R&D Radio: Brian Chau from Chau Time

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1:09you're not going to have a perfect product you may have a minimal viable product and you're going to try to launch in that capacity or you pivot and what we want to do here is make the decision making process easier for you across your supply chain across your stakeholders in manufacturing across the technical aspect of things as well as the commercial feasibility the engineering aspect of things. Hey everyone, this is Adam Yee, food scientist and podcast host of Startup CBG's new podcast section, R &D Radio, where we interview product developers and what they do and how they can build your CBG business.

1:44Today's guest is my friend Brian Chow, who leads Chow Time, an R &D operations consulting firm lowering the barrier to entry and participating in the food industry. They focus on providing a full suite of back-end services from concept to commercialization, and their specialty lies in the intersection of food science and food systems. We dive into why he believes fiber is the next big trend that will eventually surpass proteins, and he explains the term fiber stacking, a science he uses to create functional, better-for-you chocolate. Brian also breaks down how to navigate the inevitable trade-offs between cost, flavor, and nutrition to help you build a product that is actually commercially viable.

2:22Brian and I also did a fun 10-part podcast miniseries called Food Products FAQ. So if you liked our conversation here, check that out as well. Enjoy this episode with Brian Chow.

2:36Hey everyone, this is Adam Yee from the Startup CPG Podcast on R &D Radio. And I'm here with Brian Chow, founder of Chow Time, to talk about product development. And so let's get into it. Brian, we've known each other for a long time, actually. I think even pre-professional life. Yeah. We've had some talks through a mutual friend of ours through college, and now we're kind of in the same boat of private development consulting. You've helped me a lot with my business specifically, so I'd love to return the favor. And talk about Chow Time, and I'd love to know who you are and how did you get your start in private development.

3:11Definitely. Well, anytime it's Chow Time, as long as I'm here, I'm Brian Chow, food scientist, fungal fanatic, and food systems analyst at your service. I run my own R &D and operations consulting firm. I do have a team of 11 other individuals across the United States, continuous United States from Pacific over to East Coast. So we cover one of every time zone and we support basically everything on the back end. So we do new product development, reformulation, technical research design of ingredients, the nutraceuticals specifically, all the way over to commercialization. So that includes sourcing raw materials, command searches, regulatory review, food safety design, COGS development, QA, QC, and sensory.

3:52So we kind of do everything on the back end and support people, entrepreneurs, all the way up to the Fortune 500. So you do a whole breadth of things all over the nation, even some international, right, if I recall? Yes, yes. We've covered 20 other countries now at this point. Dang, that's crazy. What do you think you specialize in? There are a lot of private developers out there in the world and feel like everyone has their own special niche, but what have you specialized in? And also, what does your team get the most enjoyment out of doing? Yeah, we specialize in the concept of commercialization component.

4:23So we de-risk as much as possible. What we try to do is understand what is commercially feasible, what is viable infrastructure-wise, supply chain-wise within the United States or within the country of origin where manufacturing is going to happen. And then the more complex it is, that's what we love to do. So that could be something along the lines of taking a look at a specific breed of tomato and then going all the way down in the added value processing chain. Same could be applied for cacao or other types of ingredients of that nature. So if I were to go to you and kind of have an idea how does that generally look like to you?

5:02Like, how do people find you? And what do they say to you? And how do you get to where you want to understand the client a little bit better and what they're looking for? Definitely. Well, typically it's a 30-minute to an hour type of conversation depending on the complexity of the ask. And so if it's a simpler ask, then essentially we would be able to speak about the manufacturing of bars or manufacturing of granola. If it's more complex of an ask, it's along the lines of, let's say there's upcycling projects in which somebody wants to upcycle olives or blueberries, date seeds, and then transform it into something that's added value.

