Last year snack manufacturer Royaan introduced a revolutionary new line of snacks that no longer have to be deep-fried: they can be prepared in the oven. This summer, the company won the Gold Wheel of Retail Award for the best new product launched in Dutch supermarkets in the past 12 months. R&D Manager Ton van Ekeren talks about the long road from test kitchen to mass production. “I wasn’t prepared to settle for anything less than a 10 out of 10.”
“Market analyses indicate that in both the retail and catering industries there is a need for products that can be prepared quickly and easily in the oven or microwave.” Ton van Ekeren quotes out loud from the original project request issued by Royaan director Bart Bakker in 2013. For Van Ekeren the project had an element of déjà vu: in 2006 he worked on the development of oven snacks as a product developer at Buitenhuis Snacks. But the plans were put away in a drawer – too complex, too many uncertainties and too many other priorities.
There is no denying the complexity, says Van Ekeren. “Creating products with a breadcrumb coating that can be prepared in a microwave or convection and emerge just as crisp as they would from a deep fryer has been one of the great challenges in the food industry for decades. After we stopped working on it, the basic technology was further developed in Switzerland. At a certain point we thought we might be able to do something with it.”
That was in the spring of 2013. This time things were different: the development of oven snacks was consistent with the manufacturer’s new strategic mission. “Royaan wants to establish a position at the premium end of the market by meeting the needs of today's more conscious consumers with innovations that deliver convenience, quality and taste,” says Van Ekeren. “Being able to claim that your products no longer have to be deep-fried is a huge step in the right direction.”
Having discussed the matter with its shareholder, Royaan decided to embrace the challenge of developing a new product line. Van Ekeren: “The problem is, you might develop something great in the lab, but there’s no guarantee you can achieve the same result in the factory. Producing a sample of one kilo is very different from producing a batch of 1,000 kilos an hour. The conditions in a test kitchen are totally different from the conditions in a factory. To give you an idea: when I roll a croquette in the test kitchen by hand I use approximately half a bar of pressure. The lowest setting on our machines is 60 bar. They are completely different parameters.”