The Queen City of Food

Springfield is more than the birthplace of Route 66. It’s the birthplace of Chicken Fries and Caromel Ho Hos.  

Last month, fast-food chain Burger King placed Chicken Fries on its permanent menu, and fans can thank the Noble & Associates Inc. employees in a Springfield test kitchen for helping develop that product in collaboration with Tyson Foods Inc. (NYSE: TYN).

The buzz about Chicken Fries is just another item pointing to Springfield’s history as a place creating the foods of tomorrow. Via Bob Noble’s advertising and consultancy firm, Noble & Associates, an industry in food-product development has taken root through former employees who have launched such companies as Marlin Network’s Food IQ and Turover Straus Group Inc.

And some of the biggest names in food routinely call on the local experts for tweaks and improvements to their menus and product lines. From Subway to Nabisco, Rally’s and Campbell’s, a bevvy of national brands can point to chefs and kitchens in Springfield for some of their top offerings.

“It really is quite remarkable given the small size of our city,” said Tim Straus, co-owner of Turover Straus Group who traces his resume back to Noble.

Straus points to food research and development by DairiConcepts LP, Dairy Farmers of America, International Dehydrated Foods and Red Monkey Foods.

His own company serves such clients as Subway, Sara Lee and Van de Kamp’s. Turover Straus has developed consumer-ready products such as Caromel Ho Hos, Bakers Inn Bread and recipes for Subway’s breakfast menu.

Noble track
At the fulcrum of the food-development scene is a trio of companies owned by Bob Noble: the Noble & Associates marketing agency; Food Channel LLC, an online food-content provider; and Culture Waves LLC, an insights and consultancy firm.

“I guess I could be considered the University of Food in the area. My alumni don’t do a very good job of sending me alumni checks,” Noble said with a laugh from his Chesterfield Village office.

Southwest Missouri had become a dumping ground for private-label products in the late 1960s, Noble said, so he began working with companies, such as Hiland Dairy, to promote local products. That effort led to Noble & Associates developing a niche in the food industry, landing one of the company’s game-changing clients in the early ’70s, Tyson Foods.

Trying to stay one step ahead of clients’ needs, Noble and crew would find ways to make food items more accessible to the public through recipe changes, repackaging or branding. About 35 years ago, Noble said the firm worked with Tyson to market a new “chicken chunk” product, which would become McDonald’s Chicken McNuggets.

“That’s when Tyson started growing larger chickens with larger breast meat and breaking them into chunks,” he said. “We were the agency behind Tyson. We helped them understand the consumer and how things are constantly evolving.

“That’s the business we have today.”

Noble’s kitchen – modeled after the Culinary Institute of America – has served as development grounds for Campbell Soup Co.’s V8 Splash fruit-vegetable drink, Burger King’s bacon sundae, Smucker’s Uncrustables sandwiches and Doritos’ X-13D “flavor experiment.”

The Noble food legacy also stretches to Marlin Network owner Dennis Marlin, a former Noble executive vice president, who has gone on to create the area’s largest advertising agency with 140 local employees and annual gross revenue of over $15 million, according to Springfield Business Journal list research. Marlin Network today has a client list that represents 70 brands through companies such as Unilever, Nestle and Starbucks.

“On the consultancy side, I think we are all from the same tree, so to speak,” Straus said.

Straus launched his company with business partner Alan Turover in 1993 after working for eight years as a senior vice president at Noble.

Turover Straus’ test kitchen in south Springfield recently has been home to efforts to create a microwavable ground-beef product – which, following production delays, is slated for store shelves this summer – and presmoked packaged meat for the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association.

Food IQ and beyond
Marlin Network affiliate Food IQ is known for developments on the dessert menu for Checkers Drive-In Restaurants Inc., which does business as Checkers and Rally’s, said Mindy Armstrong, director of insights and innovation for Food IQ.

“They are someone we work with on an ongoing basis for all of their menu innovations,” Armstrong said.

From start to finish, she said Food IQ’s staff of eight sits down with clients to explore food development, then to the kitchen and eventually on to consumer testing before clients launch into production.

The company mostly focuses on national clients such as Bush’s beans, TGI Fridays and Chili’s, but it also has helped local companies Andy’s Frozen Custard and Hotel Vandivort. For the Holiday Inn chain, Food IQ recently helped set its global food-service strategy.

“Most of our clients have the syndicated data, but they’re overwhelmed because there is so much. So, we take the information and put it into our funnel,” Armstrong said of industry data trackers Technomic and Food Genius. “From there, we’ve got a culinary team that is very efficient at understanding what’s going on in the marketplace and having a culinary perspective on it.”

At Noble & Associates, Culture Waves is centered on proprietary software, which searches the Internet for emerging trends. The real work, according to Noble, comes after a possible trend has been identified.

“Big data does not mean big picture,” he said.

The next identified trend might be milk flavored with cereal brands. Kay Logsdon, editor of Noble’s FoodChannel.com, said the trend is catching on in London and New York restaurants and cafes. That has led to budding conversations with an undisclosed cereal maker about a new production line that could land on store shelves.

Springfield, it seems, is a place for food-behavior specialists.

“It’s essentially curating behavior,” Logsdon said. “Understanding human behavior is at the front end of everything else we do.”[[In-content Ad]]