What you're missing in R&D
The Business of Food
by Jennifer Barney
What you're missing in R&D
3-min read
, I highlighted Vitals Farm’s new Egg Bites as an example of an innovation play in a category. I said it is a great example of packaging innovation. And it is. But why this packaging is totally unique, and how it even works to begin with, has nothing to do with the packaging itself and everything to do with process engineering.
The popularity of sous vide egg bites, born by Starbucks, was the impetus to Vital Farm’s Egg Bites – which are not sous vide at all but baked inside these special microwaveable trays for reheating later at home. This had never been done successfully with eggs because as it turns out, it requires modified atmosphere packaging and special equipment to run on. None of this was known to the marketing team at Vital Farms. They just knew they had a cool concept they wanted to bring to market.
It would’ve never happened if it wasn’t for Jeff Greenberg at The Kitchen Coop, the co-man that makes Vital Farm’s Egg Bites. Vital Farms came to Jeff with the concept, and Jeff adapted a packaging concept from a product they had made before and took on the role of process engineer himself to fit the two together.
When you’re thinking “I’m going to shop this around to some co-packers” or “I need to buy some bigger equipment” and you’re only focused on size of production and inventory, you should also be planning for process.
What is process engineering and do I need it?
Process engineering is the third child of R&D that no one pays enough attention to.
When you think of R&D you usually think of recipe or formula development. Then you think of packaging. Process engineering is the part that happens when you move to full scale production and it happens regardless of if you plan for it or not.
Process engineering involves developing a method of production so that every time your products are run, they turn out consistently, and as expected. It involves creating or adapting an SOP (standard operating procedure) and testing each step before committing to a full run.
With Egg Bites, Vital Farms could have been stuck with a packaging solution that was not as efficient to produce and not as sustainable had they not found the right manufacturing partner in The Kitchen Coop with the right expertise and methodology to work out the process.
You and your manufacturer should sit down with the SOP and go over each step, even if it seems basic.
I learned this the hard way when making packets of almond butter. Prior to moving into our own production facility, I needed to have packets produced at a new place. I had a spec, I was providing the bulk input, and I had the packaging – what else could I need? I visited the place and got onboarded, but we never went over the process and I never asked (and they didn’t offer) to do a test run. Only after they ran the full production and ended up with super low yield did I discover they did it in a way I never anticipated, blowing up my unit economics on the whole batch.
Often startups skip this step due to lack of time and money (or in my case, not realizing this was a step at all). But if you don’t budget upfront, you’ll pay for it on the back end, and typically for startups, the added cost ends up on the P&L as part of the unit costs. This shouldn’t be.
As part of this series I’ll be diving into how to budget for R&D for optimal unit economics on your P&L.
All my best,
Jennifer
OK Millennials, one more thing you didn’t invent
One innovation GEMCO offered — found nowhere else at the time — was the storing and delivery of already purchased groceries when the member was finished shopping the rest of the store.
Gopuff is planning to open what's essentially a modified dark store. In-store shoppers will use digital terminals to order goods. Workers then pick those orders from a product storage area that also services online orders, and bring them out to the customer.
I'd love to hear from you - get in touch at jennifer@3rdandbroadway.com