ARTICLES
TAKING STOCK Fifty-three new product launches ago, we set ourselves the ambitious goal of creating, developing and launching fifty new products during 2025. A normal year might be four or five, so doing ten times this amount seemed a bit of a stretch and gave a rise to a few eyebrows around the place. However, here we are with the year not three-quarters done and our fifty-fourth product shortly to be launched.Did we create the fifty we planned? No, not entirely – some went bang during development, others tasted a little wacky or plain nasty, and others arrived on a whim, inspired by some passing event or happenstance comment.Will all that we’ve launched survive? Again, no, not entirely – some are ahead of the curve by a little too much, and some might be well behind it. Like a surfer trying to catch the perfect break – you paddle like fury, hurl yourself down the face of the wave and hope it picks you up and brings you back to shore. The wave doesn’t always behave as you expect, and you don’t always catch it just right, so you either take a face plant into the water or the wave moves silently beneath you, and you have to watch it roll away shoreward as you wallow in its wake.Either way, you don’t stand a chance of catching a wave if you’re not even in the water, so you can’t launch a new product without diving in, getting a bit wet, trying a few things and seeing what happens.Developing and launching so many products has kept us rather damp for most of the time so far this year. For us, the most fun is doing things that haven’t been done before in quite the same way we are attempting: developing a recipe with great tasting individualingredients that we blend, mix, cook, stir, tweak, taste and, finally, pack into a jar before seeing how long it will last before it either explodes or gently improves with age and is cleared for launch. Meanwhile, while we’re patiently waiting to see if the ingredients get along with each other or decide to create a messy Armageddon, we set to and get the bones of the label design down.Our labels are pretty simple on the face of it – some words, some fonts, a colour or two and that’s about it. The science behind it all is interesting on a number of levels – what do we call this new ‘thing’? Does a name really make that much difference? How about Twix? You know what it is, right? Twix is so well known as a name that we all accept it, but it is in no way descriptive of what it actually is.Do you think Twix would be so successful if they had to write its True Name on the front instead of Twix? And, so that you know, the True Name is: ‘Milk chocolate (35%) covered caramel (32%) and biscuit (26%)’. Mmmm. Sexy. Names really do make a difference.My own favourite olive is our Moorish recipe – Kalamata olives with cumin, coriander and cardamom – a recipe given to us in late October 1992 by Abu Faisal, a Bedouin Chief in Maskane, Syria. Anyone can replicate the recipe, but no one else can call it Moorish with anywhere near the same provenance and authenticity.What about the font and colour? Again, more science than you might expect are behind both aspects and, between you and me, we are a bit nerdy here. Fonts are very particular and peculiar things and make you react quite differently to the shape of words and how they make you feel. There is one font scientist who is so adept at this that she is able to make food taste differently depending on the typeface and how it looks – really.Colour, too, has an effect – historically, blue was always avoided on food labelling (unless the product was fish) but that sacred cow has long since been sacrificed and now appears across all manner of beefy delights from biltong to corned beef and all points in between.The essence of this is this: there is a lot of experimentation with recipes to get a product onto a shelf with masses of real science around the detailed toxicology and microbiology of the individual component ingredients and how they will react to one another once in a pack or jar. This is followed and supported by the design of the overall product – it’s look, touch and style and how it will make you feel when you see it and form the words on it in your mouth and head as you decide whether you want to pick it up and read it and, if all the gods align, put it your basket and take it home.You might think that after all this creating, developing, tweaking, tasting and designing that we might rest up a tad and carefully consider how each of our launches is performing and conduct endless studies and focus groups but no. That really is not our way. Focus groups are all very well, but they only offer opinions, and opinions are pretty much like noses. Everyone has one. And I cleaned that analogy up. Instead, we’re still creating and developing a raft of new products which we’ll carry on unleashing as and when they’re ready for a wider audience. So, as September plays out and the nights begin to draw in, the first fires will be lit and if you listen really hard, you might just hear the rustle and plop of ingredients hitting a bowl and being gently introduced to one another. Or you might hear a loud bang. Either way, we’re always working on something.
