Today I’d like to tell you a bit more about the first lab sessions I did last week.
The main goal was to create Happy Bags of course: a powder from pure raspberries that is soluble in water, a 100 % healthy and a 100 % tasty. A drinking sollution that makes water fun, tasty and is packed with benefits only. (I will elaborate on these benefits whe the product is finished, because, as I told you in my last blog, the recipe is changing for the better all the time)
The engineers already warned me beforehand that I wouldn’t walk out of the lab after 2 days with the magical Happy Bags in my pockets. While walking into the lab, they stressed the fact again, that product development often takes months, sometimes even years.
We had that conversation while I was given lab shoes and a lab apron, I felt both excited and at my all time low at the same time, my guess is the shoes definitely had something to do with it. I’m not exaggerating, there are pictures above.. It’s shoes, Im a woman. We take drinking clean serious. And shoes too. Ok, ok, I’m moving on. I’m over it. I’m letting go 😉
I quickly understood what they meant when I arrived at the lab. There were 3 huge machines waiting for me and only me. Each being handled by its own engineer, for me and only me. There’s no point in getting into details of what each machine does and how we tested the several options out, but to give you an idea in short, here’s what we did two ten-hour-days in a row:
A 100 kg of delicious raspberries were being moulded into a soft puree, then put on a drying belt and then moulded into soft, georgeous powder, which you can see on the pictures above. At each stage we tested the solubilty, tasted the goodies, moulded some more raspberries and amended the machines towards our needs again, in order to get the best, finest powder we needed as the basic component for the Happy Bags! It was exciting, because we could see each change we made to the moulding system affecting our powder in a good way, time flew and we were even moulding by hand and tasting our 97th cup of raspberry powder while it was already pitch dark outside… crazy days. I came home smelling of raspberry and stains all over, it was in my hair and nose, on my clothes, even on my socks (them lab shoes, I tell you…). It felt like I came home from Mars after 2 days in a raspberry lab bubble.
We’ve learned a lot with these first tests and are now able to put in place the right and necessary next steps in order to have the best and most cost-effective product line, which is of course also important so that the consumer can buy the Happy Bags at a good price.
So no Happy Bags yet, but definitely a big step closer to them. Hopefully we’ll be able to schedule the next tests soon. When and if these result in Happy Bags, the next steps will be fine tuning the taste through test panels and creating the right package for the wonderful Happy Bags. A packaging that ensures the freshness and keeps all the goodness inside but also looks good from the outside!
There’s still a big journey ahead of us and a long road to Happy land, so stay tuned for more episodes of #thehappybagsjourney right here.
Love,
Isabelle
PS. Pictures taken at the magnificent food lab: http://www.foodpilot.be/