Flavor Panels (aka Dinner Parties)

How do food companies make decisions on product formulas or recipes? They rely on food panels or groups of trained flavor panelists to tell them what they like. In many ways Supper Clubs are like food panels. The menu developer and the cook are looking to their dinner party guests to tell them what they liked. And, what was a bad idea.

A few weeks ago I developed a menu for our local supper club based on Tapas. This last weekend there were 3 dinner parties in our neighborhood where 27 people were flavor panelists telling us what they liked and what they did not. Supper Clubbers by nature are nice. It is pretty hard to get real, critical feedback directly. You might hear though the grapevine that somebody didn’t like something. But it is rare.

The one theme of feedback that I hear is that my menus are too hard and too complicated. GUILTY! I developed the original menu with 12 items and had the goal to get it down to 6. We had a trial run dinner party and my flavor panel (aka dinner party guests) argued long and loud to keep it at 10. This translated into a 13 page menu/recipe packet. There is no question that the sheer volume of recipes was daunting. The good news is that with 8 to 10 people at the dinner party there was plenty of opportunity to delegate and share the workload.

The story that is often told in this blog space is that I am a trained flavor panelist. The truth is that I have been trained 3 times. One of the reasons for going through training three times, is that I am not very good. A truly discerning palette is rare and a gift. For example, I worked in the chocolate business and we had a senior Sales Manager named Bill who thought he was the expert on chocolate. Well after training and testing it turned out that Bill couldn’t hold a candle to his secretary Sharon. Poor Bill never recovered.

Another reality is the old marketing line we used to use for our Flavors of Cooking line of products at Kraft Food Ingredients: “Nothing influences that flavor food more than how it is cooked”.It is so true. Our friend that hosted the dinner party that we attended, explained to me why she is intimated by hosting a party where the author of the menu is a guest. She reminded me of the time where 3 groups of dinner parties were merged into one house. So 3 different cooks prepared each item. Most of the dishes looked completely different. My friend was worried that the dishes at her party would not look anything like what the author had intended. The good news was twofold:

Everything I saw looked exactly as it was supposed to.
It doesn’t really matter if it looks like what the author intended as long as it tastes pretty good.

Did your flavor panel like it? That’s all that matters!

Tapas Menu

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The Intimidation Factor

Invite Paul and he will do the cooking. The word in our Supper Club is that having Paul at a dinner party can be intimidating. People must think one of two things:

1. I know what I am doing
2. I am a jerk

It must be number two, because I certainly don’t know what I am doing. Trust me, I am winging it.

It reminds me of when I worked at a Maxwell House Coffee plant in California. We had a tour of General Foods upper management. One Marketing Manager, asked the crusty old plant manager, how many coffee beans were in the huge cooling bin after the roaster? Without missing a beat, he says 3,300,030 to 3,300,040. She wrote his comment down as gospel. I must have given old Bert a quizzical look because he turns to me and whispers: “Say it with confidence kid, and they will believe anything”.

My buddy Joe Chaudoin figured out the “Invite Paul and he will cook” strategy years ago. He heard the Supper Club wives being intimidated having to host a party for the author of the menu. Like I really know what I am doing? Truth is that I am trying to figure out things like all the rest.

(Note: Speaking of intimidation..this picture is from when Joe and I played golf at Bethpage Black Course, site of the U.S. Open. They use the sign to scare off golfers of lesser ability. Joe and I were too stupid to heed the warning)

I will usually do a little research. The wealth of information on YouTube and Google is amazing. A little practice goes a long way. If there is something I haven’t made before, I have been known to make a trial run. Actually, Joe has been a guinea pig for me more than a few times. What some won’t do for a free meal?

A favorite story of mine that says a lot about Joe, it involved a chicken dinner. Joe was once asked to pass a piece of white meat chicken. Joe responded: “What do you mean white meat?” Joe was clueless. In his book, chicken is chicken. With all this said, he is one of the most appreciative guests I have ever had. And yes, the bar is not that high.

The moral of this Supper Club story is never be afraid to ask for help. Past that, research and practice goes a long way in realizing success.

Featured Image

Note this picture is of my popular Romaine Wedge Salad. It is a great salad , but it isn’t all that easy to make for the weak of heart. Yes it can be intimidating, as it takes about 10 different steps. Don’t be intimidated…give it a try!

New Communication Rules To Live By

With Supper Clubs and with life, the key to success is communication. In today’s multimedia world, we have more tools than ever to communicate. This is not always a good thing. People put things in a text or email, that they would never say in a face to face conversation. As with most things in life, the more people that are involved, the greater chance for mis-communication. We had an excellent example a few years ago. Email was used to communicate a change of plans and a newcomer to the club got upset. If someone had talked to the new person, explaining the situation and past practice, there would have been no problem. Instead, email led to a meltdown. It became a classic case of “no good deed goes unpunished”.

Check out the recipe for Ultimate Secret Recipe Brownies

We had a supper club meltdown caused by cancelations and mis-communication. Our neighborhood Supper Club was quite large with 5 dinner parties going on a given night with 4 couples at each party. So with 40 people involved it can get complicated. The leader of our club does a masterful job of scheduling through difficulties. The rule in our club is that if you cancel, it is up to you to find a substitute. We have a list of 30 or more subs so there is usually a good pool of alternates. If you have difficulty finding a sub, it initially falls back to the host of the dinner party. When we are hosting and we have cancelations I look at it as a recruiting opportunity. The host can call in reinforcements from anywhere. I have been known to pull people in from work, the gym, golf course, or anywhere. My wife has accused me a pulling strangers off the interstate.

The night of the meltdown was caused by multiple cancelations. The leader of the club made a decision to consolidate dinner parties, as was the normal practice. An email was sent out explaining that one party was being eliminated. The hostess whose party was eliminated was new to the club and was very offended. The poor leader thought she was doing the “Newby” a favor by solving the scheduling issue and saving the hostess from all the work involved with hosting. The Newby felt that she was being arbitrarily picked on. Email nasty-grams were sent and quite simply, it got ugly. To be honest it was a case where email was the standard operating procedure, but simply does not work.

New Communication rules to live by:

Never use email or text if any bad emotion is involved.
If you are irritated don’t push send.
Face to face communication is best.
Direct phone contact is second best.
If you have two touches of telephone tag use text message to get a person to person meeting or call scheduled.
Voicemail is next best but dangerous.
Be really careful what you put in writing. Email and text can be great but you miss out on the chance to read your audience and adapt your message. Plus, they don’t go away and keep hordes of lawyer gainfully employed. The really bad thing about emails and texts is that people will write things that they would never say face to face.
Blogging will piss off your sisters. As the little brother, I have a history of making “Snarky” comments. I will admit that I can be a jerk. Even when I am justified….Snarky is probably a bad thing. Being Snarky towards a family member on the internet, even when funny…will get you in trouble

Please note that I have broken just about every one of my “Rules” in writing this blog. Oh well…

At the end of the day it is hard to avoid miscommunication and feelings getting hurt. Common sense and sensitivity go a long way. Sometimes bad stuff just happens. Writing a nasty email isn’t necessarily bad. Writing a nasty email and hitting send usually is.