June 10, 2024 • 47 mins
The rise of GLP-1 drugs, like Ozempic, is a potentially existential threat to the makers of salty, sugary, high-calorie snack foods. But it's obvious that the gigantic food industry will search out ways to adapt. So what types of new products will they sell? How will they be flavored? How will they be packaged and marketed? On this episode of the podcast, we speak with Barb Stuckey. She is the chief innovation and marketing officer at Mattson, a San Francisco Bay Area company that helps food producers find the next big flavor. Her team recently undertook a big study of Ozempic users to get a better understanding of how it changed their diets. She speaks to us about what they learned, what new types of products are in development, and how food manufacturers find the next big thing.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, Radio News.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Hello and welcome to another episode of the Odd Blocks podcast.
Speaker 3 (00:24):
I'm Joe whysn't Thal and I'm Tracy Alloway.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Tracy, we like to talk about snacks and drinks and
stuff on the show, and you know, it's kind of
just how that we're interested, But I actually think that,
like there's like a deeper fundamental reason by why we
keep coming around to this topic.
Speaker 3 (00:39):
Wait, it's not just because we like snacks.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
I mean, that is the deep, deep, deep reason. But
the other reason is, Ah, I kind of think I've
been thinking about this lately that like the proliferation of
different types of snack foods and beverages and energy drinks
which multiply like crazy and store aisles. It's like the
ultimate story of like capitalist success and like the consumer
(01:02):
economy that we just keep getting this like endless permutations
of like great flavors in different ways to consume these flavors.
It's like the pinnacle of the consumption economy.
Speaker 3 (01:15):
Okay, Well, I would say, I guess capitalism, Well, capitalism
has to have some upsides, and I guess a loaded
flavored Cheetos are one of them. That's fair I do
think what's interesting to me about this moment in snacks
is there seems to be sort of two things going on,
(01:35):
like two mega trends, the very early beginnings of two
mega trends. So one is the idea of what's going
to happen to snack food in a GLP one fueled world.
And we touched on this a little bit last year
when we spoke to James van Kielin and he was
talking about his ozembic and GLP one investment thesis. And
(01:58):
I really like speaking to him because it wasn't just
like all the companies that are making these drugs are
going to see their share prices absolutely surge. It was
also there are going to be these second order knock
on effects on some consumer companies. And you could see
that playing out a little bit last year. You can
certainly see it playing out now. I think almost every major,
(02:22):
you know, food and beverage company that reported in the
most recent quarter had AGLP one or ozembic related question.
And then I guess the other mega trend is just
this idea of companies having to become more and more
creative to also drive consumption. So you have to have
more flavors in order to grow your market share, to
(02:43):
keep people engaged and interested and posting pictures of your
food on TikTok or Instagram.
Speaker 2 (02:49):
Or whatever totally, and you just see this play out.
I don't know. This is why I go back, you know,
I think about those sort of famous or infamous and
maybe apocryphal things where it's like some Soviet leader came
to the US, it's a grocery store. It's like, Okay,
capitalism is the answer. Maybe there was something, but it
really does feel like we're sort of at this moment
where these maybe almost two mega trends are in competition
(03:12):
with each other, right because there is this seemingly race
to provide more flavor and more variety and more versions
and special versions and stuff like that, and then the
sort of looming threat to the sort of traditional way
of doing business from the GLP ones Lego Zembic. So
there is never too much snack food and there's never
too much conversation about snack food.
Speaker 3 (03:33):
Well, the other thing that I just remembered, I totally
agree you can never have enough snack food. But the
other thing was the conversation we had with Ryan Harlan
where he was talking about the technology that's now going
into producing these snack foods, and also AI nowadays. So
this idea that you can basically model a virtual manufacturing
line for a new flavor, you can use AI maybe
(03:55):
to come up with new flavors. So it seems like
all of foods is getting more sophisticated. And some of
it is, of course in response to good old fashioned
consumer demand give the customer what they want. But part
of it, also, I have to think, might be in
response to competition from GLP one and ozepic and the
(04:16):
idea that well, if we're going to eat less food overall,
then maybe the way to keep customers is to make
sure that food is really really interesting.
Speaker 2 (04:25):
Yeah good, I'm glad you brought up the Ryan Harlan
episode because right that was about the sort of supply
side innovations that allow companies like say A for you
Delay to try more limited run lines and move things
faster and get a you know, you have a theoretical
test flavor, you can make a chip faster anyway. So
that raises the question where does the flavor come in
(04:46):
the first place. When there is a new chili lime
or a new Durian flavored.
Speaker 3 (04:52):
Sto, are we going to Flavortown?
Speaker 2 (04:54):
We're going to say we're going to We're going to
flavor Toown. I hadn't thought we're not. Who's the chef
that we're not talking to that chef? Well, we do
have the perfect guest because it's someone who is in
the business of great flavors. We're going to be speaking
with Barb Stucky. She's the chief innovation and marketing officer
at Madsen, which is a Silicon Valley based food and
(05:14):
beverage innovation company. She has written a lot about what
makes great flavors, and she has studied a lot about
this moment in flavor history. So, Barb, thank you so
much for coming on outlaws.
Speaker 4 (05:27):
Well, thank you for having me.
Speaker 2 (05:29):
What do you do the chief innovation and marketing officer
at Madson? What do you do in the flavor world?
Speaker 4 (05:37):
Oh? What don't we do in the big flavor world?
So the company's been around for about forty seven years,
and over the course of those decades, we have worked
in pretty much every food and beverage category that exists,
with the exception maybe a beer okay, but we work
on everything from baby food to alcoholic beverages to frozen
(06:00):
trace to confections, to dietary supplements. And we also do
work in the restaurant channel, so we work mainly for
national and global restaurant chains, but we help them identify
new menu categories and new menu items. So we are
really all over one hundred percent share of stomach is
(06:22):
how we like to sit.
Speaker 2 (06:23):
I like stomach share. I've never heard that. I've never
heard that one before, but that makes sense.
Speaker 3 (06:29):
So one thing I was wondering is the basic premise
of this conversation. I mentioned gop one drugs earlier, and
this is something that has come up in various forms
on the podcast and also on various earnings calls. As
I mentioned, Is this something that's on your radar as
a chief innovation officer in the food industry.
Speaker 4 (06:51):
Yes, absolutely, it's very much on our radar, and I'll
tell you how this happened. So you know, we work
in food and beverage. We are not in the pharmaceutical
and so we started getting some questions from our clients,
who ranged from some of the largest global CpG companies
to small founder funded startups, and they were asking questions
(07:15):
about these new drugs and what's going to happen and
should I be worried about this? And this was about
middle of twenty twenty three. So in the fourth quarter
of twenty twenty three, we decided that, because of our
position in the industry where we do work across companies
and we work across categories, that we were going to
(07:37):
educate ourselves and we were going to make ourselves as
smart as we can about this topic, and we were
going to then put forth the learnings that we gained
and share them with the industry. So we just did
that in a webinar format. It works like this, so
we handled it as we would do a client project.
So we started reading secondary resets that was out there.
(08:01):
There was a great report from Morgan Stanley that enabled
some of our learnings. And then we have a consumer
panel at Matson, So these are just consumers who have
been willing to give us their feedback on new ideas
and products, and we surveyed the panel to see if
(08:21):
anyone in our panel was on ozembic or some of
the other medicines we call them aom's anti obesity medications,
and we found out that there was about one hundred
and twenty five people who were either on the drugs
or had been on the drugs. So all of a sudden,
now we've got a patient population that we can talk
(08:42):
to to understand more. So we started doing that. We
put a survey in front of those consumers and got
to learn a little bit about what they were experiencing
and how things were changing for them. We also talked
to medical practitioners, so we talked to doctors, we talked
to practitioners, we talked to people who were prescribing the AOMs.
(09:05):
And then we did a lot of work with our
proprietary AI models to talk to AI personas to see
what was what was resonating with them, and that was
super interesting as well. And then the last thing we did,
which I can tell you more about, is we created
(09:26):
some new food and beverage concepts, some new ideas. They
ranged from beverages to snacks to meals, and we tested
those ideas with our patient panel of humans. I should
say we did test them with humans, not our AI,
which we can do, but we didn't do. So we
(09:47):
have so much data, so much to share.
Speaker 2 (09:49):
So let's start with some of that before we get
to the new concepts. What did the one hundred or
so people in your panel who are on the AOMs
tell you about their experience and how changed their relationship
with food and beverages.
Speaker 4 (10:03):
Yeah, it's a great question. And just to clarify, our
sample size ended up being about seventy five Okay, so
seventy five those patients, so some of them dropped off.
But what we heard from patients is that most of them,
the vast majority of them, were extremely satisfied or positive
with their experience on the drugs. And this is interesting
(10:27):
because many of them reported having side effects. It just
goes to show that it's so hard to lose weight
through typical strategies, you know, a combination of diet and exercise.
Some of our panelists had even had previous weight loss
surgery for example, but other interventions. And they were also
(10:50):
just really pleased with these drugs as giving them success
that they were unable to have or unable to sustain
using other methods. So that was really interesting to us.
