A Winning Product

After a lot of hard work and refinement, we have developed a product that has exceeded our expectations both in the sensory analysis aspect and the cost of production. As mentioned in previous reflections, we have chosen to take on the Chinese chicken and gravy dish. This recipe originated from a traditional stir-fry dish that is commonly found in Chinese restaurants everywhere. However, we decided to add a spicy barbecue twist to bring out more of the American slant. We believe this will give us a leg-up against our competition in the industry as well as in the classroom. The food chemistry being incorporated in our product includes an adhesive coating during breading when the pieces of chicken breast are tossed in the flour then placed in the frier. There are two different types of coating: adhesion and cohesion. Adhesion binds to the substrate and cohesion forms a shell around the substrate (ex. fried cheese sticks). Caramelization also takes place when the onions are stir fried and the gelation of cornstarch to increase the viscosity of the gravy. Caramelization and gelation are common terms that most everyone knows. However viscosity is not; viscosity is the state of being thick, sticky and semifluid in consistency. We forgot to add cornstarch to the gravy one day while working on our process and the end result was a very thin, watery gravy that did not cling to the product like we wanted causing a dry sensation during consumption.

On the day of the sensory analysis we received a lower average score on the juiciness category. We retraced our steps and realized we had forgotten to add the soy sauce. We believe that was the reason for the low average score. Other than that we received satisfactory results. We also did some digging to find out the cost of all the ingredients and calculated the cost of our product per meal minus the packaging side. We got a very affordable cost with an eighty-two percent mark up.

This Wednesday, November 16th, we are giving our first presentation on our product. This presentation only includes our professor Dr. Morey and our GTA Elle Chadwick. We must speak for a minimum of fifteen minutes. We are bringing to light the background of this dish, the competition we will likely face in the industry, what the market is looking like for frozen food products and who our target audience is. We will also talk about the facts about our product such as the ingredients, the chemistry that goes into the production, packaging and shelf life. And finally, we will talk about the pricing of our product and the markup formula that we used to calculate our selling price, the packaging, the retailers selling our product and the proper storing environment. After we get the results from them we will then refine and condense our presentation down to five minutes for our final presentation on November 30th which will be in front of the entire class as well as many visitors

.