Why your startup should hire a food scientist
It really surprises me how few “food tech” startups have anyone with a food science background. You would think that a business that purports to be focused on innovation, revolutionizing the industry, etc., would want to employ at least one experienced and trained individual to help inform the decision-making process. Unfortunately, too many startups seem to treat food scientists as an afterthought. I understand the logic for companies focusing on biotechnology (b2b ingredient companies and cultivated meat) want their first hires to help them navigate the biological sciences. I imagine that the thinking goes something like this:
“We need to develop the technology. Once we have a product, we can focus on scaling up and consumer validation.” Or, “We only have a budget for x scientists, and we need a specialist in y.”
I’m sure this approach works quite well when everything goes smoothly if you never need to pivot, and if securing additional capital to grow your business is easy. Some level of pivoting is inevitable, and we all know what the current funding environment looks like today. In this light, a food scientist's flexible expertise emerges as a tremendous asset that's surprisingly undervalued. Recognizing and leveraging this potential could be the key to unlocking new levels of innovation and growth. For the remainder of this article, I will demonstrate the merits and limitations of hiring a food scientist.
Common reasons why food scientists are not hired.
Not aware the profession existed.
Not familiar with what they can do.
Prioritized hiring a chef over a FS / thought a chef would be better.
We lack the budget.
We hired a consultant / subcontracted with another business instead.
1. Not aware the profession existed.
This is actually very common, even at the C-suit level. I regularly get asked what food science is (so often, I have a PowerPoint presentation prepared). If you already know about the field, skip ahead, but allow me to provide some background for those unfamiliar or curious.
The profession is at least 50 years old (the exact number will change depending on your definition) and is quite common. In the United States, the field probably began in the 1920s-30s with the advent of industrial meat production and the creation of federal regulations. Educationally, the field comes from agricultural science (farming and animal husbandry) and has differentiated itself by focusing on food safety, processing technology, and consumer science (to name a few).
Most state schools are also land-grant universities (when the school was founded, the state gave it land to conduct research) and will have an agricultural school with a food science and technology department. Indeed, while writing this article, I did a quick Google search, and the first result said there are 113 accredited food science schools in the United States. So, chances are your state has a food science program, and they may even be closer to you than you might have realized. Not only is this a great way to gain access to cheap or free education and training (most programs offer extension / outreach services), but you can also talk with researchers who can help answer some of your questions.
2. Not familiar with what they can do.
Ok, at this point, you may have noticed that I didn’t define what food science actually is. I’m writing a book about this, but here is a simplified definition. Food science is the content and mindset needed for industrial food's safe and profitable production. It is less of one specific, highly focused science and more of a mish-mash of many different sciences. I would say it is a generalist discipline rather than a highly specialized one. However, there is plenty of room for specification. My recommendation for any startup is to look for a good generalist, not a specialist, as specialists are more useful for large, established companies.
Ok, what can we do? Well, pretty much anything and everything. No, I’m not being hyperbolic. The whole point of formal education is to give us an overview of as many different and important aspects of the industry and then figure out what we focus on. Let’s put it another way: think about your specific business. What is your value proposition? What does your supply chain look like? Where do you fit into the business ecosystem? I guarantee you that in every one of these examples, there is at least one trained food scientist who could do the job and is currently doing so at a large company.
Your organization will need at least one of the following. A food safety or regulatory affairs specialist to ensure your product is safe and meets all governmental requirements. A consumer insight specialist to help you understand who your customer is and what motivates them. A sensory scientist will help you understand how much your consumer liked or disliked the taste and texture of your product. A food processing engineer to help you develop new processing or equipment. Lastly, a product developer will create your recipe and oversee its manufacturing in the factory. I could go on, but for every specific need, there is a trained and specialized food science professional capable of doing multiple jobs.
3. Prioritized hiring a chef over a FS / thought a chef would be better.
I’m not here to argue against chefs; I have worked with half a dozen chefs across multiple companies in the 10+ years I have worked in the industry. Chefs are creative, talented, and hard-working people. But they are not food scientists. In my definition of food science, I used the term industrial food production for a reason. That is because, as food scientists, we are trained to think across multiple disciplines and at different scales of production. A chief is going to be amazing when your production is small, 100 lbs or less, when presentation is critical, and when exploring wild concepts. However, industrial food needs to be cheap enough to afford on a daily basis (that’s why we don’t eat at restaurants every day), it needs to be safe for long periods of time, and it has to be produced in tons per hour. If you’re trying to impress your investors or board, a chef will be the best solution, but you’re not opening a restaurant.
Consider the product developer. Product development happens at different scales: benchtop, pilot plant, and factory. A product developer uses their experience and education in food science to help navigate the iterative process of formulation, production, and post-launch analysis. The product developer will provide you with a recipe and a cost estimate. Each ingredient that goes into your recipe will be sourced (probably by your product developer), and they will determine the correct manufacturing process. Because they designed your recipe, they will also be able to provide you with your nutritional information. If there are regulatory or standard of identity issues, they will be the first to know and the first to provide solutions. It is not uncommon for them to also provide you with informal sensory and consumer insight. In addition to creating the product and overseeing its manufacturing, they can support sensory, regulatory, nutrition, supply chain, and marketing. Given the sheer amount of work a product developer does, we can forgive imperfect plating.