So it does seem that these things are these drugs
are working incredibly wealth for people, not everyone. A lot
(11:11):
of the side effects are continual and a small number
of people do have them, but you know, they can
be really unpleasant in terms of GI. And one of
the ways that these drugs work is that it's hormonal.
But they also happened to slow your your gastric emptying,
(11:33):
meaning the food stays in your stomach longer and so
you feel full longer, which also happens when you have
weight loss surgery, your stomach is actually reduced in size,
but with these drugs, it's not reduced in size, but
it feels that way because the food stays in there longer,
and so people really really cannot overeat. They told us
(11:58):
really horrific story of overeating and getting sick because it
was just nauseating. Also, there are problems at the other
end of the GI track two. A lot of people
reported constipation or diarrhea other things like that. So these
are not without their challenges and not without their side effects.
(12:19):
But for the vast majority of people, they were extremely
happy and we're losing significant amounts of weight. The other
thing is that we did notice in our survey that
a lot of people were having some pretty significant changes
in their food and beverage behavior, and that was ultimately
our goal for this study.
Speaker 3 (12:41):
So what did you see in terms of food preference?
Because when I go on a diet and I restrict calories,
I usually end up this is terrible, this is not
how you should diet. But I usually end up replacing
healthy meals with like Oreo cookies, and I just eat
like three Oreo cookies instead of having a larger meal.
Does that hold out for ozembic people as well, or
(13:03):
people who are on ozembic and the other AOMs. Do
they still eat junk food just maybe less of it,
or do we see a change in their food preferences.
Speaker 4 (13:13):
You know, it definitely depends on the person. But more
people than not did say that all of a sudden
they were not craving things like sugary sodas or salty
snacks or animal proteins. So, especially for some reason, beef,
(13:34):
people were really turned off by the idea of beef,
and so they were instead sort of veering in the
direction of fruits and vegetables, things that were lighter in
flavor and lighter on the stomach. So you know, they
were really trying to satisfy those cravings. We even we
(13:55):
did some one on one video interviews, and I remember
distinctly this one went talking about how, you know, I
used to crave chips and now I crave cucumbers and parrots,
and she said the flavor of a crisp cucumber is
just so tantalizing, And I'm thinking to myself, while tantalizing cucumber,
(14:19):
I mean, that is a significant change in cravings and
you know, and the resulting caloric intake. So it does
seem to be doing something akin to teaching people how
to eat healthy, which is crazy that a drug can
do this, but it's that seems to be the case
(14:41):
with a lot of people.
Speaker 2 (14:42):
It's pretty incredible. But it also has an interesting implication
because I think like sort of one cynical expectation is that, Okay,
people don't want to eat salty chips as much anymore,
so then the food industry is going to respond by, oh, well,
we're just going to put even more salt in the
chips and will make it even more tantalizing and it'll
(15:03):
make it even harder for people to resist. But it
sounds like from your research that that will just make
the end products even more repellent to people.
Speaker 4 (15:13):
I think you're absolutely right. Yes, we heard people really
really just turning their nose up at certain foods that
they used to love and it's really odd, but I
do think that's what would happen. So, you know, a
lot of them were they were cutting from their diet
in the neighborhood of a thousand calories a day, Well,
(15:38):
that's crazy, Like for most people, that's half of the calories,
are a third of the calories that you're consuming. So
you know, that results in you having to make decisions
about what is going to be my calorie consumption based
on the fact that it is so much less. I'm
(15:59):
really to make those calories count. And so you know,
that just gets at the fact that you know, I
think you said at the beginning, like people want interesting food,
people want delicious food, in the case of the folks
that we heard from, just a lot less of it.
Speaker 3 (16:18):
Well, where does that leave, say a potato chip maker,
because it seems like if people aren't craving salty food anymore,
it seems unlikely that a maker of potato chips is
going to suddenly substitute their offerings with something like cucumbers.
Speaker 4 (16:37):
Absolutely, you're totally right. I cannot imagine that happening. Of course,
it takes a different distribution channel and different buyers in
the grocery store and yeah, that's not going to happen.
But what you know, we're in the innovation business, and
so what you could see potentially happening is that these
makers of chips, for example, what would create portion sizes
(16:58):
that are much smaller. Perhaps instead of increasing the sodium,
they reduce the sodium. Perhaps they do chips that have
some vegetables blended into their tortilla chip dough something like that,
to give it a little bit more fiber, to help
with the gi stuff, to give it a little more
(17:20):
nutrient density. So, you know, this could be an opportunity
for the food and beverage industry to really reset things
and reset expectations. You know, if you think back to
the size of a snack bag thirty years ago, or
the size of a hamburger thirty years ago, or the
size of a bagel, you know, they were all so
(17:41):
much smaller. So this is an opportunity for us to
go back to those sizes as expectations and really help
the entire country eat better. I don't know if that's
going to happen. Maybe it's a little pie in the sky,
but these are the kinds of things we were trying
to educate the end a story about because there are
(18:01):
some new opportunities.
Speaker 2 (18:19):
So you mentioned coming up with some new food concepts
or flavor concepts and actually serving them to your non
AI panelists. What are you cooking up there and what
resonated with people?
Speaker 4 (18:33):
Okay, well, I have twenty two products that we came
up with and tested. Not all of them scored well.
For example, the one that we created that was about
trying to tame nausea with ginger. That one bomb bomb Okay,
totally good.
Speaker 2 (18:54):
To bomb early before a nationwide launch, I guess.
Speaker 4 (18:57):
So, yeah, yes, that is so true that that's why
we do these kinds of us. Yeah. So essentially what
we were doing is writing these concepts for the AOM user.
So one of the top score it, we'll give you
two or three of the top scoring ideas. So one
of them was a brownie cube. So this idea was
ready to eat brownie. It's about the size of a nickel,
(19:22):
but in cube shape, and it's baked with extra protein added.
It's got a little bit of fiber in it from
the cocoa, and it's basically kind of a one byte indulgence.
And that really resonated. I think again, because when your
gastric emptying thing is slowing down. You really just don't
(19:43):
have room to eat a whole brownie.
Speaker 3 (19:45):
I suppose a nickel sized or byte sized brownie kind
of preserves customer choice in some ways. So if you're
on an AOM of some sort and you're not that hungry,
you can have one byte of the brownie. But if
you are not on AOMs and you are very hungry,
you can, you can. You'll probably just eat like a
(20:06):
bag full of them, right.
Speaker 4 (20:08):
Well, yes, And you know what that brings up a
really important point, which was that all the things that
rose to the top of our test were things that
the whole family could enjoy, and that was an important
criteria for the you know, mostly women, it's mostly women
on these because they didn't want to buy things and
bring them into the hot household that would just for
them that their kids wouldn't eat, their husband wouldn't eat,
(20:31):
their partners wouldn't eat. So we saw other things like
these chicken strips that are grilled chicken breast that are
cut into strips and then individually wrapped, and so you
could imagine, you know, you're trying to get your protein,
but you don't want to eat a whole chicken breast
because that's just way too much. So that was our
(20:52):
number two scoring concept, and it just makes so much
sense because if you can't eat a whole chicken breask,
you really probably don't want to cook one and then
cut it up yourself. So this was a refrigerated product
that you could you could take it out of the
refrigerator and snack on it cold, or heat it up
and put it in a tortilla. So things like that,
(21:12):
you know, those represent some different format options, different packaging options,
portion sizes, and then you know, we have a whole
other list of stuff that seem to resonate some more
than others.
Speaker 2 (21:27):
So it sounds like a lot of the innovation that
you've worked on or that we could see coming, as
you mentioned, sort of has to do with maybe foods
that we're familiar with, but that in rethinking the distribution,
and I have to say, I would snack on the
grilled chicken strip. I would be down for that, And
having like a big bag of those in my house,
that actually sounds like a I would snack on that.
(21:50):
You mentioned that the ginger infused foods sort of bombed.
Were there any breakthroughs in terms of flavors or somehow
recreating the sensation of a cucumber or a carrot, where
the breakthrough is not in the shape or distribution of
an existing thing, but in like some brand new type
of flavor that really worked on the ozompic users, the
(22:13):
AOM users.
Speaker 4 (22:15):
Yeah, you know, we tested a protein beverage. So this
was a line of clear beverages with protein added. And
that's that's a highly technical, very difficult challenge, having done
it myself, Yeah, that one is a high degree of difficulty,
(22:35):
let's just say that. But we tested this line of
three and I think one of our flavors was cucumber
or a cucumber line, and that actually resonated pretty well.
The idea being that if you think about protein drinks
on the market, they're usually chocolate, strawberry, really thick, they're
(22:56):
very satiating. And the idea of using the clear protein
in these lighter cucumber flavors and you know, other light
citrus flavors was that you would appeal to the more hydrating,
refreshing kind of experience but still get some protein. So yeah,
(23:18):
I think that that is actually something that would resonate
just because of the flavor because it's not chocolate or
you know, even though number one scoring product was was brownies.