5:38That could be an ingredient added value, or it could be an application or a final product of the added value. So those are a little bit more complex. And that takes a bit longer to try to understand what is the end goal, what are the objectives or the parameters in developing the product brief, then explain that we work on a per project basis to begin with, and then we break it down into the appropriate phases to allow people to understand how to work with us. When you say phases, what does that generally look like? Within the realms of R &D, we look into four phases. So the first phase is to understand the sourcing, the infrastructure, the feasibility, taste testing the product, just so we understand the prioritization in the decision making process, so that we can come together and say, these are your rough formulas, these are your ingredients that we're going to start sourcing from.

6:25Is the rough estimate on costing and nutrition? Do you want to move forward? And so that's the more of that research component side of things. And then we go into the three rounds of development. Once we have the ingredients, once we have an understanding of the process of the contract manufacturer or in-house processing, then we can mobilize pretty quickly in the iterative process and deliver the appropriate samples with all the deliverables from cost to nutrition labels and processing. So you mentioned three rounds of development. Do you feel like that's a magic number in terms of rounds of development and a consultancy?

7:00I think it's a good amount of development with regards to rapid development to get into a minimal viable product. And sometimes if it is more of, say, reformulation, it could end earlier. It really depends on what stage the client is at and how technical they need the support in reformulation or the formulation. Yeah, so like, for example, of a spice mix versus a ready-to-drink product would be a difference in technicality, right? Right. So like more of the simpler projects could also end earlier in terms of timeframe. Depends on how complex the sourcing initiative is as well. But if it's already built in supply chain and it's just one specific ask, which may be substitution of flavors or finding a backup supplier in the case of the worst case situation.

7:46So cover all our bases. It could be a few months. It could be more than a few months. It depends on how complex. So I estimate like it can be three months at most for simpler projects. More complex ones would be six, nine months, maybe a little bit longer, especially if it's nutraceutical ingredient development. Yeah, that one's a big one, right? Yeah. So speaking of kind of nutraceuticals and all these different types of products, do you have a story about a product that you worked on that you felt you had a really good impact and you just felt good about it, I feel? Yeah, a tale of two stories or two chocolates, if you will, instead of two cities.

8:21Just last year, I helped develop chocolate products that are more in the better for you functional health perspective. And so one is Dirty Gut, and they're on the Startup CPG channel. What we supported them on was sourcing the appropriate raw materials so that they have prebiotics and probiotics encapsulated, embedded into the chocolate. We took a look at the processing from bean to bar so that we can grind down the fibers. And we did fiber stacking to be able to achieve one gram of fiber per 10 gram piece. What do you mean by fiber stacking? Fiber stacking essentially is to take multiple different types of fibers indigestive, if they're GLP-1 absorbed, and be able to cover the spectrum of the different fibers so that there's more benefits than just one type of fiber.

9:09So we had an upcycled cocoa fiber from the cocoa husks that was integrated, as well as an acacia fiber, which helped with the binding aspect of things between the fats and the sweeteners. And then we also took a look at chick root inulin to be able to provide more of a digestive system. So it offers more of these prebiotics for the variety of gut microbiome to be able to digest because there's a lot of different bacteria in the gut microbiome. And each of them may have slightly different preferences for food or prebiotics to consume. That's interesting. And you mentioned like, I don't hear a lot about people using stuff outside the cocoa bean, right?

9:49Right. And I'm sure that supply chain, I don't know if you work directly with the farmers or anything like that, but that sounds also really cool as well. Now in this particular project, we worked directly with a contract manufacturer that already sources everything. And so we augmented with all the other ingredients to make sure that we hit the marketing and branding that DirtyGut wants and be able to make sure that we're able to replicate that at scale. One thing we did take a look into that's heavily in a shortage, if you will, is A2 milk powder specifically. So the dairy industry, A2 is a milk protein that is a little bit more digestible than the A1 milk.

