How to Innovate New Food Products

If you run a food manufacturing plant, a restaurant, or some other business in the food industry, you’ll be interested in innovating new food products on a regular basis. But innovation is a tricky business.

For starters, there’s no easy way to “force” creativity. You can’t bully yourself into coming up with a better food product idea on the spot, and you might be stuck in a dry spell with no new ideas for months at a time. 

If you come up with a great idea, there’s no guarantee it’s going to be commercially viable or that you’ll be able to produce it on a large scale. And even if you can produce it, how can you be sure that customers will love the way it tastes? Or that your competitors won’t be able to come up with some better version of it?

Some of these obstacles will remain challenging to you and your business indefinitely, but there are some strategies to help you innovate more new food products and make them better.

Set Up the Right Environment

First, you need to set up the right environment for yourself and for your team. Whether you’re working in an industrial kitchen or just the comfort of your home kitchen, the right environment will allow you to experiment more freely and come up with better ideas over time.

•       General surroundings/atmosphere. Work on the general surroundings and the atmosphere of your environment. Vinyl panels, for example, can provide a feeling of professionalism and cleanliness that can help inspire you to think like a genius restauranteur.
•       Tools. Don’t hesitate to invest in better tools for yourself. If you have better equipment and better utensils at your disposal, you’ll be much more inclined to create new things on a whim.
•       Space for collaboration. Make sure your workspace has plenty of room for collaboration. Oftentimes, the most innovative and creative new food ideas come as a result of multiple people working together.

Try New Cuisines Regularly

Go out of your way to try new cuisines and different foods you’ve never tried before. It’s a great way to broaden your culinary horizons and introduce you to new flavors and ingredients you might otherwise never have considered. If you find a flavor combination that piques your interest or a perfect ingredient to transform a previous dish you created, capitalize on it.

Get to Know Your Competitors

Similarly, it’s a good idea to get to know your competitors as much as possible. That means eating at their restaurants, analyzing their products, and even getting to know their customers. You’ll learn some of the things that distinguish your business from theirs, and you’ll figure out some new opportunities that you can use to get an edge.

Collaborate With Your Team

Make sure you spend time collaborating with your team. Having multiple people and a diversity of thoughts can lead you to much more inspiring and creative solutions.

•       Hire creative and entrepreneurial thinkers. Some people naturally think like entrepreneurs. Try to scout for these creative and innovative minds when you’re hiring new people.
•       Listen to all ideas. Make it clear that you’re willing to hear all ideas, even ones that may seem silly or impractical at first glance. If your team members are inhibited, you could miss out on some great ideas.
•       Encourage and reward great ideas. When an employee or team member does have a good idea, make sure to encourage and reward them. Even if you don’t move forward with the product, you’ll give them an incentive to keep coming up with new ideas.
•       Embrace differences. When you find someone who thinks differently than you do, embrace that difference. It’s good to have multiple minds working on the same problem.

Think Beyond Tasty Food

Many food innovators focus almost exclusively on creating delicious new products, but food innovation can take other forms.

•       Presentation. Any chef can tell you presentation matters just as much as flavor, if not more so. Sometimes you can make an innovation just by rearranging ingredients on a plate.
•       Health and sustainability. Can you make a popular dish more healthy or sustainable to appeal to a different audience?
•       Personal identity. Can you make this food a statement on personal identity? Or make it more appealing to a specific demographic?
•       Storage and practicality. A single ingredient or process change could make it much easier to store or process this food item.

With these strategies, you should have a much easier time coming up with innovative new food ideas and making those ideas a reality. That doesn’t mean you are going to transform the business completely overnight, nor does it mean you’re going to come up with a food innovation that’s going to change the world, but he should put you in a much better position in terms of business development and customer reach.