So you said something else that made me think that
the most the best, the best scoring products really were
(23:39):
very familiar. And I think that that just gets a
consumer behavior around food, because we'd like to say consumers
want a foot in the familiar and taking one step
out of the familiar to do to buy something really
innovative is okay, but to take that second step out
(23:59):
of the familiar is really disorienting. And so you know,
if you're on a weight loss regimen and your body
is doing things differently, it makes sense that the familiar
stuff would score really well.
Speaker 3 (24:16):
Just building on this point, i'd love to hear from
you what the sort of evolution of a new food
product or flavor actually is like from start to finish.
Do people come up with ideas for completely brand, new,
foreign things and build them out from there or is
it more taking something that already exists and trying to
(24:40):
improve on it in some way? Could you maybe walk
us through that process.
Speaker 4 (24:44):
The answer is yes, all of the above. So we
have worked on things as novel as creating a roast
and ground coffee without coffee beans, and that product is
now in the market.
Speaker 3 (25:03):
And what's wade out of I have to ask.
Speaker 4 (25:08):
Well, you can buy it, and you know you can
look at the ingredient statement, so I guess I can
say it here. We actually tested well dozens and dozens
of upcycled ingredients that were basically products that were either
sent to animal feed or were really dis waste. So
(25:30):
think about things like seeds and pits and yeah, exactly exactly.
So where we ended up was date seeds. You know,
when you get a date unless you buy the pitted kind,
they have these seeds and so what we did was
we roasted the seeds, we ground them, we brewed them,
(25:54):
and then some other secret sauce that we can't talk about,
but turns out that they work in credibly well as
a replacement for coffee beans. So you know that I
have to give credit to the company A Tomo. I
want to give them a shout out. We just did
some very early proof of concept and development work for them,
(26:14):
but they have turned it into a business and it
is incredible. So that that's the kind of novel thing
that we might get an assignment to do. And then
you know, the other things that we're getting a lot
of these days is I want to do X, except
that I want to make it healthier, I want to
(26:35):
have more protein in it, I want to use clean
label ingredients. And so we're i would say, reinventing favorites
across a lot of categories. So you know, think things
like indulgent cookies or crackers, or desserts, or you know,
even meals where we're replacing a lot of the not
(26:59):
so good ingredients with just more kitchen type of familiar ingredients.
Speaker 2 (27:05):
So we talked about this on a previous episode about snacks,
and you know, some snack food trends come and go,
but some stick around. And so for example, you know
when I was a kid, you could get cool ranch chips.
You can still get cool ranch chips. A hot thing
these days is chili lime. Flavors seem to be everywhere.
You wrote a book called Taste, Surprising Stories and Science
(27:29):
about why food tastes good. So when I bring up
cool ranch or chili lime, what is it about some
of these flavors? What do they have in common that
you can say that's like, yes, these flavors stand the
test of time, and we'll be eating chili limes, chips
in twenty years, sitting aside people who are on ams
chili lime flavors, like, what do they have in common
(27:52):
when you look look at the code of a great flavor, Well, I.
Speaker 4 (27:55):
Would say two words. One is complexity, and there is layered.
So let's just we'll take cool ranch and pull that
apart and think about it from the basic tastes. And
human beings are only capable of experiencing five basic tastes
(28:17):
on their tongue, So there's sweet, sour, bitter, salt, and
new mommy, and then everything else that you get is
either a texture or an aroma. So the thing about
cool ranch or just ranch in general, is that it's
incredibly salty and savory. And those two things together, salty
(28:39):
and savory, and they kind of come together usually in nature.
When you combine them with the sourness of the butter
milk and the creaminess of the butter milk, you now
have a whole lot going on. You've got creamy, you've
got sour, you've got savory, you've got so and that
(29:01):
complexity and then the other things that are layered in
So now I'm talking about complexity and layering on top
of complexity, so things like garlic and onion, which are
also important elements to a really interesting ranch profile. So
you know that, I think that really makes up a
(29:23):
lot of those classic flavors. So if we do the
same thing for a chili line, most of the chili
lime seasonings like something like a taheen you're familiar with.
It's not just chili and lime, but it's chili, lime
and salt, and so you know, again, let's go back
and sort of break it apart. So you've got the salt,
(29:45):
which is one of the basic tastes, and you've got
the chili, which is actually a texture that that heat.
But the slight heat that you get is working on
the same nerve that detec pain, so that is a texture.
So you're getting pain from the chili, you're getting salt
(30:07):
from the salt, and you're getting sour from the lime,
and that is a lot of complexity going on. Now
you also have to layer on that. There's some aroma
that sort of smoky maybe dusty aroma from the chilis,
and the lime has got its limy citrusness and those
(30:29):
are aromas. So those two flavors that you caught out.
There's a really really complex and they're very much layered,
and the way that you experience them happens over time.
Speaker 3 (30:57):
Joe, I'm so hungry.
Speaker 2 (30:59):
I know this, I need this right. I haven't eaten
yet either. Yeah, so now I'm going to devour my life.
Speaker 3 (31:04):
This is exactly what happened when we spoke with Ryan
Harlan as well. Okay, well, I'm curious what you think
makes a flavor or a food suddenly go viral. And
we've seen various examples of this in recent years. I think,
especially during the pandemic, everyone was stuck at home looking
maybe for new recipes to do, and you would see
(31:25):
something that looked really good on TikTok and so you
would try to do it. But is it about a
particularly innovative flavor or is it maybe you know, doing
something slightly new with food that you're already familiar with.
Speaker 4 (31:40):
I think it's probably both. I mean that example of
you know, sitting at home during the pandemic and looking
for new recipes, I think that is pitomized by the
Feta pasta phenomenon. And I'm sure if you if your
listeners were on TikTok or if anyone remembers the TikTok
(32:03):
Feda pasta was just this enormous phenomenon, and that was
in twenty twenty. If you fast forward. What's so fascinating
about that is that feta is now everywhere. If you
think about in twenty nineteen and before, feta pasta had
one roll and that was on a Greek salad and
(32:24):
that's where you would find feta and nowhere else in
the US. Nowadays, not only can you find feta everywhere,
but you can go to the frozen food section of
your grocery store and you can buy feta pasta that's
clearly just developed and positioned to mimic that recipe that
(32:45):
was done online. And then I guess the second answer
to that question is what was really unique about the
way that the I believe she was finished the Finnish
woman cooked that that she took a whole block of
feta and just put it in the plate and put
raw tomatoes in with it and threw it in the oven,
and it just it seemed very novel because you put
(33:07):
an entire block of cheese in and it seemed really easy.
And so you know, those two things in combination are
pretty powerful.
Speaker 2 (33:17):
How quickly can that happen. So you're at a consumer
package goods company and your marketing team, or maybe you
at Mattson or someone says, you know, what, Feta's going
viral and we need a feto play or whatever it
is these days, how quickly can you go from Feta
is viral to let's have a frozen Feta pasta bake
(33:40):
in the freezer aisle.
Speaker 4 (33:42):
Well, it's a good question, and it depends on a
lot of things, mainly the size of the company. I
would say that the smaller companies are a little more
nimble and they can move a little faster, so that
has something to do with it. The other thing that
makes it much easier to do is if you own
your own manufacturing. So for companies that have their own
(34:04):
manufacturing lines, they would be able to move much faster
than someone using a contract manufacturer. So there's a lot
of things that go into it. But I would say,
you know, for a large CpG, it could take anywhere
from six months to a year and a half, depending
on how complex it is and depending on how many
(34:27):
varieties you're launching and developing. And then you know, for
the small companies, there was there was a phenomenon on
TikTok for a while with pancake cereal. So somebody made
teeny little pancakes in a pan, threw them in a bowl,
poured milk over it, and was eating pancakes like cereal.
(34:47):
It's kind of a brilliant idea. And there was a
company called I think it's Belgian Boys, Belgian Boys, who
picked up on it right away.
Speaker 2 (34:55):
Oh yeah, I say, I just I did a search
for pancake cereal in the first The first one is
Belgian Boys bite Sized Pancake Cereal.
Speaker 4 (35:03):
Yeah, there you go. So those guys are brilliant because
they're already in the like the Belgian waffle kind of space,
and so they blew my mind. But how quickly they.
Speaker 2 (35:15):
Got that quickly, I don't know.
Speaker 4 (35:18):
We did not work on it, but I remember seeing
the thing on TikTok, and then maybe a couple of
months later, they were at a major industry conference demonstrating it,
you know, serving it. So that was pretty amazing.
Speaker 3 (35:32):
Who owns the intellectual copyright for something like, you know,
the feta pasta bake or bite sized pancakes, Because it
seems like you do see these things proliferate very quickly,
and eventually they become so big that no one can
really remember where they first came from. And then eventually
you have companies that sort of formalize them into actual products.
Speaker 4 (35:56):
Yeah, I think those are the ones that end up
owning and you know, air quotes owning the idea. It
is very hard, if not impossible, to patent a formula
or a recipe, so that almost never happens. So the
best thing that you can do is put a really
powerful brand on your product and make sure that your
(36:18):
brand is associated with that thing. The other thing that
you can do is you can trademark the name if
it's not too descriptive, and you can patent with what
is known as a manufacturing process, so you can get
a process patent. But in the food world, it's just
so easy for people to knock these things off. I
(36:40):
can tell you because we've done it before, so you
know it doesn't necessarily pay off to do that. The
best thing you can do is just really market it well,
make sure it tastes delicious, get lots of distribution, and
sell it for a fair price.
