The Value-Added Food Processing Incubator...

Where the Sage Meets the Sausage

Benjy Mikel

Okay. You’ve got this really terrific idea. It’s for a new food product— something that could be even bigger than Kentucky Fried Chicken. (And get this, you’re the next Colonel Sanders.) But ... how do you put wings on an idea to let it fly?

If it’s food, if it’s a new concept, call Benjy Mikel.
Mikel, an animal scientist at the University of Kentucky Value-Added Food Processing Incubator, has developed a place where food entrepreneurs can get solid advice on bringing their new ideas to the marketplace.

What started in 1997 as a couple of Extension workshops for meat processors has grown since then—and it’s growing faster now—into a full-fledged, one-stop shop for budding food entrepreneurs. There they can try out their ideas to see if they really have the potential for moneymaking before they put their life savings into them.

The experts at the incubator work with people and their ideas. First, they eyeball the idea to see if it has merit for further scrutiny. If it’s worthy of proceeding, then they consider the cost of manufacturing the product, the marketing costs associated with bringing it to the marketplace, the per-item basis when the production lines are up and running, and whether the market niche is sufficient to support the product’s manufacture.

“We let our clients know at every step of the way what we believe needs to be done to get the product to the consumer. We act as consultants; we advise, but the clients make the decisions,” said Mikel. Mikel is a muscle foods specialist in the food science group within the Department of Animal Sciences whose own brainchild is the food science incubator program.

The Ultimate Test: Taste
The team at the incubator even puts new food products through the litmus test for foods: taste testing.
“If it doesn’t meet favorably with the consumer palate, you might as well go home. Consumers are more sophisticated than ever in their desire for foods. Not only do they want convenience, they want taste,” Mikel said.
Actually, new products go through a two-stage testing procedure for palatability: first with scientists whose training lends them some sense of what consumers want, then with real-life consumers.

“At the first stage, our scientists evaluate the product to see if a little tweaking here and there with spices or other ingredients would enhance its chances to make it in the marketplace,” Mikel said.
After tweaking—and usually several slightly different formulations come out of that process—the new food formulations are ready for the real test: consumers.

“We have our taste panels provide detailed information about each of the formulations of the product,” Mikel said.
If the product comes out of taste tasting with high marks, the team then considers packaging and labeling.
“Packaging includes how much product to put in each unit, which is usually determined by whether the product will be sold for the wholesale or retail trade, and how to package it for shelf life and storage ease,” Mikel said.
Labeling, he said, is pretty much driven by the federal laws pertaining to food commerce.
“We make sure that the package label meets federal guidelines, which can be complicated,” he said.

Taste testing is an important part of what the Value-Added Food Processing Incubator does. Scientists on the incubator team do the first taste testing of the products. Then, after tweaking, real-life consumers try them out.

The Land-Grant Philosophy at Work
In its brief life, the incubator has worked with all types of clients, from Fortune 500 companies to mom-and-pop operations with hopes of becoming Fortune 500 companies (or at least enticing the Fortune 500 companies to do business with them).

“Each of our clients has different needs. Small businesses need expertise at all levels, and we give it to them. They use the whole panoply of our services—including help from our agricultural economists, packaging experts, processing people, you name it. The big firms use our services to help them with product formulation, which often involves making a quality product with least-cost ingredients,” Mikel said.

Mikel said that the incubator project embodies the land-grant university philosophy to a T.
“We provide the research and development to the little guys so they can compete with the big guys. And we are affordable,” he said.

So far, the services of the incubator remain free to all who ask for help, although Mikel said that the incubator has benefitted from grateful clients. “We started this with a $150,000 pot of seed money that Dr. Scott Smith provided (he was then associate dean for research; he’s now dean of the College). From there, clients have been very generous and we hope that remains the case so we can grow and become bigger and better. Clients who’ve used our services have donated a great deal of expensive equipment to help us improve our services,” he said.

The incubator program recently became one of the first projects in the state to be awarded a $75,000 grant through the Kentucky Innovation Act of 2000, which is designed to help Kentucky businesses create marketable products from cutting-edge research. The grant will be used to assist local processors and entrepreneurs in developing innovative food products.

The Taste of Success
Mikel is enthusiastic about the entire program, which not only helps Kentucky farmers and consumers, but helps students in the food sciences program have real-life experience in food technology as undergraduates. And that can help them when they seek employment upon graduation.

“The experiences the students have prepare them very well to take on responsibilities in industry upon graduation. They know firsthand how things operate,” Mikel said.

