of sourcing to find you initial ingredient suppliers and a co-packer.
We’ll work to find you ingredients that meet your product and brand specifications, be it organic, non-GMO, vegan, keto, paleo, nothing artificial, humanely-raised, or more. We’ll also handle all those initial gruff co-packer calls to vet each facility for appropriate equipment, processing and MOQs, as well as general ability to interact with humans.
Phase 4
REFORMULATION
During Reformulation we take your feedback from our first tasting and use that to refine the formulation, as well as explore any new avenues uncovered during that first tasting. Usually we complete dozens of additional trials that culminate in up to three rounds of reformulation with tastings in between.
During this phase we’re also continuing to source ingredients, work with you on ingredient COGS, and coordinate with co-packers.
Phase 3
BENCHTOP
DEVELOPMENT
During Benchtop Development we begin executing on the development plan in our test kitchen. We’ll run dozens of trials putting your product through its paces to explore the outer boundaries of what’s possible in food and science to show you the spectrum of taste, color, aroma, texture, and experience available, so you can decide which path we take.
At the end of benchtop development we have our first tasting where we’ll guide you through the unchartered waters of your new product and the myriad of samples created in order to collect your feedback and chart our path forward.
Phase 5
SCALE UP
Once we have an approved benchtop formulation, it’s time to get it primed and
ready for the co-packer. Our entire process is done with scale up in mind as you can only sell a product if it comes off a production line.
At this point we’ll scale the formulation, introduce you to commercial scale ingredient suppliers, facilitate nutritional testing and process authority letters, and coordinate with the co-packer to prep in advance of the trial run.
Phase 6
TRIAL DAY
Time for a trial run! The ingredients are on site, the co-packer is prepped, and the formulation is ready for a test run on a commercial scale production line.
Every product formulation needs tweaks and troubleshooting as it’s optimized for scaled equipment during the trial run, so we’re on hand to make those changes and get the formulation dialed in so it’s ready for production. Once those changes are made, we deliver the formulation, ingredient and processing specs, and QA metrics to you, so you can take it from here to get your product into production and sell!
Our Relationship
On average, projects take anywhere between 6 and 14 months, although some have finished in weeks and others have run longer. It all depends on the client’s needs and
co-packer availability.
We work on a project basis rather than billing hourly. We believe clients benefit from understanding the scope of our work and fees upfront. We never want people watching the clock. We do what it takes to get the
project done and done right.
We’d rather over communicate than under communicate. We utilize a shared google doc Project Tracker to organize and document our work together and are in regular contact throughout your project, so you have full visibility to our progress and what’s happening next.