Speaker 3 (36:56):
Jo, there goes my idea of making money from a
corn rib grilled cheese sandwich dusted with fiery Cheetos.
Speaker 2 (37:05):
Yeah you could still if you had the right brand,
the odd lots brand and the distribution, maybe you could
do it. But yes, I agree, something bigger, all right.
So a company comes to your barb and they're like,
you know what, we need something new, we wanna we
need a breakthrough snack chili lime. It's fine, but it's
sort of getting mature whatever. Like I guess two questions
(37:27):
like how do you identify the next big thing? And
actually just what is the next big thing?
Speaker 4 (37:33):
Well, you have to be on it. You have to
be watching the next big thing everywhere and all the time.
So we look too higher end restaurants for inspiration. That's
where we get a lot of them. We also look
to TikTok. It's interesting that things are starting there and
(37:53):
not just food, but the way that you're making food.
The appliance is a using you know, there's a couple
of appliances that have really taken off on TikTok, like
the Ninja creamy that allows you to make high protein
ice cream. So that's something that we're using on our
(38:15):
trend lunch menu this year. So you really do have
to look everywhere and then what we have to our
advantage is that we are working with some forty to
fifty food and beverage companies every day, and in our
work for them, we're always doing consumer research. So we're
(38:35):
constantly talking to consumers about what they like, what they
don't like, what's resonating, what are they cooking at home,
what are they eating out, where are they shopping. So
we have a lot of institutionalized knowledge, and you know,
that is our ip and that's part of what we
bring to our clients. But it's a never ending search
(38:57):
for the next thing. If I had to say one
thing or one flavor right now, I would say that
tropical flavors are just on fire. And tropical can mean
everything from mango and pineapple to.
Speaker 2 (39:16):
Ube and everything, yeah and everything, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 4 (39:23):
So we're we're closely watching Southeast Asian flavors, so Filipino
flavors like kalamansi, which is a bitter citrus that comes
on the heels of yuzu, which is a Japanese kind
of lime citrus. So you have to go far and wide,
and it's it's really easy to do these days. I mean,
(39:46):
if you think about just opening TikTok. And you know
this is it's not a national audience of users, it's
a global audience of users. So you're seeing what people
are posting in Korea and elsewhere. That's the other thing
we're very bullish on is Korean food.
Speaker 2 (40:06):
So I just have one request speaking of Southeast Asian flavors,
and I'm seeing it more. But Pondon in particular is
one of my favorite flavors, and so is a is
a consumer. I just request please tell your clients to
create more Pondon infuse sweets because that is probably my
(40:26):
favorite flavor in the world. So I'm just passing down, passing.
Speaker 4 (40:30):
I will pass that along to all clients.
Speaker 2 (40:33):
Okay, thank you, Thank you very much, Barb Stucky. It
was so great chatting with you. Really appreciate you coming
on out block.
Speaker 4 (40:39):
Oh with my pleasure. It was super fun. Thank you
for having me.
Speaker 2 (40:42):
Yeah, thank you so much.
Speaker 3 (40:44):
Thanks so much, Barb. I gotta go eat something.
Speaker 2 (40:46):
Yeah, Tracy, I never heard of a klamansi before, but
it looks like a lime that looks like an orange
in side. It looks amazing. Have you ever had one
(41:06):
of these?
Speaker 3 (41:07):
I don't think I have. Hold on, I'm looking it up.
Speaker 2 (41:09):
Look at it. It looks like that. It looks like
the cover of like the Freakonomics book, where it's like
not the oh yeah, look at that. Doesn't they look good?
Speaker 3 (41:17):
That looks amazing. I don't think I have had that.
Speaker 4 (41:19):
No, I need.
Speaker 2 (41:20):
I definitely need to try a Kalamansi.
Speaker 3 (41:22):
Yeah, lots of ideas of foods to try. From that conversation,
I thought the ozembic study was absolutely fascinating because my
assumption had kind of been, well, if you're on ozempic
and you're just not that hungry anymore, that companies need
to try harder with like new and exotic flavors to
(41:42):
lure you in, which means more sugar, more salt maybe,
But per Barb's research, it seems like people don't want
to eat that kind of stuff anymore.
Speaker 2 (41:51):
No, it's interesting too that the innovation, it sounds like,
will be on preparation packaging in distribt.
Speaker 3 (42:00):
Yeah, and I think portion size.
Speaker 2 (42:02):
It sounds like so the idea of and the idea
also that the maybe packaging in such a way that
the person in the family who is on a GLP
one can just have one of them, but everyone else
can have more so you know, like a grilled, prepared
chicken strip. Yeah, I could see like grabbing one out
of the refrigerator and using that as a snack. But
(42:24):
also you could have, like you know, someone else could
grab five, or someone else could put a bunch on
a salad or something like that, or the sort of
sad sounding brownie cube.
Speaker 3 (42:36):
Really some of this does sound slightly dystopian to me,
so nicol sized brownie bites, and like coffee made out
of not coffee, although I can understand maybe why some
people don't want to drink coffee, you know. In terms
of individually wrapped chicken, this is something I remember they
have in Hong Kong. If you go into a seven
(42:58):
eleven or any of the meanings over there, they have
like plastic wrapped I think it must have been boiled
or roast chicken.
Speaker 2 (43:07):
I would eat that.
Speaker 3 (43:08):
You could just snack on. It never looks particularly appetizing
to be but it does exist.
Speaker 2 (43:13):
Yeah, I would definitely eat it somebody. It sounds very utilitarian.
It does seem like that maybe utilitarian is the way
to put it. Also, this idea that like already, if
someone is on one of these drugs, they're going to
be eating in a new way or whatever. And so
the idea of like keep some aspect of it that's
familiar was an interesting idea. So something that people are
familiar with, but maybe in a new way or a
(43:35):
new portion. Or she mentioned the idea of like a
clear protein drink instead of a gloppy like chocolate. One.
Really interesting stuff there.
Speaker 3 (43:44):
Yeah, And I was thinking just going back to the
original golp one discussion that we had with James Van Geln,
and he was talking about these second order effects. I mean,
it does seem like if you run a restaurant or
something in some respects you can start tailor your menu
to an increased proportion of the population that maybe doesn't
want to eat really salty or heavy or sweet foods.
(44:08):
But I have to think if you are a chip maker, yeah,
not that kind of chip maker, a potato chip maker,
or I don't know, someone who makes like soda or whatever.
There must be maybe not soda, because I guess you
could make a celsiest type energy drink that feels light
and invigorating. But certainly if you're a junk food maker,
(44:28):
this must be difficult for you, right, You are not
going to be able to push a button and suddenly
come up with a suite of healthy light options that
satisfy the new gl P one population totally.
Speaker 2 (44:42):
Like if you get a bunch of people going around
saying like I really am just craving a slice of
cution cor Yeah, which, for what it's worth, I've been there.
I've every once in a while just like a nicely
crispiece of cucumbers.
Speaker 3 (44:54):
Who stick of celery.
Speaker 2 (44:55):
Yeah it's not bad or like I you know, I
endorse that too, but it does not sound like a
great opportunity if you're like in the business of like
making ruffles or something like that.
Speaker 3 (45:04):
Well, the other thing I was thinking is I've seen
some negative commentary around food packagers stemming from the weight
loss drugs. So this idea that they're just not going
to sell as much food, and okay, yeah, perhaps on aggregate.
But on the other hand, it sounds like there might
be opportunities if you're getting smaller portions for more packaging
or more packaging for things like vegetable sticks or apple
(45:28):
slices or whatever. It sounds like maybe there's an opportunity there.
Speaker 2 (45:31):
Well, if nothing else, I feel like after this conversation,
I suspect we're going to start, you know, when we're
going to the grocery store, notice things or pay closer
attention to, like, oh, is this being portion sized or
is this package sized in a way that looks tailored
for someone on one of these drugs?
Speaker 4 (45:49):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (45:49):
Absolutely, all right, a new grocery shopping game.
Speaker 2 (45:53):
Yeah, I thing to look forward to.
Speaker 3 (45:54):
Shall we leave it there?
Speaker 2 (45:55):
Let's leave it there.
Speaker 3 (45:56):
This has been another episode of the Odd Thoughts podcast.
I'm Tree Alloway. You can follow me at Tracy Alloway and.
Speaker 2 (46:02):
I'm Joe Wisenthal. You can follow me at the Stalwart.
Follow our guest Barb Stucky. She's at Barb Stucky. Follow
our producers Carmen Rodriguez at Carmen armand dash O Bennett
at Dashbot and kill Brooks at Kilbrooks. Thank you to
our producer Moses Ondam. For more Oddlots, go to Bloomberg
dot com slash odd Lots, where we post transcripts. We
have a blog and a newsletter and you can chat
(46:25):
about all of these topics twenty four to seven in
our discord with fellow listeners Discord dot gg.
