What's It Like to Go Through a Food R&D Process?
- Bryan Le
- May 26
- 3 min read
Subreddit: r/Entrepreneur
User: u/Only_Ad1117
Original Post:
Ok, the product already exists but is not yet popular . There are limited manufacturers/ suppliers (under 10 worldwide and they are all small business owners)
Labels from the samples I got from one of these supplier shows me 3 basic ingredients. As I can’t call them to ask for the other ingredients (lol, it would be too easy), I might need to get help from a R&D center to determine the right ingredients composition and additional ones to add to improve it (because what I ordered sucks….literally).
So for those who’ve ever launched a food product (let’s say you sell chips or snacks), how long did it take ? But mainly, how costly was it ? What did the R&D center needed from you ?
My Response:
Hi, I’m a food scientist and I do this for a living.
What you’re looking for is reverse engineering of a food product. It’s a fairly straight forward process, once you have the ingredient list, nutrition label, and some basic understanding of the product’s taste, texture, and behavior.
Very few food products are so complex that you can’t figure out how to at least match within a small ballpark of the composition. Most formulators can stare at an ingredient label and nutrition facts with an Excel spreadsheet and a few calls to ingredient suppliers, and get an approximation.
Where you might run into difficulties is sourcing the ingredients at the scale you’re looking for. Most commercial ingredients that are designed to work under specific applications are sold in very large order quantities. It’s not unusual to be unable to get a smaller quantity of certain ingredients with specific characteristics and flavor profiles.
The typical cost of this process is between $10,000 to $30,000. More complex formulations may be up to $100,000 because they need the assistance of mass spectrometry and more advanced chemical analysis. So it just depends.
Flavor formulation is typically the most challenging part of the process, as most flavorings are condensed into the term “Natural Flavorings” or “Artificial Flavorings”, but can be 5 to 50 different compounds, extracts, or components.
Reply:
I didn’t think someone would actually answer, because my question was too specific 😅
Big thanks for your insightful answer ! It really helped me see things more clearly with this project!
I was kind of expecting the 10k range to be honest… guess that’s the price to pay if I want to see this product come to life one day 🫣
As a food scientist, do you know if there is anything in particular I should watch for when choosing a research center?
My Second Response:
Okay, I'm glad to hear that the $10,000 didn't give you any panic. Some people see that price tag and balk, but that's about the lowest I've seen that hasn't seriously impacted the quality of the output. Of course, can't speak to every service provider in the industry, just my personal experience.
I think it can be hard because usually people who come into this industry don't have the technical background, so formulators can tend to do things that sound good on paper, but turns out it doesn't match up with technical reality. Or they might overhype some aspect that you don't quite understand, but for someone like me, I can call B.S. pretty fast.
I would recommend you find a food scientist who can help you evaluate the offerings of a product formulator or product development center. I would also recommend working through a university product development or innovation center, as they tend to have a lot of the resources needed to produce many different types of products. They also tend to have lower price points for their services because it's partially subsidized by the state:
Cornell University
North Carolina State University
Chapman University
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Dr. Bryan Quoc Le is the Founder and Principal Food Consultant of Mendocino Food Consulting. He earned his Ph.D. in Food Science from the University of Wisconsin, Madison and his B.S. and M.S. in Chemistry from the University of California, Irvine. He currently lives in Mendocino, California with his wife and two dogs.
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