4. We lack the budget.
You have to spend money to make money. Instead of asking if you can afford it, the better question is, can you find someone who is good enough to spend the money on? What good enough entails is subjective, and studies imply that your perfect candidate either doesn’t exist or isn’t worth the wait. If you want to talk more about this, I’m happy to provide my perspective as I have experience answering this question.
In general, a full-time food scientist will be much cheaper than hiring a consultant (ouch, that stings) in the long term. If you are unsure of your long-term needs, hiring a consultant or an independent contractor is probably your best option. I’ve already sung the praises for common roles that a food scientist can provide, but remember that their primary purpose will be to help you make money or prevent you from wasting it. Thus far, this article has focused on the consumer packaged good company CPG. However not every company will be focused on manufacturing and selling directly to the consumer.
If you are more interested in selling technology or producing an ingredient that a CPG company would buy, here are four reasons why you really can’t afford not to hire a food scientist. Your clients are food companies, and many, if not all, the key decision makers will be food scientists; here are three questions they might ask and one they always will ask.
A) How does your service fit into my existing pipeline?
B) What is the functionality of your ingredient?
C) What does your ingredient do to the flavor and texture of my product?
D) How much does it cost?
At this point, you may never have asked yourself any of these questions except about the cost. You’ve probably been so focused on developing your scientific team and figuring out the details of your production that you set aside these business plan details. Well, how will you answer it when no one in your organization is familiar with the food industry?
A) How does your service fit into my existing pipeline?
One of the major reasons why innovation doesn’t happen is that people are resistant to change. Here is a free sales tip: don’t sell them on the technology or even the product; sell them on a story. Especially the story of how your service or ingredient fits into their current process in a way that is easy to imagine. How problems they never thought could be solved are gone forever, about higher profit margins or expanding their portfolio by attracting new customers. All this will be much easier when you have someone on your team who they can relate to. You want a food scientist on the call who can provide details and answer questions in real-time.
B) What is the functionality of your ingredient?
If you don’t know what functionality is, you absolutely need to hire a food scientist. If you do but are unsure how to measure it, this is a service I excel at (yes, shameless plug). Functionality is defined contextually in practice, so very few tests will be standardized and readily available. Instead, each product type and even each formulation will need to have a test created for them. Your team has great scientists, but they might not have time to design, execute, interpret, and meet with clients. Like before, you are selling solutions and stories, not commodity ingredients. This is the rare blend of science and business, technical details, and practical execution. The right food scientist will absolutely crush it, but the wrong hire (a non-food scientist) will keep you wondering what’s going on long past the point where an easy pivot is possible. That’s the other reason you want to hire a food scientist: the feedback they will give to the rest of your team will help you save months, if not years, off your R&D plan.
C) What does your ingredient do to the flavor and texture of their product?
This is also a challenging question to answer. Compared to many other industries, food science has few standardized tests that are publicly available and widely applicable. Instead, a customized test is created for each individual product or ingredient. Measurements must be accurate, robust, and meaningful (correlate to human experiences). You need to learn a lot without spending much money and present and explain the information to your prospective customer. Sometimes, the customer will have their own tests; this is not an excuse to avoid understanding your product. If they don’t like your product, they’re not likely to tell you why or how to improve it. If you can present your own information, you have a better chance of convincing them that your product is worth buying. Lastly, the best way to test a new ingredient (if not the fastest or cheapest) is to make something. A good food scientist will do this and help your customers troubleshoot and replicate your success. From a sales perspective, it’s fairly straightforward: speak to the client in the language they understand (food science), provide solutions to their problems, and tell a story of how they benefit from working with you.
D) What does it cost?
This is either the last question you want to answer or the hardest question to answer if you are still getting started. If you have an answer, it’s probably too much. I’ve said it in another article, and I’ll say it again: costs really matter and we have to get the costs down. Even if your clients today are willing to pay high prices, are you sure they will tomorrow? There are an awful lot of other companies that are trying to muscle into your space. If you get those prices down today, you have a higher profit margin (or smaller losses), and you can quickly and easily offer lower prices once your competition scales up. Reducing costs comes from managing your supply chain, improving productivity, and developing new technology, to name a few examples. Unfortunately, most cost reductions have a negative impact on questions A, B, and C, but fortunately, a good food scientist will be able to mitigate such challenges. A good food scientist can help put numbers to the tradeoffs and proactively provide solutions before they snowball (this is exactly what I did at Nestlé).
5. We hired a consultant / subcontracted with another business
And that’s fine; did / are they working well for you? If you read through all the above sections and you still think that your current needs are met great. Thanks for reading, I hope you found this useful even though you won’t hire a food scientist right now. If your answer was no or not enough, let’s explore that in more detail. You may also benefit from hiring a food scientist permanently within your company they’re definitely a good deal cheaper than a consultant.
If you’re not happy with your current arrangement, your specific needs might require more time and attention than what you’re currently getting. Food Science and Applied Research Consulting was and is designed around customized service. We are highly detail-oriented (jezz look how long this “short” article is) but very practically oriented. Our goal is to meet you where you are with the services you need today and for the future. We are prompt and professional, honest to a fault (literally), and above all, invested in your success. If you're interested in learning more or just looking to network, email us at foodscienceappliedresearch@gmail.com, check out our the rest of our website https://www.foodscienceappliedresearchconsulting.com/ or schedule a conversation at https://calendly.com/goulder-6/chat.
