So you’ve come upon a problem in your business that calls for expert help. You’ve browsed some food consultants’ websites and seen a lot of exciting promises and impressive portfolios. But can they help you, or do you need a food science consultant?

Food consultants in general know a lot. And they’ve helped a lot of businesses to achieve success.

But who do you turn to when you don’t know what you need? How do you get the best bang for your buck? What kind of expert should you be looking for?

Well, like all things in craft and science, that depends on several variables.

Not all food consultants are created equal

There are a lot of very smart and talented food consultants specializing in various elements of the food and beverage industry.

Maybe they’ve worked for years at a RTD beverage company, and have a vast body of experience and knowledge, offering incredible consulting value for beverage producers.

Maybe they were a master brewer at a well-known craft brewery, and have tons of insight on fermentation and flavor balance.

Or maybe they’re a marketing genius with a knack for spotting opportunities in the food and beverage market.

But what if you want to scale your gourmet cannabis candy formulation for cost-effective manufacturing?

Or what if you want to remove the alcohol from something that normally has alcohol in it, and still have it taste incredible?

Or let’s say you have a solid customer base and you want to formulate a new product that appeals to the broadest segment of them, meaning delicious with no room for error?

When it comes to solving problems they’ve never seen before—even the brightest, most creative food consultants likely don’t have the training or experience to design an effective experiment to figure out exactly why your edible baked good is showing sugar bloom, or set up precise formulation trials to find the best possible recipe for your next CBD gummy release.

There’s nothing wrong with that limitation—after all, most food consultants don’t have a food science degree, let alone a doctorate in flavor chemistry, resting on a solid foundation of formal experiment design/analysis and sensory-science experience. And as long as they don’t pretend to offer something they can’t, food consultants are an important contributor to the world of edible production.

But the fact is, there are some problems in food and beverage production that can only be solved through rigorous food science. And that’s where a food science consultant comes in.

What to consider when hiring a food science consultant

There are a few things to think about, before reaching out about food science consultation. While we’re always rooting for your success, your situation may not be the best fit for what we do. At least not yet…

Size of your business

There’s no hard and fast rule, but we generally work with medium to larger companies or well-organized startups who have budgets for R&D.

Whether that comes from established revenue streams, or venture capital doesn’t matter as much as the drive to do what it takes to get to the root of whatever we’re trying to solve.

For some projects we may also train members of your team to run certain elements, so we can be as efficient as possible with our direct consultation time. If you have people on your team who you trust to play such a role, we have even more options available. We don’t always need to be on-site for the magic of food science to work.

Business stage

You don’t have to be a 30-year brand for food science consulting to make sense—but we’re generally not the right choice for throwing ideas at the wall and seeing what sticks.

We work with well-funded startups and generational food manufacturers alike, who have a specific challenge or idea they’re hoping to delve into deeply. Food science is about precision and investigation. Not aimless brainstorming.

For self-funded people with a good idea and no idea what’s next…let’s talk once you’ve done some preliminary research, have a specific product in mind, and have created a viable business plan with a solid source of funding to get started.

Type of project

Keep in mind that not every project needs the specialization that a food science consultant brings. For example, you don’t need a food scientist just to outsource the manufacturing of your product. There are plenty of so-called Co Packers set up to do just that, for any type of food you can think of.

Non-science-based food consultants can help with:

Kitchen-to-carton product development
Co-packing (contract packager/manufacturer)
Sales & marketing
Branding

But when it comes to edible product formulation, technical problem solving, scaling, optimizing for multiple objectives, and shelf-life or other food-quality advising—food science offers an array of tools for getting precision results and eliminating expensive guesswork.

Don’t need the power of food science? Here’s a helpful directory of food consultants across a variety of fields.

Budget constraints

Please be clear and upfront about the available budget for your project. This may seem obvious, but you’d be surprised how many people try to prevaricate, hoping for some kind of price match against other food consultant quotes they’ve gathered.

But that ain’t how it works. This is food science. You get what you pay for.

It’s not worth your time for us to get deep into the problem at hand, only to balk at the project proposal price tag. We can help you make the most of your budget, and the quality of our work may seem miraculous to the untrained eye—but we can’t magically make something out of nothing, and we don’t work on spec.