Speaker 3 (46:31):
Slash off on and if you enjoy odlots If you
like it when we dig into the world of snack foods,
then please leave us a positive review on your favorite
podcast platform. And remember, if you are a Bloomberg subscriber,
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All you need to do is connect your Bloomberg account
with Apple Podcasts. You can do that by finding the
(46:52):
Bloomberg channel on Apple Podcasts. Thanks for listening in
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, Radio News.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Hello and welcome to another episode of the Odd Blocks podcast.
Speaker 3 (00:24):
I'm Joe whysn't Thal and I'm Tracy Alloway.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Tracy, we like to talk about snacks and drinks and
stuff on the show, and you know, it's kind of
just how that we're interested, But I actually think that,
like there's like a deeper fundamental reason by why we
keep coming around to this topic.
Speaker 3 (00:39):
Wait, it's not just because we like snacks.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
I mean, that is the deep, deep, deep reason. But
the other reason is, Ah, I kind of think I've
been thinking about this lately that like the proliferation of
different types of snack foods and beverages and energy drinks
which multiply like crazy and store aisles. It's like the
ultimate story of like capitalist success and like the consumer
(01:02):
economy that we just keep getting this like endless permutations
of like great flavors in different ways to consume these flavors.
It's like the pinnacle of the consumption economy.
Speaker 3 (01:15):
Okay, Well, I would say, I guess capitalism, Well, capitalism
has to have some upsides, and I guess a loaded
flavored Cheetos are one of them. That's fair I do
think what's interesting to me about this moment in snacks
is there seems to be sort of two things going on,
(01:35):
like two mega trends, the very early beginnings of two
mega trends. So one is the idea of what's going
to happen to snack food in a GLP one fueled world.
And we touched on this a little bit last year
when we spoke to James van Kielin and he was
talking about his ozembic and GLP one investment thesis. And
(01:58):
I really like speaking to him because it wasn't just
like all the companies that are making these drugs are
going to see their share prices absolutely surge. It was
also there are going to be these second order knock
on effects on some consumer companies. And you could see
that playing out a little bit last year. You can
certainly see it playing out now. I think almost every major,
(02:22):
you know, food and beverage company that reported in the
most recent quarter had AGLP one or ozembic related question.
And then I guess the other mega trend is just
this idea of companies having to become more and more
creative to also drive consumption. So you have to have
more flavors in order to grow your market share, to
(02:43):
keep people engaged and interested and posting pictures of your
food on TikTok or Instagram.
Speaker 2 (02:49):
Or whatever totally, and you just see this play out.
I don't know. This is why I go back, you know,
I think about those sort of famous or infamous and
maybe apocryphal things where it's like some Soviet leader came
to the US, it's a grocery store. It's like, Okay,
capitalism is the answer. Maybe there was something, but it
really does feel like we're sort of at this moment
where these maybe almost two mega trends are in competition
(03:12):
with each other, right because there is this seemingly race
to provide more flavor and more variety and more versions
and special versions and stuff like that, and then the
sort of looming threat to the sort of traditional way
of doing business from the GLP ones Lego Zembic. So
there is never too much snack food and there's never
too much conversation about snack food.
Speaker 3 (03:33):
Well, the other thing that I just remembered, I totally
agree you can never have enough snack food. But the
other thing was the conversation we had with Ryan Harlan
where he was talking about the technology that's now going
into producing these snack foods, and also AI nowadays. So
this idea that you can basically model a virtual manufacturing
line for a new flavor, you can use AI maybe
(03:55):
to come up with new flavors. So it seems like
all of foods is getting more sophisticated. And some of
it is, of course in response to good old fashioned
consumer demand give the customer what they want. But part
of it, also, I have to think, might be in
response to competition from GLP one and ozepic and the
(04:16):
idea that well, if we're going to eat less food overall,
then maybe the way to keep customers is to make
sure that food is really really interesting.
Speaker 2 (04:25):
Yeah good, I'm glad you brought up the Ryan Harlan
episode because right that was about the sort of supply
side innovations that allow companies like say A for you
Delay to try more limited run lines and move things
faster and get a you know, you have a theoretical
test flavor, you can make a chip faster anyway. So
that raises the question where does the flavor come in
(04:46):
the first place. When there is a new chili lime
or a new Durian flavored.
Speaker 3 (04:52):
Sto, are we going to Flavortown?
Speaker 2 (04:54):
We're going to say we're going to We're going to
flavor Toown. I hadn't thought we're not. Who's the chef
that we're not talking to that chef? Well, we do
have the perfect guest because it's someone who is in
the business of great flavors. We're going to be speaking
with Barb Stucky. She's the chief innovation and marketing officer
at Madsen, which is a Silicon Valley based food and
(05:14):
beverage innovation company. She has written a lot about what
makes great flavors, and she has studied a lot about
this moment in flavor history. So, Barb, thank you so
much for coming on outlaws.
Speaker 4 (05:27):
Well, thank you for having me.
Speaker 2 (05:29):
What do you do the chief innovation and marketing officer
at Madson? What do you do in the flavor world?
Speaker 4 (05:37):
Oh? What don't we do in the big flavor world?
So the company's been around for about forty seven years,
and over the course of those decades, we have worked
in pretty much every food and beverage category that exists,
with the exception maybe a beer okay, but we work
on everything from baby food to alcoholic beverages to frozen
(06:00):
trace to confections, to dietary supplements. And we also do
work in the restaurant channel, so we work mainly for
national and global restaurant chains, but we help them identify
new menu categories and new menu items. So we are
really all over one hundred percent share of stomach is
(06:22):
how we like to sit.
Speaker 2 (06:23):
I like stomach share. I've never heard that. I've never
heard that one before, but that makes sense.
Speaker 3 (06:29):
So one thing I was wondering is the basic premise
of this conversation. I mentioned gop one drugs earlier, and
this is something that has come up in various forms
on the podcast and also on various earnings calls. As
I mentioned, Is this something that's on your radar as
a chief innovation officer in the food industry.
Speaker 4 (06:51):
Yes, absolutely, it's very much on our radar, and I'll
tell you how this happened. So you know, we work
in food and beverage. We are not in the pharmaceutical
and so we started getting some questions from our clients,
who ranged from some of the largest global CpG companies
to small founder funded startups, and they were asking questions
(07:15):
about these new drugs and what's going to happen and
should I be worried about this? And this was about
middle of twenty twenty three. So in the fourth quarter
of twenty twenty three, we decided that, because of our
position in the industry where we do work across companies
and we work across categories, that we were going to
(07:37):
educate ourselves and we were going to make ourselves as
smart as we can about this topic, and we were
going to then put forth the learnings that we gained
and share them with the industry. So we just did
that in a webinar format. It works like this, so
we handled it as we would do a client project.
So we started reading secondary resets that was out there.
(08:01):
There was a great report from Morgan Stanley that enabled
some of our learnings. And then we have a consumer
panel at Matson, So these are just consumers who have
been willing to give us their feedback on new ideas
and products, and we surveyed the panel to see if
(08:21):
anyone in our panel was on ozembic or some of
the other medicines we call them aom's anti obesity medications,
and we found out that there was about one hundred
and twenty five people who were either on the drugs
or had been on the drugs. So all of a sudden,
now we've got a patient population that we can talk
(08:42):
to to understand more. So we started doing that. We
put a survey in front of those consumers and got
to learn a little bit about what they were experiencing
and how things were changing for them. We also talked
to medical practitioners, so we talked to doctors, we talked
to practitioners, we talked to people who were prescribing the AOMs.
(09:05):
And then we did a lot of work with our
proprietary AI models to talk to AI personas to see
what was what was resonating with them, and that was
super interesting as well. And then the last thing we did,
which I can tell you more about, is we created
(09:26):
some new food and beverage concepts, some new ideas. They
ranged from beverages to snacks to meals, and we tested
those ideas with our patient panel of humans. I should
say we did test them with humans, not our AI,
which we can do, but we didn't do. So we
(09:47):
have so much data, so much to share.
Speaker 2 (09:49):
So let's start with some of that before we get
to the new concepts. What did the one hundred or
so people in your panel who are on the AOMs
tell you about their experience and how changed their relationship
with food and beverages.
Speaker 4 (10:03):
Yeah, it's a great question. And just to clarify, our
sample size ended up being about seventy five Okay, so
seventy five those patients, so some of them dropped off.
But what we heard from patients is that most of them,
the vast majority of them, were extremely satisfied or positive
with their experience on the drugs. And this is interesting
(10:27):
because many of them reported having side effects. It just
goes to show that it's so hard to lose weight
through typical strategies, you know, a combination of diet and exercise.
Some of our panelists had even had previous weight loss
surgery for example, but other interventions. And they were also
(10:50):
just really pleased with these drugs as giving them success
that they were unable to have or unable to sustain
using other methods. So that was really interesting to us.
So it does seem that these things are these drugs
are working incredibly wealth for people, not everyone. A lot
(11:11):
of the side effects are continual and a small number
of people do have them, but you know, they can
be really unpleasant in terms of GI. And one of
the ways that these drugs work is that it's hormonal.
