Institute For The Future

Looking Beyond Standardized Foods

A few months ago, I happened upon an outstanding, if brief article in Wired about all of the processes involved in making a bag of Cheetos. My favorite step, far and away, is quality control, which the article's author Brendan Koerner describes as involving:

 

Every half hour, an in-house lab analyzes the chemical composition of samples pulled from the cooking line to verify that the Cheetos have the right density and nutritional content. Then, every four hours, a four-person panel convenes to inspect and taste the snacks, comparing them to perfect reference Cheetos sent from Frito-Lay headquarters.

 

 

Something about the idea that there could be such a thing as "a perfect reference Cheeto" has been making me laugh for, well, several months now. Except it does make sense--producing anything at that scale requires incredible quality control and attention to detail, along with a concept of the perfect, platonic standard.

 

But while big food manufacturers can excel at standardization, smaller players can excel at offering something unique and authentic. Take this recently funded project on Kickstarter for a contract beer brewery, called Mystery Brewing Company, which bills its lack of standardization as one of its great strengths.

 

It's hard to create a consistent product when you're changing breweries. Yeast is an amazing organism that brings us the wonder that is great beer, but it is fickle. It reacts differently in different environments (even the shape and size of a fermenter can alter flavor profiles), but that's part of the art - and fun - of making beer. The fact is, no two batches of beer are ever identical, and I intend to capitalize on that.

 

This I promise: No two batches of my beer will ever be the same. There will be no set product line. Instead, I’ll have a constantly-rotating selection of beers. Think of it as a full line-up of seasonals. If a beer is popular? Certainly, I’ll make it again - but I’ll tweak it. I’ll always be asking myself, “How can I make this beer even better than it was before?” Each batch of beer will be dated and numbered uniquely, like you see on a bottle of wine or good liquor. Year to year, the beer will change (all beer does, even if breweries don't tell you it does), and I'll provide the tools for people to enjoy the changes.

 

 

I've never heard of a food maker playing up the individuality of its products quite so much, but in spirit, it's similar to a lot of what's happening in the U.S. food market: Shoppers are reconnecting emotionally to their food choices.

 

The meteoric rise in farmer's markets--a highly impractical, but often enjoyable way--to buy groceries is one example of this connection. Farmer's markets are events; they offer opportunities to socialize and listen to music, and, oh, by the way, pick up some fruit. I went to a similar event last week in San Francisco called Off the Grid, which is a group of small, high-end food truck operators who repurpose parking lots, set up some chairs and music, engage with the community, and, oh, by the way, also sell some food from their trucks.

 

At some level, food trucks are reminiscent of small scale entrepreneurs of the past--Carl, of Carl's Junior, started out by running a hot dog stand, for example. Over time, he, like other small scale food entrepreneurs of the twentieth century, became leaders of producing standardized, mass-produced foods--with the promise of a consistent, reliable meal being key to success.

 

But we're seeing signals--from the examples I highlighted above, to things like a diet plan based on eating rare species of plants and non-aquatic animals aimed at encouraging biodiversity--suggesting that the future of food entrepreneurship won't lie in producing such a standardized chip that it takes a specially trained staff to monitor for signs of deviation from the perfect, ideal snack. Instead, it may lie in lots of smaller decisions to give up on standardized food and instead offer variety.