Sports food

Maximise your chances of a successful product launch

By Charlotte Holmes- 6 December 2017


The trade press and market research reports are filled with sobering statistics about new food and drink products failure rates, but this doesn’t tell the whole story. Many new products don’t even make it to launch - they fail quietly in companies’ NPD kitchens or during factory trials, causing significant losses in time and money. So why does this happen?


Product innovation

Maximise product launch

We have decades of experience of transforming ideas into real food and drink products. The problem we see time and time again is companies don’t consider all the factors that will affect their product right at the start. They often overlook crucial legal, safety, quality, processing or packaging factors. For example, the client has specified a minimally processed product in the brief but have to do a u-turn during the feasibility stages so that they can satisfy due diligence requirements and demonstrate that the product is safe. The client then ends up with a highly processed product which they didn’t want, which doesn’t have the desired taste or texture and doesn’t meet the brief. The only option is to repeat the development work that has already been done at this later stage of the project which can be costly and delays the product launch.


Save yourself time, money, resources and get your product on the shelf quicker


You can maximise your chances of a successful product launch by considering all aspects of development at the start of the process. This will save you time, money, resources and get your product on the shelf quicker.

Some important things to consider when writing you product brief include:


Success requires skills from a team of individuals with different expertise and the use of a stage gated process.


Developing new products is complex and full of many hurdles and risks. The wrong thermal process, a problem with an ingredient or microbiological issues can impact on a product’s safety and quality. NPD requires a holistic approach with specialist knowledge and expertise from a wide range of areas, including ingredients, safety assurance, thermal process validation, legislation and packaging. Unless you have your own product development team, you will probably need the help of food science and technology experts. If you involve us at the start of your process before you’ve started development work, we can help take your blue sky idea and develop it into a finished product that works on a commercial scale.


To find out how we can help you please get in touch.



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