How to Make Internal Tastings More Effective & Efficient

Sensory evaluation is at the core of our work to develop delicious, clean label foods for our clients. At CuliNEX, we approach sensory evaluations in many ways depending on the specific project, client, and overall product goals. But we always strive to keep our tastings fast, fun, and easy.

Fast

To keep our sensory evaluations fast, we make sure to clarify the type of tasting exercise to our internal tasting team. Context is the most important part of any tastings, either formal or informal. Framing the goal of each evaluation provides our team with the feedback needed to push the project forward.

Katherine Langel

Fun

When tasting a particular type of product over and over again, we make it fun by providing an enjoyable lunch or snack made with the tasting product. One of our latest projects had us tasting countless waffles, so as a treat for our tasting panel having to diligently sit through an intense tasting, we prepared the team a lunch of fried chicken and waffles!

Emily Munday

Easy

Often, we have informal tastings with comparative or blind samples, which keeps the tasting simple and direct by asking questions that have a focus on a particular attribute, such as sweetness, a particular flavor profile, or texture. Although not always possible, we try to schedule informal tastings when our team is hungry (which is often!) and by presenting samples on plates with silverware instead of in plastic sample cups. We encourage a full eating experience similarly to how a consumer would.

Lesley Werblin

When formal sensory analysis is required, our team works diligently to prepare appropriate standardized reference samples, questionnaires, and data analysis tools for our internal trained panel. Ample planning and preparation make these formal tasting much easier for our team. We strive to keep the atmosphere open for conversation, suggestions, opinions, and additions to the reference samples from the test kitchen.

If you need development work, our sensory evaluation process can be engineered to fit your product to help it be the best on the market!