New Product Development

New Product Development

Every food service operation needs to develop new and interesting products. The larger and the longer an operation has been established, the more difficult it will be to successfully add newly developed items to the menu. Thus us especially true for fast good restaurants.

Possible reasons why:

- Size of the clientele is so broad that it is difficult to find the core group for the new product.
- Due to present new product testing, quality is compromised for popular opinion.
- New items are old items with alterations.
- Too late in jumping onto new trends.
- New items don’t fit company image.

These reasons do not mean that a large operation is unable to successfully develop new items, but the process needs to be changed.

The new product needs excellent quality and consistency. It must fit the identity of the company. New products need to be made with main ingredients that are not available on existing items. This is evident for very limited variety outlets.

The taste of the new item must be distinctive and pleasant to the palate. To achieve this, one needs to have a good understanding if which ingredients are going to compliment one another. In limited item outlets, it is necessary to develop or change just about every major ingredient, other wise, the developing process remains too rigid to be able to enhance creativity.

Conception:

In the beginning stages of conception, there should only be an item that needs to be developed. Creativity needs to be nourished at this stage. How this is done depends a lot on the individuals involved. Some get creative by going through books to stimulate new ideas, others will go out for dinner. One of the most important things to know about creativity is that it comes in spurts. Keeping records of creative ideas is essential for future development of items. These records should be available to the individuals working on the new product. Since creativity comes at the most unpredictable time, it is best to record the conversations and thoughts, this will not interrupt the creative flow.

Making Samples:

All the feasible ideas should reach this stage. It is uncommon for creative individuals to keep records of how much of an ingredient they use in the sample making state. To enhance freedom of creativity at this state, necessary ingredients should be pre weighed. And in a ready to use state for each individual concerned. This allows for focused one of a kind sample building. And at the same tine it provides the foundation for figuring out exact ingredient usage.
Precision at this stage is extremely important for the future success of the product’s development.

The creative stages need to be managed in a modern fashion. The idea is not to control or to manipulate, but to demonstrate involvement by asking questions like; How would…affect your product? Could … help you solve that problem? Therefore, choosing the right individual as leader is extremely important.

Item/ingredients that will be supplied by a vendor need to be evaluated in the same fashion as your own items. If such items/ingredients are not satisfactory, it may be necessary to develop then in-house and have them exclusively made for the company.

Taste testing:

There are different ways taste testing is done. Some ways to get results are not realistic. Keep it as close to potential customers real live situation. Example; taste testing 3 different coffees at the same time is unrealistic. A customer usually would drink one cup at a time throughout the course of a day. Most of the time he/she will not be able to distinguish one medium quality coffee from another unless they are compared at the same time. But if he/she has a low quality coffee or superior quality coffee, that will be noticed. The same holds true for many other items. Would you order hamburgers from different companies just to see which one you like better? Highly unlikely, however, by tasting these burgers on different occasions you would recall which one you enjoyed the most.

An exceptionally good item will be noticed! Especially when marketed effectively.

I like to quote from Jay Conrad Levinson’s book called “Guerrilla Marketing for the 90’s” where he states: “Fully 83 percent of new products brought to market in 1993 failed to reach their business objectives, according to the respondent’s projections. Fingers were also pointed at guilty parties for failure to market aggressively: Only 70 percent said their companies put their best marketing people on new products. To illustrate the pitiful lack of creativity in creating products, 87 percent of the products respondents companies brought to market in 1992 were line extensions – new versions of old products – while only 4 percent created a new product category. These figures pertain to new products and to large companies, but all entrepreneurs can learn from important lessons from them.”

Written by Marcel Schoch
Copyright 1995

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