But they also happened to slow your your gastric emptying,
(11:33):
meaning the food stays in your stomach longer and so
you feel full longer, which also happens when you have
weight loss surgery, your stomach is actually reduced in size,
but with these drugs, it's not reduced in size, but
it feels that way because the food stays in there longer,
and so people really really cannot overeat. They told us
(11:58):
really horrific story of overeating and getting sick because it
was just nauseating. Also, there are problems at the other
end of the GI track two. A lot of people
reported constipation or diarrhea other things like that. So these
are not without their challenges and not without their side effects.
(12:19):
But for the vast majority of people, they were extremely
happy and we're losing significant amounts of weight. The other
thing is that we did notice in our survey that
a lot of people were having some pretty significant changes
in their food and beverage behavior, and that was ultimately
our goal for this study.
Speaker 3 (12:41):
So what did you see in terms of food preference?
Because when I go on a diet and I restrict calories,
I usually end up this is terrible, this is not
how you should diet. But I usually end up replacing
healthy meals with like Oreo cookies, and I just eat
like three Oreo cookies instead of having a larger meal.
Does that hold out for ozembic people as well, or
(13:03):
people who are on ozembic and the other AOMs. Do
they still eat junk food just maybe less of it,
or do we see a change in their food preferences.
Speaker 4 (13:13):
You know, it definitely depends on the person. But more
people than not did say that all of a sudden
they were not craving things like sugary sodas or salty
snacks or animal proteins. So, especially for some reason, beef,
(13:34):
people were really turned off by the idea of beef,
and so they were instead sort of veering in the
direction of fruits and vegetables, things that were lighter in
flavor and lighter on the stomach. So you know, they
were really trying to satisfy those cravings. We even we
(13:55):
did some one on one video interviews, and I remember
distinctly this one went talking about how, you know, I
used to crave chips and now I crave cucumbers and parrots,
and she said the flavor of a crisp cucumber is
just so tantalizing, And I'm thinking to myself, while tantalizing cucumber,
(14:19):
I mean, that is a significant change in cravings and
you know, and the resulting caloric intake. So it does
seem to be doing something akin to teaching people how
to eat healthy, which is crazy that a drug can
do this, but it's that seems to be the case
(14:41):
with a lot of people.
Speaker 2 (14:42):
It's pretty incredible. But it also has an interesting implication
because I think like sort of one cynical expectation is that, Okay,
people don't want to eat salty chips as much anymore,
so then the food industry is going to respond by, oh, well,
we're just going to put even more salt in the
chips and will make it even more tantalizing and it'll
(15:03):
make it even harder for people to resist. But it
sounds like from your research that that will just make
the end products even more repellent to people.
Speaker 4 (15:13):
I think you're absolutely right. Yes, we heard people really
really just turning their nose up at certain foods that
they used to love and it's really odd, but I
do think that's what would happen. So, you know, a
lot of them were they were cutting from their diet
in the neighborhood of a thousand calories a day, Well,
(15:38):
that's crazy, Like for most people, that's half of the calories,
are a third of the calories that you're consuming. So
you know, that results in you having to make decisions
about what is going to be my calorie consumption based
on the fact that it is so much less. I'm
(15:59):
really to make those calories count. And so you know,
that just gets at the fact that you know, I
think you said at the beginning, like people want interesting food,
people want delicious food, in the case of the folks
that we heard from, just a lot less of it.
Speaker 3 (16:18):
Well, where does that leave, say a potato chip maker,
because it seems like if people aren't craving salty food anymore,
it seems unlikely that a maker of potato chips is
going to suddenly substitute their offerings with something like cucumbers.
Speaker 4 (16:37):
Absolutely, you're totally right. I cannot imagine that happening. Of course,
it takes a different distribution channel and different buyers in
the grocery store and yeah, that's not going to happen.
But what you know, we're in the innovation business, and
so what you could see potentially happening is that these
makers of chips, for example, what would create portion sizes
(16:58):
that are much smaller. Perhaps instead of increasing the sodium,
they reduce the sodium. Perhaps they do chips that have
some vegetables blended into their tortilla chip dough something like that,
to give it a little bit more fiber, to help
with the gi stuff, to give it a little more
(17:20):
nutrient density. So, you know, this could be an opportunity
for the food and beverage industry to really reset things
and reset expectations. You know, if you think back to
the size of a snack bag thirty years ago, or
the size of a hamburger thirty years ago, or the
size of a bagel, you know, they were all so
(17:41):
much smaller. So this is an opportunity for us to
go back to those sizes as expectations and really help
the entire country eat better. I don't know if that's
going to happen. Maybe it's a little pie in the sky,
but these are the kinds of things we were trying
to educate the end a story about because there are
(18:01):
some new opportunities.
Speaker 2 (18:19):
So you mentioned coming up with some new food concepts
or flavor concepts and actually serving them to your non
AI panelists. What are you cooking up there and what
resonated with people?
Speaker 4 (18:33):
Okay, well, I have twenty two products that we came
up with and tested. Not all of them scored well.
For example, the one that we created that was about
trying to tame nausea with ginger. That one bomb bomb Okay,
totally good.
Speaker 2 (18:54):
To bomb early before a nationwide launch, I guess.
Speaker 4 (18:57):
So, yeah, yes, that is so true that that's why
we do these kinds of us. Yeah. So essentially what
we were doing is writing these concepts for the AOM user.
So one of the top score it, we'll give you
two or three of the top scoring ideas. So one
of them was a brownie cube. So this idea was
ready to eat brownie. It's about the size of a nickel,
(19:22):
but in cube shape, and it's baked with extra protein added.
It's got a little bit of fiber in it from
the cocoa, and it's basically kind of a one byte indulgence.
And that really resonated. I think again, because when your
gastric emptying thing is slowing down. You really just don't
(19:43):
have room to eat a whole brownie.
Speaker 3 (19:45):
I suppose a nickel sized or byte sized brownie kind
of preserves customer choice in some ways. So if you're
on an AOM of some sort and you're not that hungry,
you can have one byte of the brownie. But if
you are not on AOMs and you are very hungry,
you can, you can. You'll probably just eat like a
(20:06):
bag full of them, right.
Speaker 4 (20:08):
Well, yes, And you know what that brings up a
really important point, which was that all the things that
rose to the top of our test were things that
the whole family could enjoy, and that was an important
criteria for the you know, mostly women, it's mostly women
on these because they didn't want to buy things and
bring them into the hot household that would just for
them that their kids wouldn't eat, their husband wouldn't eat,
(20:31):
their partners wouldn't eat. So we saw other things like
these chicken strips that are grilled chicken breast that are
cut into strips and then individually wrapped, and so you
could imagine, you know, you're trying to get your protein,
but you don't want to eat a whole chicken breast
because that's just way too much. So that was our
(20:52):
number two scoring concept, and it just makes so much
sense because if you can't eat a whole chicken breask,
you really probably don't want to cook one and then
cut it up yourself. So this was a refrigerated product
that you could you could take it out of the
refrigerator and snack on it cold, or heat it up
and put it in a tortilla. So things like that,
(21:12):
you know, those represent some different format options, different packaging options,
portion sizes, and then you know, we have a whole
other list of stuff that seem to resonate some more
than others.
Speaker 2 (21:27):
So it sounds like a lot of the innovation that
you've worked on or that we could see coming, as
you mentioned, sort of has to do with maybe foods
that we're familiar with, but that in rethinking the distribution,
and I have to say, I would snack on the
grilled chicken strip. I would be down for that, And
having like a big bag of those in my house,
that actually sounds like a I would snack on that.
(21:50):
You mentioned that the ginger infused foods sort of bombed.
Were there any breakthroughs in terms of flavors or somehow
recreating the sensation of a cucumber or a carrot, where
the breakthrough is not in the shape or distribution of
an existing thing, but in like some brand new type
of flavor that really worked on the ozompic users, the
(22:13):
AOM users.
Speaker 4 (22:15):
Yeah, you know, we tested a protein beverage. So this
was a line of clear beverages with protein added. And
that's that's a highly technical, very difficult challenge, having done
it myself, Yeah, that one is a high degree of difficulty,
(22:35):
let's just say that. But we tested this line of
three and I think one of our flavors was cucumber
or a cucumber line, and that actually resonated pretty well.
The idea being that if you think about protein drinks
on the market, they're usually chocolate, strawberry, really thick, they're
(22:56):
very satiating. And the idea of using the clear protein
in these lighter cucumber flavors and you know, other light
citrus flavors was that you would appeal to the more hydrating,
refreshing kind of experience but still get some protein. So yeah,
(23:18):
I think that that is actually something that would resonate
just because of the flavor because it's not chocolate or
you know, even though number one scoring product was was brownies.
So you said something else that made me think that
the most the best, the best scoring products really were
(23:39):
very familiar. And I think that that just gets a
consumer behavior around food, because we'd like to say consumers
want a foot in the familiar and taking one step
out of the familiar to do to buy something really
innovative is okay, but to take that second step out
(23:59):
of the familiar is really disorienting. And so you know,
if you're on a weight loss regimen and your body
is doing things differently, it makes sense that the familiar
stuff would score really well.
