New Food Product Development

Most projects move through six stages; moving from one stage to the next is the client's call.

1. Concept and brief. We start with a written brief: the product, target consumer, nutritional targets and claims, market, target cost, raw materials, regulation, packaging and shelf life. If all you have is an idea, or an answer from an AI model, we turn it into a brief a lab can test. Our work begins where the model's answer ends: in tasting, texture and the production line.
2. Formulation. We build the first formulas around what will matter on the line and the shelf: cost, raw materials, nutrition, allergens and stability. Water activity (aw), pH and moisture-sorption behaviour set the targets for how the product will keep. We do that first in our simulation models, so the bench trials start with a better understanding of the trade-offs and interactions.
3. Benchtop trials. We make prototypes on benchtop equipment chosen to mimic industrial unit operations, from freeze and spray drying to extrusion, a 1,000-bar homogenizer and UHT. Each prototype is recorded as numbers: aw, pH, Brix, viscosity, time and temperature. Texture profile analysis (TPA) turns words like "crunchy" or "chewy" into measurements we compare with tasting. You taste with us, and we iterate.
4. Process design. We define the process sequence and its operating window: mixing, heating, cooling and holding times. For safety and stability we design with hurdle technology: pH, water activity, heat treatment and packaging working together, not one barrier alone. For heat-treated products we calculate pasteurization (P) and sterilization (F) values from temperature-probe data.
5. Scale-up readiness. We develop with scale-up in mind from the first prototype. We identify the critical process parameters and check how shear, heat transfer, mass transfer and product geometry will change on industrial equipment. Where a process is hard to observe, our physics-based Food Simulations help narrow the trials before we run them. You receive a product file: raw-material specifications, process parameters, production instructions and packaging recommendations. We can also support the first production trials at your plant.
6. Shelf-life validation. We find what limits your product's shelf life and test against it. Common causes are moisture migration, a crisp product going soft past its glass transition, rancidity from lipid oxidation, and microbial growth. Accelerated shelf-life testing (ASLT), modelled with Arrhenius kinetics, gives an early read; real-time storage confirms it. When shelf life is the main problem, The Whole Package, our shelf-life diagnostics and packaging service, goes deeper. Accredited microbiological and nutritional tests go to external laboratories.

• Startups: from a technology to a product that can be manufactured and priced. We give you a sober view built on many years of experience.
• Established food manufacturers: an extension of your R&D team, with extra capacity and equipment your plant may lack. We test parameters at benchtop scale before your pilot or line trial, working with your team, not instead of it.
• Entrepreneurs: from an idea, a home recipe or a brand concept to a product a manufacturer can produce.

We have built food companies, run production and put products on the shelf. Some of our products succeeded and some failed, and both taught us where the challenge hides. Dozens of products we developed are sold in stores around the world.

• Gil de Picciotto, co-founder. A former fighter pilot turned chef, Gil has developed food products in Israel, the USA, Europe and China for more than 20 years.
• Yoel Benesh, co-founder. Yoel founded Olivia, an Israeli maker of sauces and spreads, and became Head of R&D at Tnuva after Tnuva acquired it.
• Tamar Feldman, R&D and lab manager. Tamar studied food science and biochemistry at the Hebrew University and runs our project development and lab operations.

Your formulations, process data and results belong to you, and we sign an NDA when needed.