The accomplishments of the program for Kentucky food processors and farmers are impressive. Several new products already in the marketplace or close to being in the marketplace, include:

Fried Green Tomatoes—Most Southerners relish fried green tomatoes, but enjoying them is still a late summer treat for home gardeners. This project links a tomato producer, who produces both field and hothouse tomatoes, with a major food restaurant chain that features Southern cuisine.

The Value-Added Food Processing Incubator has worked with the grower to bread and freeze the green tomatoes for wholesaling to restaurant chains that feature comfort food cuisine. Three coating formulations—traditional, hot and spicy, and cornmeal—have been tested at a restaurant. The outcome is that hot and spicy appeals to younger diners, while the other two coatings appeal to middle age and older diners. If the small entrepreneur can secure capital, entrance into the market is expected within the next year.

Ham Jerky— A small Kentucky pork producer, Foothills Country Meats in Monticello, wanted to increase the value of pork hams. Working with the incubator program, the experts suggested ham jerky, a dried meat product that has long shelf life and a market niche.

Natural Connection—The college’s Food Science program continues to work with businesses like SMG Inc., which recently purchased Fischer Packing Company in Louisville. At left is Troy Wilkerson, (UK class of ‘85, animal sciences), now SMG’s vice president for food safety, who worked with faculty members Benjy Mikel and Melissa Newman before they traveled to Field Packing (also an SMG company) in Owensboro to review its food safety plan. Through its incubator project, the Food Science program also helped Fischer improve its natural casing bratwurst.


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• Food manufacturing is one of the state’s largest manufacturing sub-sectors.
• Food manufacturing accounts for more than 37,000 jobs in Kentucky, with a payroll in excess of $11 billion annually.
• Because of Kentucky’s geographic location (within a day’s drive of a substantial portion of the nation’s consumers) the state’s industry has the potential to grow rapidly.
• The College of Agriculture’s Food Science program, a four-year B.S. degree program, educates students for positions in the value-added food manufacturing industry. n Starting salaries for last year’s crop of graduates were in the $39,000 range, with hiring demand exceeding the supply.
  

Taking Care of a Sticky Problem

Blend Pak, a dry blending and packaging plant in Bloomfield, Kentucky, needed help with a sticky situation. Its breading mixture, used by a meat packer to coat pork fritters sold at fast food restaurants, wasn’t sticking to some of the meat fritters (which are made from whole pork loins). It stuck fast on some, but on others the breading fell off before cooking.

The incubator faculty tackled the problem by first finding out why the breading only stuck to some pork loin fritters. They found that the pH of the meats the meat processor used was quite variable, which accounted for why the breading did the job well for some, but not others.

“We worked with the pork fritter processing company, so they started using better quality pork loins, which had a more consistent pH. In addition, we took the advice from the value-added incubator faculty and modified our coating recipe to include a soybean product that would increase the breading’s adhesiveness,” said Dan Sutherland, owner and chief executive officer of the 25-employeefirm.

“We will continue to depend on UK’s incubator to help us with cutting-edge science research in the future. UK’s expertise is just what small food processing firms like ours need to grow,” Sutherland said.

Putting the Snap Back into Bratwurst

Bratwurst aficionados who remember the old-style brats love the newest addition to the Fischer Meats line of delicatessen products: natural casing brats.

Until the middle of the 20th century, brats were made with natural casing (gut) surrounding the ground pork—spiced with ingredients such as ginger, nutmeg, and coriander—that constituted the middle of the sausage.
With modern technology—and an industry dominated by large corporations that could out-compete smaller firms through speed and efficiency—the natural gut casing became largely a historical culinary curiosity replaced by synthetic casing.

But many fans of brats believed that the synthetic casing caused the brats to lose their snap when they bit into the sausages.

When the Fischer Meats marketing department saw a market niche for a natural casing bratwurst, it needed help.
Garry Bork, director of technical services for Fischer Packing in Louisville, asked Benjy Mikel if the Value-Added Food Processing Incubator could help “redevelop” the natural casing bratwurst to bring back the snap and flavor.
“At the incubator, we ground and spiced the pork and stuffed the natural casings with the mixture. Benjy brought meat sciences students to help and observe. After we had the uncooked brats stuffed, we used the ‘smokehouse’ in the facility to cook the brats,” Bork said.

Because the natural casings add a distinctive flavor to the brats, the spice mixture was blended in differentcombinations. Brats from the different combinations of spices were taste tested to find the right combinations for consumers, he said.

“As a result of the incubator’s expertise, we now have a natural casing bratwurst product the meets consumer expectations. We most likely will use the expertise of the facility when our sales department suggests we add another product to our delicatessen line,” Bork said.
Fischer’s natural casing product can be purchased at major grocery stores throughout Kentucky, Ohio, Tennessee, and West Virginia.

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