10:23It's most prevalent in the United States at the current moment. And in that capacity, because of that digestive gut health benefit, it's extremely high demand. Yeah. But the other chocolate is more about women's health. This one is using lactoferrin as a key ingredient. This is for Femme Health, and it's run by an LA mom who is iron deficient herself. And she wanted to find another way to consume a supplement without having to consume another gummy bear or another powder to make shakes. And she's just getting so tired of that. And the iron supplementation through tablets, they don't taste that well.

11:01I mean, iron is very metallic. And so lactoferrin answers a different question. Instead of adding more iron in a product, how can we have better absorption? And lactoferrin as a protein binds onto iron for better absorption purposes. So we partnered with the right ingredient supplier, Helena, and figured out the supply chain, bean to bar and went all the way to the farmers to be able to find that these are low and heavy metals, but high, naturally speaking, in iron and make sure that it's very integrated for the masking naturally because cocoa is bitter to be able to have that complementary role to put in some sort of bioactive, in this case, lactobarin.

11:41That's very cool. And so those are two different nutraceutical-based chocolates. Is that right? Is that the right word? Yeah, I am trying to push more for these better-for-you chocolates, nutraceutical, because cacao or chocolate, generally speaking, if it's not laden with sugar or additives, is generally regarded as pretty healthy. These projects were made during kind of a chocolate supply crisis, right? I'd love to hear your take on that. Yeah, it's actually very serendipitous. I mean, if you're looking at infrastructure development in the United States, there's not a lot of bean-to-bar manufacturers.

12:11There's a lot of consolidation. And then if you're to take a look overseas, West Africa grows most of the cacao. What we had to do is find a way to find different varietals, heirlooms or otherwise, smaller farmers, and go direct bean-to-bar in that capacity to circumnavigate and offer more benefits in controlling the supply chain for each of these companies. And then from there, what we wanted to do was, in Dirty Guts' case, we wanted to take a look at upcycling of the ingredients, extend the flavor profile by utilizing the cocoa husks. What we hope to do in the future is probably take a look into the cocoa pulp, the fruit itself, and see how sweet it can be, dehydrate that, and grind that into the process if it's possible.

12:58So there's still a lot of early leads in supply chain that we need to set up, but it is a good time to do so because everybody is scrambling to try to restructure their supply chains. Interesting. And I'm curious about with all these supply chain things happening, how do you kind of figure that out? I think we try to keep our pulse in connecting with all the different suppliers that come towards our doors. So in some cases, it's ingredient suppliers that will give us updates in terms of in real time they have in stock or they're not in stock of certain ingredients. For the cacao industry, it's such a huge industry.

13:33You'll hear a lot from the large players, Barry Callebo, Blommers, etc., give you updates on commodity trading. And then at the same time, be able to interact with farmers from overseas to be able to understand, you know, what is the reality on the ground in terms of how flexible they are in being able to produce the particular ingredient, being able to produce added value product, and then be nimble to get that into the United States, which is helpful for our import, export and working with 20 other countries to be able to integrate that within the infrastructure of the United States of added value or novel technologies.

14:08or upcycling, if you will. Dang, that's a lot. But you know, it's important. It's commodities. I feel like every single food product you ever think about, if even just the one ingredient has such a big history and such a wide supply chain, right? Yeah. And we always want to make sure we have a backup supplier if or whenever possible. We don't want to have another situation where it's like a David Protein Bar type company buying out Epogee. So we try to make sure we de-risk as much as possible for our clients. You're the second person mentioned David Protein. Rachel, who was a mutual friend of ours, also mentioned David, and I just found it kind of funny.

14:42I feel like every R &D person I'm going to interview is going to talk about that company. It's very relevant. I mean, it's not that far off. That's true. So you've done a lot of different products. You've worked in a lot of different places and have worked in a lot of different segments of the food industry. Overall, what's one piece of advice that you think would be useful for entrepreneurs in CPG as they make or improve their product? I think it's to create a list of parameters with ranges so that in order to communicate with a food scientist or product developer, we can't read your mind and you can't read our mind.

