Sensory Capability
Creamy. Crunchy. Rich. Mouth-watering. Words consumers use to describe textures and eating experiences. . . useful for marketers but imprecise for food developers. National believes that the key to delivering new and improved food products is to better understand the consumer lexicon and preferences and translate that information into technical language that food formulators can put into practice. That’s why we have a staff of industry-leading sensory experts, to aid our culinary and food formulation teams in their work with our customers.

Descriptive Analysis
Our team is dedicated to the descriptive process and uses their highly developed texture language and sensory skills to create profiles and texture maps. This information is correlated with instrumental measurement and consumer testing to create technical road maps for our customers’ product development and improvement efforts.

Consumer Testing
The sensory team continuously performs consumer testing to benchmark leading products and determine acceptability and preference in the marketplace. They also appraise different categories to determine the consumer drivers of “liking” and motivation to purchase. They use these insights to brainstorm with our technical teams to come up with new ideas and fast track the process for prototype development, ingredient performance and market place familiarization. This process helps identify product opportunities for both National and our customers.

What it Means for Formulators
This continuous process of testing consumer attributes and applying descriptive analysis has lead to the creation of a highly developed texture language and road maps for food formulators. The ultimate results: unique and differentiating textures; shorter time to market; and higher success rates.