The following help us mimic the customer product to the best of our ability: vendor documentation (SDS, Specification, GMO statement, etc.), costing parameters (price/pound and CIU), annual volumes and order patterns. A formula breakdown of the finished product is helpful if you are unable to provide base (This typically means we have to purchase market product from store).

We use Discrimination Testing—specifically the Tetrad method—with our internal Discrimination Panel to predict whether a flavor match will be perceptibly different from the target/reference. This is a screened panel (not formally trained) to ensure panelists can reliably smell and taste well. The underlying theory is that if this panel cannot reliably distinguish the matched flavor from the control beyond chance, it provides strong evidence that most consumers will also be unlikely to detect a difference. In the Tetrad test, panelists assess four coded samples and group them into two pairs based on similarity, offering a sensitive, efficient way to verify match performance.