Services
Recipe Development
The difference between a home food recipe and a commercial recipe?
- Home Recipe: Typically designed for small batches and based on serving a small group of people.
- Commercial Recipe: Developed for large-scale production, such as in restaurants, food factories, or mass food distribution. It’s designed to produce large quantities quickly, efficiently, and consistently.
- Home Recipe: Ingredients are usually sourced from local grocery stores or markets. They tend to be fresh, often with a focus on seasonality or availability.
- Commercial Recipe: Ingredients are often sourced in bulk and may include specialized, standardized items (e.g., pre-cut vegetables, commercial sauces, or bulk spices). These are sourced to maintain uniformity and cost-efficiency at scale.
- Home Recipe: More flexible. Home cooks may adjust ingredients based on taste, availability, or dietary restrictions. Substitutions are more common.
- Commercial Recipe: Highly standardized to maintain consistency in taste, texture, and appearance across every batch. Changes are rare unless a recipe is being reformulated for a new product launch or improvement.
- Home Recipe: There is typically room for variation. Home cooks may make eyeball measurements or adjust based on personal taste or experience.
- Commercial Recipe: Precision and consistency are paramount. Recipes often require exact measurements, cooking times, and processes to ensure every unit (whether it's a meal in a restaurant or a packaged product) meets the same standard every time.
- Home Recipe: Relies on home kitchen tools like standard ovens, stovetops, mixers, etc. Cooking methods may vary based on the cook's skill level and kitchen equipment.
- Commercial Recipe: Uses industrial-sized equipment like large mixers, industrial ovens, deep fryers, and conveyor belts for continuous production. Commercial kitchens also employ specialized techniques for efficiency, such as sous-vide or high-speed cooking.
- Home recipes: Recipes typically don't require nutrition labeling or compliance with food safety regulations unless being sold.
- Commercial Recipe: Must adhere to strict nutritional, safety, and regulatory guidelines. These may include nutritional labeling, ingredient disclosures, allergen warnings, and ensuring the food meets health standards for mass consumption.
A process authority: Who are they and what do they do?
Process Authority is an individual or group with expert knowledge of food science, microbiology, and processing methods who is authorized to determine whether a food product's process ensures it is safe for consumption and meets regulatory requirements (e.g., from the FDA or USDA).
Key Roles are evaluating product safety. Establishing and validating processing parameters to ensure product safety. Helping food processors comply with food safety regulations such as low acid food and acidified food regulations. Helping food producers register their processes and facilities with the appropriate regulatory body.
Process Authorities are typically a food scientist, microbiologist, or processing engineer that has expertise in thermal processing and food safety.
Process Authorities are needed when producing an acidified food or low acid canned food. When selling shelf stable products. When launching a new product that uses a recipe that has not previously been reviewed and approved for commercial use.
Recipe Conversion
- Scaling up or down to change the batch size of the recipe.
- Changing units of Measure such as going from cups of flour to grams of flour.
- Converting home recipes into a commercial recipe.
- Help determine cost, sell price and labeling.
Product Testing
Measures how acidic or basic a solution is. In shelf-stable or canned food it is essential in food safety as it helps prevent botulism. The pH scale ranges from 0 to 14 with 0 being most acidic and 14 being most basic and 7 being neutral. Examples are vinegar (acidic), pure water (neutral) and baking soda (basic). pH plays a pivotal role in taste, texture, safety and shelf life.
Measures the availability of water in food products. This indicates the amount of water that is free to be used by microbes. Water activity plays a significant role in food spoilage. Bacteria, yeast and molds all need water activity levels of .60 and greater to survive. With Bacteria needing a water activity of .91 or greater. By maintaining a water activity below the minimum required for a target organism spoilage can be controlled.
Testing that helps ensure food products meet safety, quality and customer standards. This helps maintain consistency in taste, appearance and texture. Quality testing also helps maintain food safety and reduce waste. Types of quality testing are pH, water activity, taste, texture, foreign material, color and texture. The types of testing are endless. They can be conducted at receiving, in-process, packaging and after being in storage for a while.
Technical Assistance
A food safety plan is a written document that helps a food manufacturer identify food safety hazards and control measures that are meant to reduce or eliminate those identified hazards. The food safety plan is essential to maintaining compliance with governmental regulations. This is very useful even if the manufacturer is not required to implement and maintain such a plan.
The allergen control plan is part of a comprehensive food safety plan and is designed to identify and manage food allergen risks associated with the products being manufactured. It is designed to address production controls to prevent allergen cross contact between products, product labeling, sanitation methods and training.
A product recall plan is part of a comprehensive food safety plan that is designed to map out the response a food company is to take when their product needs to be removed from the market. It will facilitate the quick identification and location of the product in question as well as set up predetermined actions to take for product disposal. The importance of the product recall plan is to maintain regulatory compliance and protect the consumer.
Current Good Manufacturing Practices are minimum standards that food manufacturers must follow to ensure safer and wholesome products are being produced. cGMPs cover hygiene, facility management, sanitation, operational procedures, maintenance, and storage. cGMPs are the skeletal structure that supports the food safety plan.
Team member training is the process of education staff on how to handle, prepare and store food products to prevent foodborne illness. Training should include cross contamination, cross contact prevention, how important personal hygiene and sanitation are to providing a safe and wholesome product to the customer and what is necessary to produce the products.
Documenting the critical steps in the production process to ensure Food safety, quality, traceability and regulatory compliance if applicable. Maintaining an accurately organized recordkeeping system is essential for meeting regulatory requirements, food safety and improving product quality. Types of records to maintain are batch records, training records, temperature records, sanitation records and maintenance records. This is not an exhaustive list there are many others that can be maintained.