How long does it take to develop a new food product?

Developing New Food products can vary counting on the client and therefore the project. I’m assuming here that you simply mean development at the company level, instead of recipe development for one chef during a single kitchen.

For a totally new menu item or line , it can take a minimum of 2 years or more. For an extension of an existing product, it can take a couple of months. for instance , unveiling a completely new breakfast menu across a multinational chain involves far more than simply adding another chip flavor to a family-owned snack company.

For a time I worked on the very beginning phase: helping clients with the “golden recipe” — which is that the ideal, best-tasting version prepared more or less with regular ingredients. My colleagues further down the hallway would commercialize that recipe. In kitchens that resembled labs, they’d convert my ingredients and procedures to suit successfully and consistently into a large-scale production process. Their choices for what foods and equipment to use trusted the sourcing, facilities, packaging, and marketing (i.e. price point) needs of the client.

That golden recipe process would take 3 months minimally, and that’s assuming the client features a focused and efficient internal process for describing and deciding what they need .

Often, the client doesn’t know. they only got to offer something new under their brand. So they’d also ask us to conduct initial trend research, competitive analysis, and market research like surveys and focus groups. within the meantime, weeks or months have passed. Only then , once they need a far better idea what they ought to pursue, can we begin developing and testing. 

We then spend 3 or 6 months (or maybe a dreaded 9-12 months with especially tricky preparations) within the test kitchen, narrowing down possibilities and offering several rounds of tastings to decision-makers. Once the client signs off on this golden recipe, we hand off to the commercialization team.

For them, the time would depend upon whether there have been any completely new ingredients for the corporate , or a replacement assembly line with new equipment, or new packaging which may affect the form of the food, or maybe a replacement distribution system. there's typically more complexity at this stage, and yet higher requirements for precision.


Development has got to balance two different demands on project timelines: longer to develop better quality products vs. going to market as quickly as possible to beat out competitors and to maximise returns on investments in food trends. I’m not experienced with the commercialization part, but my guess is it requires a minimum of 2–3 months for a replacement foodstuff . I’m guessing more, though, since testing of the assembly line has got to happen , and it’d be a miracle if it worked on the primary run. (On the opposite hand, an experienced co-packer for a replacement flavor of ice tea during a standard bottle with no fancy, unstable additions could probably find out a formulation during a few weeks.)


There’s far more pressure now to bring new food  product  Development to plug extremely quickly, so I’m guessing that the longer timelines I worked under have contracted greatly. Still, for an investment of millions upon many dollars for subsequent Frappuccino or Popeye’s sandwich , I’m guessing that there's still a minimum of 6 to 12 months under all ideal circumstances for creating a replacement product.

 For what it’s worth, an experienced chef can come up with a “new” dish for his or her restaurant in anywhere from 1 hour to 1 week. I understand that a version may need been prepared for hundreds of years in another country or for many years by someone’s mom…but the precise ingredients and procedures for that unique kitchen will still got to be found out . Production kitchens do things very differently than home kitchens, then there’s still technically a development process for any dish to get delicious, consistent, and  yes  profitable leads to a restaurant, food truck or catering company.


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