Customizing on Demand

In this ever-changing marketplace, where advances in technology, the latest nutritional findings and increased consumer demands can outdate a formulation seemingly overnight, most food manufacturers could use a good industry partner. Companies have long relied on McClancy Seasoning Co. to provide the spices and seasonings that add dash to their products, but there’s more to the story than cardamom and coriander.

“We develop menu items,” says Reid Wilkerson, president. “Everyone has an idea of what items they want on their menu from a restaurant standpoint, or what kinds of items they want in the market from a prepared-food-company standpoint. And everyone wants to take advantage of trends in the industry. What becomes the rub is: How are they going to create these products, and who are they going to partner with to actually develop the core flavor profiles?” This is where McClancy steps in.

For companies interested in tweaking their products, for example, McClancy’s R&D specialists can help. “Many of our existing customers are asking us to take their ‘gold-standard’ products and come up with versions that have less sodium, or perhaps less saturated fat,” Wilkerson says. “There are three steps to this: First, you have to know what you have; second, you need to know what you want to end up with; third, you have to formulate and do comparison testing.” The process includes running a nutritional assay on the product, looking at its components, determining how to modify its ingredient structure, and creating a prototype. “When we bring prototypes into customers, we are showing them what is possible,” Wilkerson says. “A lot of it is us saying, ‘This is possible. Is this where you want to go?’”

If the answer is “yes,” the prototype moves on to consumer testing. If the answer is “close, but not quite,” the prototype is revised. “Customers can come into our test kitchen, and we cook off products until we get the product to the point where they want to prototype it,” Wilkerson says. “With four or five lab technicians running revisions, we’ve been able to do 30 revisions in a day in order to zero in on where a customer wants a product to be, with them present and giving feedback.

“This is all custom,” Wilkerson continues. “This is not about making XYZ product and selling it to whoever we can. Yes, we absolutely do have products in our line that are available for sale, but the vast majority of them are done for a specific need, whether it’s for a starch company or one of the different flavor companies. We can provide solutions for them. The buzzword in the industry right now seems to be ‘partnering.’ Our company has been doing just that for almost 60 years.” 

McClancy Seasoning Co.
One Spice Road 
Fort Mill, SC 29715 
Phone: 800/843-1968 
Fax: 803/548-2379 
E-mail: [email protected] 
Website: www.mcclancy.com