We were looking at Cup a Soups, but it could have been anything from green tea to whisky, cola to orange juice.
The standard five tests always apply: appearance, odour, flavour, mouthfeel and aftertaste. Olfactory senses are also important (the ability to link it to memory of a smell).
Sensory manager Phiala Mehring studied Food Science and Nutrition at Reading. “What’s important to me is that we don’t lose the signal data,” she said, which means we all need to be measuring product attributes with the same parameters in mind. “This standard benchmarking is critical.”
The white cups or plates holding the new products are always marked with the same symbols – a star, square, circle and triangle – so as not to bias the group’s thinking.
We looked at ‘undisturbed appearance’ of the soup and then reviewed it again once it had been stirred. The coating of the cup sides was noted too, and every particle was closely examined.
Were the green pieces parsley or another herb? Was the tomato smell that of roasted, sun-dried or fresh tomatoes? Was the stock used beef, chicken, pork or vegetable? The next stage would be to compare this aspect of the soup to the taste of branded stock cubes from the various stores.
Sometimes, products can be withdrawn from shop shelves even before they’ve finished testing, but generally the sensory panel are helping develop a concept pre-brief, and the results will be used to reduce salt or sweetness levels in the finished product, for instance.
What sort of challenges do the group encounter? “Well, we operate in Shanghai and New York too,” said Phiala, “and sometimes food production methods are very different. Take the term ‘baked goods’, for instance. In China, baking is rare as they mostly steam foods, so baked crisps were totally new to them.
“Real green tea was also new to many of us here in the UK and we soon learned to understand that the phraseology ‘young and tender’ in green tea means very leafy, grassy and green rather than the dried and dusty taste many of us associated with green tea in bags.”
She added that they look at personal care products too, and are just as likely to come across green tea here as in food and drink products.
We then went into the tasting booths, where there is a distinct absence of distraction (it’s very grey), and there’s the option to change the lighting. Apparently, colas and diet colas have a slightly different colour and it’s important not be swayed by this when tasting.
The sensory world, it seems, isn’t so simple as I’d first thought. There seems to be great potential for marketing and packaging design agencies to work more closely with the sensory set. Sensory reward is all about getting the taste you expect from the promise of the packaging, or something even better.
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