Patric Food & Beverage Development will:
- Create Your Exceptional Food & Beverage Products
15+ years of experience producing multi-award-winning products. Experience with confectionery and much more. - Optimize Your Existing Food & Beverage Product Formulations
Improve & optimize products that are not standing up to the competition. - Optimize Your Existing Processes
Improve & optimize your production process to save time & money. - Solve Your Tricky Technical Problems
We can use science to solve problems related to ingredient & process variation. - Much More
Do you need other food and beverage assistance? We can help!
Our Mission:
We help food and beverage companies develop higher-quality, better-tasting products through science and foodcraft—so you can captivate customers and scale successfully.
As seen in:
A new era of data-driven food and beverage development is here. Are you ready?
The mainstream and specialty food and beverage markets are saturated with mediocre products. But consumers are getting tired of it. How do you make sure you’re equipped to compete as quality expectations rise?
Why science & quality matter
Whether formulation or scaling craft recipes for market demand, masking bitter flavors in functional products, or figuring out why your product isn’t lasting long enough on the shelves—food science can provide your answer.
Quality and consistency are how you keep customers returning. This is how you compete in a market flooded with mediocre products.
Solving the functional food & beverages flavor problem
What’s the most common complaint about functional foods? Say it with me: bitter aftertaste.
Many functional ingredients are bitter. It’s a fact of life. Most manufacturers simply add functional ingredients to recipes without accounting for that fact.
But what if you were empowered by the knowledge and experience of a PhD in bitterness modification? What kind of flavors would you focus on then?
“Dr. Alan’s extensive knowledge, enthusiasm, and high level of teaching skills have been truly inspirational—our week of food-science consulting exceeded my highest expectations.”
Josefin Zernell
Mork Chocolate Australia
Founder“I told Dr. Alan: make the best. Don’t limit your creativity. Product quality is most important… He delivered these nanoemulsion gummies and my marketing team couldn’t stop eating them because the flavor blew their minds. They ate so many that—well, imagine a line of creatives moonwalking in business attire, holding onto the wall, trying to get down the stairs.”
Ken Bender
R&R Manufacturing
Co-Owner & Head of Operations“[Alan McClure] has won an award every year…ten years in a row. A record-breaking 26 Good Food Awards and 350,000 chocolate bars; that’s a lot of happy people.”
Sam Mogannam
Good Food Awards
Master of CeremoniesDr. Alan: Founder & Head Alchemist
Before I became a food scientist & flavor mage…I spent time working as a line cook, followed by a year travelling in France, which encompassed an eye-opening adventure in deliciousness. I then spent 15+ years running Patric Chocolate winning awards as a chocolate maker of some renown. When I wanted to go molecular on what makes chocolate and other foods taste so good, I got my PhD in the chemistry of flavor.
And now I’m sharing that knowledge with you, to develop better food & beverage products for the hungry masses yearning for yummy.
FAQ
If you have a question about food, science, beverages, or chemistry…chances are we can help you.
If you don’t see your answer here, feel free to reach out with any question.
Why are my functional foods and beverages turning out bitter?
Good flavor is often a matter of balance. For our purposes that generally means sweet, sour, salty, and bitter.
A number of different elements cause bitterness in functional foods. For one thing, the molecular structure of many plant-derived bioactive ingredients makes them inherently bitter to our taste receptors. Along with that, certain process steps may also introduce or enhance bitterness—such as roasting, adding acidic ingredients, or even ingredient purity.
But science-based formulation doesn’t mean adding a bunch of fancy chemicals. Even clean-label functional foods and beverages can be bitter-balanced with natural sugars and the aromas of fruits and spices. That’s the magic of flavor chemistry—once you know how food molecules dance with our senses, you can summon all kinds of natural elements to solve the puzzle.
But if that’s not enough—there’s our proprietary blend of all-natural plant-derived ingredients specifically designed to encapsulate, block, and/or otherwise dramatically reduce bitterness in functional products. Currently available only to clients with custom formulations.
How come my gummies aren’t setting right or are turning out watery?
Gummies are by far the most popular category of edibles on the market. But that doesn’t mean they’re easy to manufacture—nor that all gummies are made equal. There are several different gelling ingredients for making gummies, each with their own pros and cons.
Gummies that don’t set may be suffering from a number of different glitches. It could be as simple as forgetting to decrease the proportion of water when scaling a batch. Or it could have something to do with pH or temperature. Or there could be something off about your gelling agent.
That’s about all we can say without knowing more about your recipe. Feel free to reach out with specific questions. At Patric Development we can call on some scientific lightning to resuscitate your gummy recipe and help you improve the flavor at the same time.
That said though, we always recommend you work with a food science consultant about edibles gummy formulation before you get started. We can save you time, money, and headaches at every step of the process.
What do food & beverage customers want?
Our founder and formulations wizard, Dr. Alan McClure, is a multi-award-winning expert in flawless flavor. With 15+ years of experience in the premium- and craft-food business, he has a sixth sense for what consumers love and what they hate.
We can also help you find out exactly what your customers want through a process of sensory analysis/consumer focus groups. This will all help you avoid disappointing your customers and distributors in the future.
How does food & beverage science consulting work?
Every project is different and we customize our processes to fit your needs. But generally we’ll figure out the problem and lay out a strategy together for solving it. Then we break it down into science-based action steps based on a timeline that fits your budget and goals.
Check out our Services page for more about the Patric Development process.
Do I have to pay for the initial consultation?
No! The initial conversation and any ideas or information we send you is complimentary.
We stand out by offering food science knowledge and creative value you can’t get anywhere else. Whatever you get from the initial consultation is just a hint of what we offer with full service.