Imagine working for a
company where it is your job to create any flavor your customer desires. Does
your customer want asparagus? Do you need the flavor of apple? If so, what
kind of apple? David Michael & Co. can be that specific! Their slogan is "Yes
we can." They'll try anything proving there is no limit to the imagination.
Based in several countries all over the world, David Michael caters to just about every food industry; and you guessed it, ice cream is one of them! Steve Wilbur is the Vice President of Marketing at David Michael, "So, if a company comes to us and says, 'We need ice cream flavor ideas' by tomorrow we could go to them with 50 ideas, no problem."
Are there flavors that
you feel would be a piece of cake to replicate...tough ones?
We are very
good at getting the flavors that our customers need. Right now in our flavor
library we have over 28,000 flavor formulations.
In my opinion, one of the
most difficult flavors to replicate is banana.
It can be a very difficult flavor
to replicate, and I can't tell you why, but there are often issues with
banana. Depending on what finished product it's going into, candy or
ice cream, etc., there can be some difficulties with it.
So there are formulas
for the flavors?
Yes.
So somebody's in a lab...
Yes, we have a team
of flavor chemists and their job is to develop flavors. Basically, they go
through a very extensive training program to get certified as a flavor chemist.
You can't go to
college for it; you actually have to get experience working at a flavor company
to become a flavor chemist. Their job is to know the several thousand plus
ingredients that are approved by the FDA for the use of making flavors. Their
job is to know how to mix these ingredients together to make the flavor profile
that we want. Some flavors are very complex with 100 or more different ingredients
with very minute amounts of each ingredient that all combine to make, say a
strawberry flavor. Or there could be something that is simpler that only has
5 ingredients in it to give you a flavor.
On the ingredients labels, there
are words the average consumer can't pronounce. Are the flavor chemists
reporting the unpronounceable ingredients that make up flavors to the client
to list on the packaging?
No, they're not being reported on the label.
The only thing that goes on the label from a flavor point of view is the flavor,
whether it's natural,
artificial or natural and artificial.
Can you describe the three of them?
Natural
flavors are natural extracts or natural chemicals or a combination of both.
Some chemicals approved for making flavors are natural and some are artificial.
Artificial flavors are man made products. Natural and Artificial flavoring
can be combined together to give a flavor profile.
Are you allowed to tell
me what ice cream brands use you?
No. But I can tell you we are an international
corporation. And there's probably not too many food companies that you
could name that don't buy something from us in some way shape or form;
including ice cream companies. There are about 300 flavor companies in the
world and we have been in business since 1896, so people know us. If we are
calling on "Kris's
Ice Cream Company" we're probably not the only flavor company calling
on you. You could have six other flavor companies competing for your business,
and what you are doing is asking all six of them for their best strawberry
flavor. Flavor is very subjective. You can give us the strawberry profile in
minute detail, you want it to be jammy, not seedy, not green...it's
got to be natural, it's got to be liquid and work in an ice cream system
with real strawberry pieces. And we can make that strawberry and send it to
you and you could say, "Yuck,
this doesn't even taste like strawberry, it tastes like raspberry!" And
we are going to scratch our heads and say, "Well, geez, it tastes like
strawberry to us." But we can't argue with you because that's
your perception of it. So, imagine 5 other flavor companies doing the same
thing. So many times it's a matter of who gets the right flavor the first
time around at the best price. Sometimes price plays a big part, sometimes
it doesn't; often
times it's in the mix. It's all about relationships.
What about
bean specks?
Vanilla ice cream with bean specks is called Philadelphia Style
Vanilla Ice Cream. That type of ice cream started in Philadelphia and it's
known around the world as Philadelphia Style. The most common Philadelphia
Style system we make is vanilla extract with bean seeds in it. We provide a
product to our customers called a "vanilla slurry", which is vanilla
extract with the bean seeds in the flavoring mix. So all the manufacturer has
to do is take the jar of flavor with the bean seeds, shake it up and pour the
whole container into their ice cream mix.
How do you make the bean specks?
When we make vanilla extract, we take
vanilla beans and chop them up into little pieces. The process of making vanilla
extract is pretty simple; it's
like making coffee in your coffee maker. You put the chopped up beans in a
filter and then you percolate it with water and alcohol. It's a little
more complicated than that, but that's the basic procedure. When we are
finished with the chopped up vanilla beans, they come out the bottom of the
extractor and they get dried. At that point they are considered to be spent
vanilla beans. There's nothing left
to them, there's no flavor to them. But the seeds are dried and used
to make the Philadelphia Style System. But people have the perception that
those bean seeds equal flavor. We are not trying to pull the wool over anyone's
eyes, but people think, "If bean seeds are in there, it's got to
be better." But they are strictly visual. If they were not in there
the ice cream would not taste a bit different than if they were in there.
Some
ice cream companies come out with Feature Flavors every quarter or so. Do you
cater to them for the feature flavors, how creative do your folks get to be
and do you get to make suggestions?
Some of our competitors have a feature
flavor program which offers the manufacturer everything from the flavor to
the cartons to the advertising. We don't go that deeply into it. But
every year we develop 4 feature flavors and we have a mailing list we send
out and that's the
extent of what we do for David Michael Feature flavors. We also have a whole
applications lab that is dedicated strictly to ice cream.
This would be your
ice cream pilot plant?
We have application labs and make small batches of finished
products. Years ago we were strictly a flavor company. But in the last 10 years
or so, more and more companies are coming to us for complete product development,
because their development staff or departments have been cut they are saying
we need you to develop a complete product system for us. So we take the mix,
all other ingredients, the flavor and make the product and send them a 1/2-gallon
of strawberry ice cream and that's how they are tasting it. This
is all done in our application labs. We can work on ice cream, cereal, candy,
hamburgers, alcoholic beverages...anything... in small quantities.
When clients say they want a larger quantity, that's when we make it
in our pilot plant where we have the equipment that can scale up to larger
batches. When we are working with one of the large ice cream companies, you
might need to make 20 gallons for their tasting requirements. You might need
to ship different quantities to different offices, 1 gallon to Cincinnati,
2 gallons to Boston for tasting.
Your company is located all over the world,
China/Mexico/France. You must be able to find flavors that other countries
love and bring them back to introduce them to us finicky Americans?
We do introduce
many flavors from around the world. Some are very interesting like the Durian,
an exotic, tropical fruit that has a terrible smell. It's so bad, this
fruit has been banned in some public locations, like airports. However, when
it's used in ice
cream, it's
supposed to be quite good.
So just hold your nose at the factory tour!
Yes,
definitely!