Speaker 3 (24:16):
Just building on this point, i'd love to hear from
you what the sort of evolution of a new food
product or flavor actually is like from start to finish.
Do people come up with ideas for completely brand, new,
foreign things and build them out from there or is
it more taking something that already exists and trying to
(24:40):
improve on it in some way? Could you maybe walk
us through that process.
Speaker 4 (24:44):
The answer is yes, all of the above. So we
have worked on things as novel as creating a roast
and ground coffee without coffee beans, and that product is
now in the market.
Speaker 3 (25:03):
And what's wade out of I have to ask.
Speaker 4 (25:08):
Well, you can buy it, and you know you can
look at the ingredient statement, so I guess I can
say it here. We actually tested well dozens and dozens
of upcycled ingredients that were basically products that were either
sent to animal feed or were really dis waste. So
(25:30):
think about things like seeds and pits and yeah, exactly exactly.
So where we ended up was date seeds. You know,
when you get a date unless you buy the pitted kind,
they have these seeds and so what we did was
we roasted the seeds, we ground them, we brewed them,
(25:54):
and then some other secret sauce that we can't talk about,
but turns out that they work in credibly well as
a replacement for coffee beans. So you know that I
have to give credit to the company A Tomo. I
want to give them a shout out. We just did
some very early proof of concept and development work for them,
(26:14):
but they have turned it into a business and it
is incredible. So that that's the kind of novel thing
that we might get an assignment to do. And then
you know, the other things that we're getting a lot
of these days is I want to do X, except
that I want to make it healthier, I want to
(26:35):
have more protein in it, I want to use clean
label ingredients. And so we're i would say, reinventing favorites
across a lot of categories. So you know, think things
like indulgent cookies or crackers, or desserts, or you know,
even meals where we're replacing a lot of the not
(26:59):
so good ingredients with just more kitchen type of familiar ingredients.
Speaker 2 (27:05):
So we talked about this on a previous episode about snacks,
and you know, some snack food trends come and go,
but some stick around. And so for example, you know
when I was a kid, you could get cool ranch chips.
You can still get cool ranch chips. A hot thing
these days is chili lime. Flavors seem to be everywhere.
You wrote a book called Taste, Surprising Stories and Science
(27:29):
about why food tastes good. So when I bring up
cool ranch or chili lime, what is it about some
of these flavors? What do they have in common that
you can say that's like, yes, these flavors stand the
test of time, and we'll be eating chili limes, chips
in twenty years, sitting aside people who are on ams
chili lime flavors, like, what do they have in common
(27:52):
when you look look at the code of a great flavor, Well, I.
Speaker 4 (27:55):
Would say two words. One is complexity, and there is layered.
So let's just we'll take cool ranch and pull that
apart and think about it from the basic tastes. And
human beings are only capable of experiencing five basic tastes
(28:17):
on their tongue, So there's sweet, sour, bitter, salt, and
new mommy, and then everything else that you get is
either a texture or an aroma. So the thing about
cool ranch or just ranch in general, is that it's
incredibly salty and savory. And those two things together, salty
(28:39):
and savory, and they kind of come together usually in nature.
When you combine them with the sourness of the butter
milk and the creaminess of the butter milk, you now
have a whole lot going on. You've got creamy, you've
got sour, you've got savory, you've got so and that
(29:01):
complexity and then the other things that are layered in
So now I'm talking about complexity and layering on top
of complexity, so things like garlic and onion, which are
also important elements to a really interesting ranch profile. So
you know that, I think that really makes up a
(29:23):
lot of those classic flavors. So if we do the
same thing for a chili line, most of the chili
lime seasonings like something like a taheen you're familiar with.
It's not just chili and lime, but it's chili, lime
and salt, and so you know, again, let's go back
and sort of break it apart. So you've got the salt,
(29:45):
which is one of the basic tastes, and you've got
the chili, which is actually a texture that that heat.
But the slight heat that you get is working on
the same nerve that detec pain, so that is a texture.
So you're getting pain from the chili, you're getting salt
(30:07):
from the salt, and you're getting sour from the lime,
and that is a lot of complexity going on. Now
you also have to layer on that. There's some aroma
that sort of smoky maybe dusty aroma from the chilis,
and the lime has got its limy citrusness and those
(30:29):
are aromas. So those two flavors that you caught out.
There's a really really complex and they're very much layered,
and the way that you experience them happens over time.
Speaker 3 (30:57):
Joe, I'm so hungry.
Speaker 2 (30:59):
I know this, I need this right. I haven't eaten
yet either. Yeah, so now I'm going to devour my life.
Speaker 3 (31:04):
This is exactly what happened when we spoke with Ryan
Harlan as well. Okay, well, I'm curious what you think
makes a flavor or a food suddenly go viral. And
we've seen various examples of this in recent years. I think,
especially during the pandemic, everyone was stuck at home looking
maybe for new recipes to do, and you would see
(31:25):
something that looked really good on TikTok and so you
would try to do it. But is it about a
particularly innovative flavor or is it maybe you know, doing
something slightly new with food that you're already familiar with.
Speaker 4 (31:40):
I think it's probably both. I mean that example of
you know, sitting at home during the pandemic and looking
for new recipes, I think that is pitomized by the
Feta pasta phenomenon. And I'm sure if you if your
listeners were on TikTok or if anyone remembers the TikTok
(32:03):
Feda pasta was just this enormous phenomenon, and that was
in twenty twenty. If you fast forward. What's so fascinating
about that is that feta is now everywhere. If you
think about in twenty nineteen and before, feta pasta had
one roll and that was on a Greek salad and
(32:24):
that's where you would find feta and nowhere else in
the US. Nowadays, not only can you find feta everywhere,
but you can go to the frozen food section of
your grocery store and you can buy feta pasta that's
clearly just developed and positioned to mimic that recipe that
(32:45):
was done online. And then I guess the second answer
to that question is what was really unique about the
way that the I believe she was finished the Finnish
woman cooked that that she took a whole block of
feta and just put it in the plate and put
raw tomatoes in with it and threw it in the oven,
and it just it seemed very novel because you put
(33:07):
an entire block of cheese in and it seemed really easy.
And so you know, those two things in combination are
pretty powerful.
Speaker 2 (33:17):
How quickly can that happen. So you're at a consumer
package goods company and your marketing team, or maybe you
at Mattson or someone says, you know, what, Feta's going
viral and we need a feto play or whatever it
is these days, how quickly can you go from Feta
is viral to let's have a frozen Feta pasta bake
(33:40):
in the freezer aisle.
Speaker 4 (33:42):
Well, it's a good question, and it depends on a
lot of things, mainly the size of the company. I
would say that the smaller companies are a little more
nimble and they can move a little faster, so that
has something to do with it. The other thing that
makes it much easier to do is if you own
your own manufacturing. So for companies that have their own
(34:04):
manufacturing lines, they would be able to move much faster
than someone using a contract manufacturer. So there's a lot
of things that go into it. But I would say,
you know, for a large CpG, it could take anywhere
from six months to a year and a half, depending
on how complex it is and depending on how many
(34:27):
varieties you're launching and developing. And then you know, for
the small companies, there was there was a phenomenon on
TikTok for a while with pancake cereal. So somebody made
teeny little pancakes in a pan, threw them in a bowl,
poured milk over it, and was eating pancakes like cereal.
(34:47):
It's kind of a brilliant idea. And there was a
company called I think it's Belgian Boys, Belgian Boys, who
picked up on it right away.
Speaker 2 (34:55):
Oh yeah, I say, I just I did a search
for pancake cereal in the first The first one is
Belgian Boys bite Sized Pancake Cereal.
Speaker 4 (35:03):
Yeah, there you go. So those guys are brilliant because
they're already in the like the Belgian waffle kind of space,
and so they blew my mind. But how quickly they.
Speaker 2 (35:15):
Got that quickly, I don't know.
Speaker 4 (35:18):
We did not work on it, but I remember seeing
the thing on TikTok, and then maybe a couple of
months later, they were at a major industry conference demonstrating it,
you know, serving it. So that was pretty amazing.
Speaker 3 (35:32):
Who owns the intellectual copyright for something like, you know,
the feta pasta bake or bite sized pancakes, Because it
seems like you do see these things proliferate very quickly,
and eventually they become so big that no one can
really remember where they first came from. And then eventually
you have companies that sort of formalize them into actual products.
Speaker 4 (35:56):
Yeah, I think those are the ones that end up
owning and you know, air quotes owning the idea. It
is very hard, if not impossible, to patent a formula
or a recipe, so that almost never happens. So the
best thing that you can do is put a really
powerful brand on your product and make sure that your
(36:18):
brand is associated with that thing. The other thing that
you can do is you can trademark the name if
it's not too descriptive, and you can patent with what
is known as a manufacturing process, so you can get
a process patent. But in the food world, it's just
so easy for people to knock these things off. I
(36:40):
can tell you because we've done it before, so you
know it doesn't necessarily pay off to do that. The
best thing you can do is just really market it well,
make sure it tastes delicious, get lots of distribution, and
sell it for a fair price.
Speaker 3 (36:56):
Jo, there goes my idea of making money from a
corn rib grilled cheese sandwich dusted with fiery Cheetos.