Budget accordingly, and you’ll get the returns you’re looking for.

Why are food science consultants expensive?

Science isn’t simply a body of knowledge. It’s a very specific process for understanding our world by isolating variables and eliminating bias in observation.

It’s not expensive; it’s valuable.

Food science isn’t just fill-in-the-blank. Designing effective experiments requires a lot of experience and creativity. High-level specialists always cost a little more—because the returns can be much greater.

A doctorate in food science comes with more than just a fancy title and framed certificate. It represents thousands of hours immersed in the best education, labs, and methods in the world. It indicates a mind sculpted to make connections, up and down the scale.

But again, you’re not just paying for all the knowledge we bring to bear. You’re paying to access a portal to overcome any obstacle that can be pieced apart by science, from appearance and sensory analysis to molecular activity.

If you had the budget to hire a full-time food scientist with that level of training, you could expect to pay an easy six-figure salary plus benefits.

But don’t worry—a lot of food-science problems can be solved with just a few days of direct consulting, via experiment design and training your team to conduct the data collection.

How much does a food science consultant cost?

Every project is different, of course, in terms of time, materials, and expenses like lab fees.

If we want to get down to the core of the problem—which we do, right?—it’ll generally take at least a full day of investigation and research. Effective food science isn’t one of those two-hour turnaround magic shows.

We don’t waste any time, but we also don’t cut corners. Food science is a systematic approach to problem solving. There’s investigation and research, experiment design and data collection, analysis and recommendations.

Experiments can take a few days to set up. If we need to collect data, we’ll train your team to do it to keep expenses minimal if possible, but training will take another day or so, and then there is analysis and reporting.

If you’re in a rush, hoping for a silver-bullet solution done cheap, quick, and dirty—then we’re simply not the right choice for the job.

But if you’re on a mission to bore into the very building blocks of whatever obstacle you’re facing—and rearrange it into a stairway to lasting success—then we’d love to hear what you’re working on. Tell us here.

Thanks to the slow but steady crawl toward legalization, more and more people are turning to cannabis as medicine or for recreation.

Led by gummies, cannabis edibles have quickly gobbled up a massive share of the $5 billion cannabis market—with a year-over-year sales growth of more than 20% in 2021—and total edibles sales are projected to reach $8 billion by 2025.

The industry is getting crowded but it’s still a goldrush. And it’s the perfect time for ambitious edibles producers to stake their claim with high-quality, standout cannabis products.

But there’s one big problem that every edibles maker must contend with: cannabis extracts are inherently bitter.

Ricardo Baca, former Editor in Chief of The Cannabist, said “One hundred percent of the edibles market is focused on removing that recognizable scent and flavor of the cannabis plant and replacing it with something that’s more aesthetically familiar.”

In fact, an entirely new industry has emerged within the $1.4 billion cannabis edibles market—whose sole purpose is overcoming the bitter and potentially off-putting flavors of marijuana.

So what can you do if your edibles come out too bitter?

There are a few different directions to take when it comes to fixing bitterness in edibles—but first let’s take a look at the science of bitterness and flavor.

How bitterness works

As we learned in school, bitterness is one of the five taste sensations (along with sweet, sour, salty, and umami) that are perceptible by the tongue—and one that is particularly useful for keeping us alive.

Many toxic plants and substances share similarities in molecular structures. So the ability to detect bitterness evolved as a “last chance” defense mechanism (once the toxin is already in your mouth!) causing an unpleasant experience—hopefully not too late.

Research has found that human taste receptors type 2 (T2Rs) and G-proteins like gustducin are responsible for our ability to taste bitter compounds. When you consume something bitter—let’s say quinine from the tonic in your G&T—the quinine compound binds to G-protein-coupled receptors like gustducin, which release several enzymes the taste cell uses to transmit the response via neurons to produce the cognitive experience of bitter.

Scientifically, bitter substances are rated relative to quinine (with a reference index of 1), ranging to the most bitter natural substance (gentian root) which has an index value of 5 million.

