Insights on Ingredient Selection

The million-dollar question for ingredient suppliers is Who makes the ingredient decisions at food manufacturers?" In a presentation at SupplySide West, Anatomy of a Decision: Insights on Ingredient Selection," Jeff Manning, Cherry Marketing Institute (CMI), shed a little light on the decision-making process.

During their early efforts to create demand for tart cherries, CMI realized they, too, werent sure who to talk to at food manufacturers. They embarked on a qualitative research study to understand the basis for ingredient decisions.

One thing they learned was that you cant depend on job titles. The decision-makers, they found, had titles that ran the gamut from Director R&D to Principal Scientist to Quality Operations Manager. Perhaps not surprisingly, CMI also learned the ingredient-selection process involves lots of stages, lots of go/no-go decisions," Manning says. But ultimately, the ingredient has to have mass appeal (no risk), but it has to be on-trend and exciting. It has to have an interesting flavor but have mass appeal. It all comes down to mass appeal."