Speaker 2 (37:05):
Yeah you could still if you had the right brand,
the odd lots brand and the distribution, maybe you could
do it. But yes, I agree, something bigger, all right.
So a company comes to your barb and they're like,
you know what, we need something new, we wanna we
need a breakthrough snack chili lime. It's fine, but it's
sort of getting mature whatever. Like I guess two questions
(37:27):
like how do you identify the next big thing? And
actually just what is the next big thing?
Speaker 4 (37:33):
Well, you have to be on it. You have to
be watching the next big thing everywhere and all the time.
So we look too higher end restaurants for inspiration. That's
where we get a lot of them. We also look
to TikTok. It's interesting that things are starting there and
(37:53):
not just food, but the way that you're making food.
The appliance is a using you know, there's a couple
of appliances that have really taken off on TikTok, like
the Ninja creamy that allows you to make high protein
ice cream. So that's something that we're using on our
(38:15):
trend lunch menu this year. So you really do have
to look everywhere and then what we have to our
advantage is that we are working with some forty to
fifty food and beverage companies every day, and in our
work for them, we're always doing consumer research. So we're
(38:35):
constantly talking to consumers about what they like, what they
don't like, what's resonating, what are they cooking at home,
what are they eating out, where are they shopping. So
we have a lot of institutionalized knowledge, and you know,
that is our ip and that's part of what we
bring to our clients. But it's a never ending search
(38:57):
for the next thing. If I had to say one
thing or one flavor right now, I would say that
tropical flavors are just on fire. And tropical can mean
everything from mango and pineapple to.
Speaker 2 (39:16):
Ube and everything, yeah and everything, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 4 (39:23):
So we're we're closely watching Southeast Asian flavors, so Filipino
flavors like kalamansi, which is a bitter citrus that comes
on the heels of yuzu, which is a Japanese kind
of lime citrus. So you have to go far and wide,
and it's it's really easy to do these days. I mean,
(39:46):
if you think about just opening TikTok. And you know
this is it's not a national audience of users, it's
a global audience of users. So you're seeing what people
are posting in Korea and elsewhere. That's the other thing
we're very bullish on is Korean food.
Speaker 2 (40:06):
So I just have one request speaking of Southeast Asian flavors,
and I'm seeing it more. But Pondon in particular is
one of my favorite flavors, and so is a is
a consumer. I just request please tell your clients to
create more Pondon infuse sweets because that is probably my
(40:26):
favorite flavor in the world. So I'm just passing down, passing.
Speaker 4 (40:30):
I will pass that along to all clients.
Speaker 2 (40:33):
Okay, thank you, Thank you very much, Barb Stucky. It
was so great chatting with you. Really appreciate you coming
on out block.
Speaker 4 (40:39):
Oh with my pleasure. It was super fun. Thank you
for having me.
Speaker 2 (40:42):
Yeah, thank you so much.
Speaker 3 (40:44):
Thanks so much, Barb. I gotta go eat something.
Speaker 2 (40:46):
Yeah, Tracy, I never heard of a klamansi before, but
it looks like a lime that looks like an orange
in side. It looks amazing. Have you ever had one
(41:06):
of these?
Speaker 3 (41:07):
I don't think I have. Hold on, I'm looking it up.
Speaker 2 (41:09):
Look at it. It looks like that. It looks like
the cover of like the Freakonomics book, where it's like
not the oh yeah, look at that. Doesn't they look good?
Speaker 3 (41:17):
That looks amazing. I don't think I have had that.
Speaker 4 (41:19):
No, I need.
Speaker 2 (41:20):
I definitely need to try a Kalamansi.
Speaker 3 (41:22):
Yeah, lots of ideas of foods to try. From that conversation,
I thought the ozembic study was absolutely fascinating because my
assumption had kind of been, well, if you're on ozempic
and you're just not that hungry anymore, that companies need
to try harder with like new and exotic flavors to
(41:42):
lure you in, which means more sugar, more salt maybe,
But per Barb's research, it seems like people don't want
to eat that kind of stuff anymore.
Speaker 2 (41:51):
No, it's interesting too that the innovation, it sounds like,
will be on preparation packaging in distribt.
Speaker 3 (42:00):
Yeah, and I think portion size.
Speaker 2 (42:02):
It sounds like so the idea of and the idea
also that the maybe packaging in such a way that
the person in the family who is on a GLP
one can just have one of them, but everyone else
can have more so you know, like a grilled, prepared
chicken strip. Yeah, I could see like grabbing one out
of the refrigerator and using that as a snack. But
(42:24):
also you could have, like you know, someone else could
grab five, or someone else could put a bunch on
a salad or something like that, or the sort of
sad sounding brownie cube.
Speaker 3 (42:36):
Really some of this does sound slightly dystopian to me,
so nicol sized brownie bites, and like coffee made out
of not coffee, although I can understand maybe why some
people don't want to drink coffee, you know. In terms
of individually wrapped chicken, this is something I remember they
have in Hong Kong. If you go into a seven
(42:58):
eleven or any of the meanings over there, they have
like plastic wrapped I think it must have been boiled
or roast chicken.
Speaker 2 (43:07):
I would eat that.
Speaker 3 (43:08):
You could just snack on. It never looks particularly appetizing
to be but it does exist.
Speaker 2 (43:13):
Yeah, I would definitely eat it somebody. It sounds very utilitarian.
It does seem like that maybe utilitarian is the way
to put it. Also, this idea that like already, if
someone is on one of these drugs, they're going to
be eating in a new way or whatever. And so
the idea of like keep some aspect of it that's
familiar was an interesting idea. So something that people are
familiar with, but maybe in a new way or a
(43:35):
new portion. Or she mentioned the idea of like a
clear protein drink instead of a gloppy like chocolate. One.
Really interesting stuff there.
Speaker 3 (43:44):
Yeah, And I was thinking just going back to the
original golp one discussion that we had with James Van Geln,
and he was talking about these second order effects. I mean,
it does seem like if you run a restaurant or
something in some respects you can start tailor your menu
to an increased proportion of the population that maybe doesn't
want to eat really salty or heavy or sweet foods.
(44:08):
But I have to think if you are a chip maker, yeah,
not that kind of chip maker, a potato chip maker,
or I don't know, someone who makes like soda or whatever.
There must be maybe not soda, because I guess you
could make a celsiest type energy drink that feels light
and invigorating. But certainly if you're a junk food maker,
(44:28):
this must be difficult for you, right, You are not
going to be able to push a button and suddenly
come up with a suite of healthy light options that
satisfy the new gl P one population totally.
Speaker 2 (44:42):
Like if you get a bunch of people going around
saying like I really am just craving a slice of
cution cor Yeah, which, for what it's worth, I've been there.
I've every once in a while just like a nicely
crispiece of cucumbers.
Speaker 3 (44:54):
Who stick of celery.
Speaker 2 (44:55):
Yeah it's not bad or like I you know, I
endorse that too, but it does not sound like a
great opportunity if you're like in the business of like
making ruffles or something like that.
Speaker 3 (45:04):
Well, the other thing I was thinking is I've seen
some negative commentary around food packagers stemming from the weight
loss drugs. So this idea that they're just not going
to sell as much food, and okay, yeah, perhaps on aggregate.
But on the other hand, it sounds like there might
be opportunities if you're getting smaller portions for more packaging
or more packaging for things like vegetable sticks or apple
(45:28):
slices or whatever. It sounds like maybe there's an opportunity there.
Speaker 2 (45:31):
Well, if nothing else, I feel like after this conversation,
I suspect we're going to start, you know, when we're
going to the grocery store, notice things or pay closer
attention to, like, oh, is this being portion sized or
is this package sized in a way that looks tailored
for someone on one of these drugs?
Speaker 4 (45:49):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (45:49):
Absolutely, all right, a new grocery shopping game.
Speaker 2 (45:53):
Yeah, I thing to look forward to.
Speaker 3 (45:54):
Shall we leave it there?
Speaker 2 (45:55):
Let's leave it there.
Speaker 3 (45:56):
This has been another episode of the Odd Thoughts podcast.
I'm Tree Alloway. You can follow me at Tracy Alloway and.
Speaker 2 (46:02):
I'm Joe Wisenthal. You can follow me at the Stalwart.
Follow our guest Barb Stucky. She's at Barb Stucky. Follow
our producers Carmen Rodriguez at Carmen armand dash O Bennett
at Dashbot and kill Brooks at Kilbrooks. Thank you to
our producer Moses Ondam. For more Oddlots, go to Bloomberg
dot com slash odd Lots, where we post transcripts. We
have a blog and a newsletter and you can chat
(46:25):
about all of these topics twenty four to seven in
our discord with fellow listeners Discord dot gg.
Speaker 3 (46:31):
Slash off on and if you enjoy odlots If you
like it when we dig into the world of snack foods,
then please leave us a positive review on your favorite
podcast platform. And remember, if you are a Bloomberg subscriber,
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All you need to do is connect your Bloomberg account
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(46:52):
Bloomberg channel on Apple Podcasts. Thanks for listening in
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Joe Weisenthal
Tracy Alloway
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On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!