Business Spotlight: Food for Thought

Imagine browning ground chuck in 8 minutes in the microwave. Or preparing smoked meats without setting aside hours to man a smoker.

The chefs and food scientists at The Turover Straus Group Inc. are working to bring these culinary options to market.

In a commercial test kitchen in south Springfield, two chefs precisely mix ingredients for sauces and experiment with cuts of meat in their smoker. They’re on a mission to create solutions for food industry problems.

Today’s question: How can you make fresh foods more convenient?

“We’re giving a head start to people so they don’t have to rely on processed foods,” says Tim Straus, co-founder of the food product development company.

With 20 years of product consulting for such clients as Subway, Ziploc and Sara Lee, Straus and co-owner Alan Turover continually study food trends and industry demands. The products they hang their hats on are Caromel Ho Hos, Bakers Inn bread, Mrs. Paul’s and Van de Kamp’s fish dinners, and Subway breakfast items.

Consumer thinking
Working with the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, Turover Straus Group’s research and development is banking on new technology and processes.

For instance, in the years creating the microwavable bag of ground beef, the firm and the product licensing company secured two U.S. patents. The team hit a roadblock in America and took the research across the pond.

“The European market is ahead of us in microwave packaging,” Straus says, noting the efforts created a connection with United Kingdom-based Excelsior Technologies, the firm that licenses packaging for Birds Eye.

The package is designed with a cool zone at the top for grabbing and a compartment at the bottom to collect grease. Straus says the product has passed four consumer tests.

“Packaging like that needs to have extensive food-safety tasting to meet government approval,” he says.

Now, the packaged fresh meat is scheduled to hit store shelves in December. Straus says an undisclosed national retailer will release the product first in three regional markets.

Still in the development phase, he says the presmoked packaged meats are longer off. The end goal is to stabilize the procedure so that a meat processor could produce, package and sell the ready-to-be-cooked items.

Keys to those concepts are microwaves and supercharged ovens. A hurdle they’ve identified is the bad rap consumers have given to nuking foods.

“The microwave is a terribly misunderstood appliance. We’ve found it’s an ideal way,” he says of cooking especially moisture-rich foods, such as seafood, chicken and vegetables.

One of Subway’s Turbo Chef ovens is on loan in the TSG kitchen. Chefs Bob Hendrickson and Raymond Stopczynski have used it the last few years to test breakfast menu items in development for the sandwich chain of over 42,000 restaurants.

In working with Subway, Straus says the assignment to research breakfast options and other sandwiches came from corporate, but a nearby franchisee lent a helping hand.

“He’d come over once in a while and ask questions,” says Rick Straus, who operates three Subway stores and is not related to Tim Straus. “As they were developing stuff, he would bring it over and put it in our toaster oven and let us try them. We’d give them a little input.”

The Subway franchisee recalls TSG honing in on the hash browns, which aren’t deep-fried but browned in a toaster oven. TSG’s Straus says the firm advised on recipes all the way down to the oven button settings.

Main ingredients
While mixing science and creativity to meet client needs, TSG’s two owners represent either side of the equation.

Turover has a background in food technology and previously held vice president of development positions with Kraft Foods and Dole Foods. Straus came up the marketing side and worked at an agency in Greenville, S.C., before moving to Springfield for a job with Noble & Associates. After eight years, he left Noble as a senior vice president.

“We were about as different as any two people could be, but we both saw the new product development process was extremely slow and laborious,” says Turover, who was responsible for 700 employees in Kraft’s R&D department and recalls meetings with 18 disciplines at the table making only incremental decisions. “I recognized the need to get to the food faster.”

When the business partners launched their food-consulting agency in 1993 in Northbrook, Ill., the added ingredient was a chef on board. Turover maintains an office in the Chicago area, and visits Springfield for client meetings and focus groups, held between 12 and 20 times a year.

“It’s a very creative environment,” Straus says. “The hard part is getting things to work where they’re bulletproof for the consumer.”

TSG primarily works with private companies that serve grocery and convenience stores, food services and restaurants, as well as industry trade associations, such as the national boards for dairy, hazelnut and potato products. With the private companies, the partners don’t always know where their ideas will end up.

“They might come out with something exactly the way we presented it, or they might tweak it here or there,” Turover says.

“But we recognize it – maybe right away, maybe a few years later.”