15:12And so to put something on a piece of paper to say, this is what I'm estimating now in terms of expectations on cogs, in terms of what I believe mouthfeel texture would feel like or what the shelf life should be. At that point, we can take a look at that and be able to say, let's readjust to what's a little bit more realistic. or we can try to push the boundaries of these parameters. And then from there, add on the priorities and the decision-making process. So between say cogs, flavor, and shelf life or nutrition, one of them has to take precedent because they will conflict with each other. The best flavor may not be the best cost of goods sold.

15:50The best cogs may not be the best nutrition. The best shelf life or commercial feasible product may not necessarily be fitting of your brand in terms of acceptable or unacceptable ingredients. So I think what we want to do is be able to say, let's set the appropriate guardrails. And if you don't know, make assumptions. And then we as the technical people will then help guide you through that process. We'll help challenge or reinforce the parameters by sending you samples and say, this is your best COGS. And we'll do it in a blind taste test. So you can fill out a survey and say, okay, this is what I think.

16:24And then we reveal to you, iteration A could be the best COGS. But what did you really think about the flavor profile? iteration B could be the best flavor. What do you think about nutrition? iteration C could be the best nutrition, but what do you think about commercial feasibility and or shelf life? So on and so forth. And then we can actually come together and say, okay, we've tested the extremes on both ends. Where directionally can we move? Should we reprioritize the decision-making process? Should we double down on the decision-making process or should we pivot? And I think that is pretty critical in the communication aspect of working with a food scientist.

16:57Yeah, I think that's a really good point. And I think as a food scientist who worked on corporate and small businesses, what I understand is that it is a series of tradeoffs per iteration, right? So when you show people a blind, like sample A, sample B, and there's generally a tradeoff you have to choose as you kind of go through it, right? And I think that's what we do as food scientists really well is that we express these tradeoffs that you can't have it on a perfect product. Like maybe you can if you've found the right time or if you have the right money. generally you have to have a choice about choosing one trade-off versus another trade-off.

17:33Exactly. I mean, that's business generally speaking too, right? You're not going to have a perfect product. You may have a minimal viable product and you're going to try to launch in that capacity or you pivot. And what we want to do here is make the decision-making process easier for you across your supply chain, across your stakeholders in manufacturing, across the technical aspect of things, as well as the commercial feasibility engineering aspect of things. In generally for your client base, what do people value most of through like kind of these trade-off tests? So is it one, is it flavor?

18:03Is it cost? Does it just depend on the person? I'd love to hear a little bit more about that. It depends on the project and the type of company. So startups, oftentimes, they would not prioritize cost first. They'll typically prioritize better flavor or nutritional attributes that calls out to the specific brand and marketing piece as a point of differentiation. If it's a larger company, cost oftentimes, so long as it meets the expectations within reasonable flavor acceptance, then that's what they'll opt for. Very cool. Very cool. Yeah. I think at least what I've learned from like people who just start out, taste seems to be the penultimate factor.

18:43And then I do feel though, eventually cost catches up with you as you kind of build your business and you go through the storm of scaling your business. Definitely. At some point, people want to expand, especially within the United States. They want to expand to the middle of America. They want to expand their accounts and cost of goods sold just isn't sustainable at the initial stages that when they launch their product. So they have to figure out a way to reduce their COGS so they can grow their business, reallocate some of those extra earnings into even more working capital, etc. So I think in that capacity, it opens up two major components.

19:20Do you reformulate through the context of reducing your cogs through supply chain or changing the formula? Or do you increase the throughput of the manufacturing capacity to be able to sell more products at a cheaper price because you're amortizing or breaking the cost down for each production run? Got it. I'd love to hear your thoughts on some trends that are popping up. I mean, you mentioned like nutraceutical chocolate, but what other types of trends or ingredients that you see are popping up in your field of view? Yeah, I see a crossover in terms of fiber having an uptick, especially for gut health perspective, and different types of fibers, whether it's like upcycle, digestive, prebiotic, the variety of fibers and where it's coming from, and the benefits is growing and growing.