Okay so we know how bitterness works—but what can you do about bitterness in marijuana edibles?

Managing bitterness in cannabis edibles

Most cannabinoid extracts are intensely bitter, earthy, and often difficult to work with. When the raw product has such a dramatic impact on flavor, creating a formula for an infused product that tastes good and also delivers the expected amount of THC or CBD can require a bit of finesse and scientific precision.

For example, when it comes to emulsified cannabinoid products, the carrier oils and preservatives can actually intensify the bitterness. During the process of emulsification, when the cannabinoid particles are broken down into their smallest size, the increased surface area means more likelihood of transferring bitter flavors to the taste receptors.

Some people are proponents of keeping the herbaceous, bitter flavor of cannabis products—to remind people that what they’re consuming is medicine and not candy, hoping to limit accidental ingestion or overindulgence.

For those who don’t follow that school of thought, there are 3 main ways to deal with the inherent bitterness of cannabis:

Incorporate the flavor
Mask the flavor
Use a lower concentration

Incorporating bitterness flavor in edibles

The cheapest approach to bitterness in cannabis edibles starts with accepting the naturally bitter flavor of cannabis and working with it.

Adding other familiar flavors that are also bitter—such as cocoa, coffee, peppermint, and hops—can trick the brain into thinking, “Even though this tastes bitter, it’s a bitter flavor I enjoy.”

One method that any chef could tell you is taking advantage of the Maillard reaction (if it makes sense for your flavor profile). The browning of sugars and proteins adds a bitterness and aromatic complexity that we find pleasant and helps incorporate other bitter tastes for an overall positive flavor experience.

Bitterness can also be balanced by adding natural sweeteners—but that may not do much for the aftertaste, and can affect your calorie count and labeling. The bitter effect can also be impacted by sour ingredients like lemon juice or citric acid—but again that changes the whole flavor profile and limits your options.

Many consumers acknowledge that bitterness in cannabis edibles is just part of the experience; a small price to pay for the intended effect, much like alcohol or caffeine.

But trust a wizened old food scientist and highly decorated flavor maven: it doesn’t have to be that way.

Bitterness masking in edibles

Masking flavors is a relatively low-tech approach that is widely used in the edibles industry. The ultimate goal is to eliminate the natural bitterness of the plant extract by adding ingredients that cover up or block bitterness receptors on the tongue.

One such technique is called microencapsulation, where a hollow sugar molecule (cyclodextrin) attracts and contains the smaller cannabinoid molecules, and carries them past the tongue’s bitterness receptors into the stomach where the sugar dissolves and releases the THC or CBD into the bloodstream.

There are plenty of other all-natural food science compounds and ingredients for masking bitterness (including plant-based non-nutritive sweeteners, seaweed extracts, and fruit-derived essential oils) but we’ll get to that.

Using lower concentration of cannabis extract per volume

One simple way to manage bitterness is to make a bigger edible per dose. Minor adjustments in a batch’s concentration per volume can perceptibly reduce the bitterness in each edible.

Obviously this isn’t always feasible for existing cannabis products needing a flavor tune-up—it could impact packaging, labeling, regulatory registration, etc.

Plus at scale, even slight adjustments in recipe volume can affect your product costs in a big way.

Beyond balance: the future of the edibles industry

For many consumers who are new to cannabis—especially those in the “Baby Boomer” generation—edibles are the preferred method for dosing.

So this problem of bitterness in edibles has to be solved.

There are plenty of bitterness masking ingredients available—but not all of them work well for cannabis; and if they do, maybe only partially.

Finding the best one for your edibles recipe could mean expensive rounds of prototyping—and even then, with all the options available, how do you know you aren’t missing out on something that works even better?

As food scientists and chemistry nerds, we at Elevated Edibles are always searching for more effective ways to achieve the holy grail of bitterness masking for cannabis edibles.

We’ve put in countless lab hours—so you don’t have to—scientifically testing the myriad individual and combined ingredients available on the bitterness-masking market…and we’ve come up with a somewhat remarkable solution that’s all-natural, highly effective, and unique in the industry.

Do I Need a Food Science Consultant?