At Frontline Food Consultants & Engineers (FFCE), the journey to successful product development begins with a solid foundation of strategic planning and properly researched insights. Our Project Ideation, Market Research, and Feasibility Study services are designed to guide you through the crucial early stages of your food and beverage projects. We plan and eliminate up to 93% of the impediments and roadblocks in this stage itself so that there are no surprises later.
Project Ideation
The creative engine pushing invention in product development is the ideation phase. At FFCE, we provide f&b consultancy by approaching ideation with a mix of creativity and scientific rigor so that every idea is both visionary and based in pragmatic viability.
- Conceptualization: Our flowchart starts with the concept mapping and is followed by the panel brainstorming that involves combining all the key stakeholders such as food scientists, analysts, and industry experty. These sessions are intended to help us check that our ideas are in step with existing trends and consumer preferences.
- Scientific Validation: The raw ideas are further categorized with scientific checks and balances applied soon there after. This involves the consideration of the feasibility of the ingredients making up the product, the proceedings and technologies to be used in the production. For example when a new food product relates to the use of a new ingredient, our food scientists and food consultants will assess its functionality in terms of emulsification, gellation or, flavor release for its applicability to the product. Other procedures such as rheological testing or differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), may be used to evaluate texture, as well as stability.
- Concept Refinement and Prototyping: : The best ideas are developed by using prototypes and consumers’ feedback when implementing the innovation sources. To ensure the final product has the right taste, aroma, and Mouth feel we make small samples and use quantitative descriptive analysis (QDA). This way of working ensures we are able to adjust the product concept with respect to expectations of the consumers as well as its technical viability.
Market Research
It is important to have knowledge on the market in order for food and beverage product to be successful. Market research at FFCE enables you to make managerial decisions correctly as well as confirm whether the product perfectly suits the market.
- Consumer Insight Analysis: Consumer research is performed offering methodologies such as focus group discussion, questionnaires, and ethnography to comprehend consumer motivations, desires and latent demands. There is data segmentation of the specialisation together with the use of advanced analysis tools such as cluster analysis as well as conjoint analysis to locate key determinants of demand. This enables us to decide on distinct aspects of product characteristics—taste and fragrance and nutrition values and packaging and much more – ensuring their appeal to the pertinent target markets.
- Trend Analysis and Forecasting: More than the usual standards, conformity to trends is crucial in the field of food and beverages. Market research includes information from market releases, consumer trends, market status, and retailers’ sales data to establish new trends and predict the unfolding market shifts. Present day methods including time series analysis and machine learning are employed to make forecasts to put one ahead in performing all the activities. For instance, if, through analytics, it is determined that diets are gradually shifting from meat-heavy meals, further discussion aims at exposing how your product can balance with this emerging market by using, for instance, plant proteins and products.
- Competitive Benchmarking: In order to position your product correctly, we conduct the competition analysis and comparative evaluation of the proposed product. This encompass seniors’ assessment of competitor’s products to include; sensory examination, optimism and marketing techniques.
- Regulatory Assessment: The food industry and particularly the food processors cannot afford to compromise on regulatory compliance. Our market research will also feature an evaluation of the regulatory environment in your target markets. We check necessary regulations concerning aspects of food safety, labeling and claims to make sure our product complies with legal standards. This may require making a conduct of regulatory risks scan to determine possible regulatory risk factors and outlining how they might be managed.
Feasibility Study
A feasibility study it a critical component of new product development, and a detailed study must be carried out before unveiling any product to the market. In order to help you determine the technical, financial and operational feasibility of your project we at FFCE provide a blueprint towards commercialization.
- Technical Feasibility: It starts with the analysis based on your process requirements with regard to ingredients, process technology, and issues of scale. Our team of food scientists and process engineers evaluate how some of the proposed ingredients and processes will fit in the organization’s processing capabilities. For example, where a product in development may be using HPP, pilot scale runs will be made to assess the resultant effects on product quality and shelf-life. We also assess the source and supply of raw materials with reference to its supply cycle and when it becomes scarce, limited or unavailable.
- Process Engineering: On the second level we have our process engineering team responsible for the development and optimization of the process to support scalability. This entails the development of over Pressurised Process Flow Diagrams PFDs and Piping Instrumentation Diagrams P&IDs that demonstrate the entire production process line. We also perform simulations and modeling with the help of such tools as computational fluid dynamics (CFD) as well as adjust process parameters and predict performance of the production system.
- Financial Analysis:The financial provisionality test is carried out financially by cost modeling where key drivers for capital expenditure (CAPEX), and operational expenditure (OPEX), and revenues are estimated. In analysing the financial outlook of the project we employ various financial indicators including the: Net Present Value (NPV), Internal Rate of Return (IRR), and break-even analysis. Sensitivity analysis is also performed to see a change in value of different input factors like cost of raw materials or price in the market.
- Operational Viability: As for the operational feasibility which is part of the criterial evaluation of this model, we look at workforce, infrastructural, and logistic necessities. This will incorporate the aspects of site selection evaluation where we evaluate aspects such as; closeness to material sources, working force and utility supply. We also have risk evaluation to be able to know what possible obstacles may occur such as some suppliers or other regulatory environment, and then work out on how to deal with them.
- Sustainability Considerations: In relation to the new and informed consciousness of users and governments on the global position of enterprise and consequent regulatory concerns, the analyses of feasibility also contain an evaluation of the environmental influence of your project. Some of the considerations include energy consumption, amount and type of waste produced, and the company’s overall carbon footprint; further, the company receives suggestions for improvement. It may embrace energy sources, where it needs to consider renewable energy sources for example,incipit waste management strategies, or instigate use of environmentally friendly packaging among others.