20:08I would still say that it's still falling behind protein at the moment, but it is growing in demand. So I would say that's like second or third top of mind for a lot of people. And I think this follows the trend with the GLP-1 readiness with food as medicine, as well as initiative from a healthcare perspective. And in some aspects with the Maha movement and the regulatory changes in accordance to Maha, make America healthy again in that perspective. So you have a combination of these different variables from a macro perspective where fiber is becoming a key attribute in that perspective. And then on the other end, ingredients as bioactives, as nutraceuticals that fall under women's health and wellness or sexual health and wellness and these niche that becoming pretty big sectors.

20:52And so bioactives could be better extraction processes for mushrooms, taking a look at kava and serene capacity, taking a look at ingredients like lactoferrin or something that's similar. These are ingredients that I see that's trending upwards as well. So do you think fiber is going to catch up to protein or do you think protein is always going to have this handle on the world? Because right now we see protein everywhere, right? I think fibers are going to catch up and surpass the protein at some point. Oh, they claim. And I think it may not be the next five years. It may be 10 years or so. And I say that because fibers can also have the benefit of multiple functionality.

21:34So some fibers, like acacia fiber, can bind and act. It's a gum, essentially. It's another word for a gum. So there's a way to take a look at fibers for extra flavor profile, like as in the cocoa husks and cocoa fiber. Same could be said with, say, blueberry skins or raspberry seeds. So we're looking at flavor extension. We're looking at antioxidants. We're looking at color contribution in certain aspects of things. We've taken a look at upcycled pomegranate shells for added color and flavor as a cocoa replacer. Same thing with plums and date seeds as a replacer for coffee. So there's a lot of variability that we could utilize.

22:13and oftentimes it's coming from fiber or these upcycled ingredients are pretty high in fiber, generally speaking. Huh, I haven't thought of it like that. That's a really cool insight. I always thought that fiber will affect things as more research comes out with the health. I think colon cancer is something that I think a lot of people in their 30s worry about. And I think if there's more data that associates what causes the reduction in colon cancer, which I have a hunch is going to be fiber. I think that's where it's going to like overtake protein. I agree. I think it was last year, there's some studies that came out or research that came out where people are looking at what is the heavy metal count in these proteins, these concentrated proteins, etc.

22:51Then also people are, if you over consume protein, then essentially at some point you need fiber to push the protein through the body and the system because not all the protein may be digested. And so fiber is coming to compound as an extra benefit for these high protein products that may not be easily digestible for a large population size. That's true. I'd love to know, like, you have an obsession with mushrooms, and I'd love to dive into that a little bit more. Let me hear a little bit about mushrooms from you. So I love mushrooms. I grew up loving mushrooms. I forage for mushrooms. I grow mushrooms.

23:26And in terms of mushrooms, there's a lot of different mushrooms that are not only from an edible perspective, culinarily speaking, but also applicable from a traditional Chinese medicine or holistic perspective and nutraceuticals. And so with this love and the added value of nutraceutical sciences and extraction, we are taking a look at different elements in having more bioavailability of each of these bioactives, taking a look and exploring novel processes such such as refractive window drying, for example, to be able to create flakes to have it better dissolve into water. So it's pretty exciting to see where we can push the science and the extracts and discover and explore new bioactives within mushrooms, not only from a culinary perspective, but also from a nutrition and food as medicine perspective.

24:19That's really cool. And I think we'll wrap up here. I'd love to know where people can find you and what kind of companies that you seem to gel well with. And also, I think we should talk about our podcast that we've done in the past called Food Products FAQ. Yeah, we've done a podcast, Food Products FAQ. It's 10 episodes. It walks through a specific component of the consulting process, whether it's contract manufacturing only or sensory only. And I think that gives a wide perspective of the breadth of knowledge and capabilities that food scientists do, not just only product development, but the multifaceted approach that is required in the development process and the research process that goes through it from concept to commercialization.