Noble relocates research kitchen to Chesterfield Village

Noble’s advertising firm moved its research kitchen to Noble’s Chesterfield Village campus in August. The result is more room to work and a better communication pipeline to make edible concepts a reality.

“When we have a new product idea, we’ll produce what we call living concepts,” said Noble, chairman and CEO of Springfield-based Noble & Associates, which has annual capitalized billings of $250 million. “A living concept is an actual product we use for research, for home placement or putting it in restaurants for testing.”

Noble said he established a research kitchen in the early 1980s, at 3508 E. Division, as a resource for his food-related clients. By inventing new recipes, either for manufacturing or for new restaurant menu items, Noble said his clients get to market to the trendiest of consumer tastes.

“We work with these companies in bringing new products to life,” he said.

According to Noble, his company has about 21,000 square feet of culinary research space in three Chesterfield Village buildings, plus the original culinary facility’s 6,000 square feet. Noble established his new 8,000-square-foot kitchen in Chesterfield Village on Aug. 15, housed in the newly constructed Noble Idea Center.

Noble’s agency generates about 70 percent of its business from developing and marketing food or food-related products. Noble played a part in developing Nabisco’s Snackwell’s cookies and crackers in the early 1990s. It has worked with dozens of the largest restaurant chains and food manufacturers, including McDonald’s, Tyson Foods and Frito Lay.

Noble employs around 300, with offices in Springfield, Chicago and Arkansas. Nine of those employees are research chefs.

Noble said 10 percent of his company’s revenue is generated from research and development efforts, which include a new division called Culture Waves that attempts to forecast the next big food and nonfood consumer trends.

Culture Waves staff track and develop ideas, and chefs in the research kitchen, one floor below the Culture Waves office, cook the ideas.

“It’s a very restricted area,” said Chief Culinary Officer Judy Sipe of the research kitchen. “We’re working on lots of confidential, way-out new products – new ideas for companies.”

For example, Noble helped develop new soup and salad lines for a national restaurant.

Sipe, who has worked for Noble since 1983, said her staff has two weeks to develop an assigned concept and present it to a client, either a restaurant or food manufacturer.

Noble and Sipe, citing agency-client confidentiality agreements, declined to discuss specific clients or specific products the company helped develop, but Noble said, “We generate hundreds of thousands of conceptual ideas in brainstorming sessions.”

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