Sponsored Workshop: From Formulation to Final SipTM: Crafting the Perfect Beverage for your Brand

Joanne Sheehan [00:11] Good morning. We're gonna get started cause I know everybody's on a tight schedule today. Thank you and welcome to From Formulation to Final Sip. My name's Joanne Sheehan and my role at Florida Food Products is business development. Um, we've been fortunate to be at attendees at BEBNET for several years and we're excited to be able to participate in a workshop this year. So, um, We, we're delighted today to share examples of our portfolio of pro of ingredients and our process. Um, We developed beverage systems for the RTD beverage category, which as we know, is so, so exciting. We also have a whole food service division, so know that all these products are transferable, but today we're focused on CPG and RTDs. So, who's Florida Food Products? Um, uh, we call ourselves FFP. We, our company is committed to real, simple, and better, premium ingredients rooted in nature to, from our ingredients to our skilled flavor and technical expertise. Uh, we've been in this business for over 70 years, and the, the two people here. I have 20 years each, so our expertise is deep and rooted. Um, our in-house team provides collaborative, customized natural ingredient solutions to final applications. We pride ourselves on our ability to develop beverage systems to help support innovative RTD development. Under the FFP umbrella, we supply a variety of natural and clean ingredients to enable us to deliver unique solutions tailored to your needs. And examples of some of the ingredients that we do. Yeah. The ingredients that we do are L-theanine. Natural caffeine, we have flavors, 40,000 plus varieties of flavors. We have fruit and vegetable and it basically extracted powders, and then we have our extraction of coffee, teas, and botanicals which we extract using raw material and purified waters. Is it moving? There we go. So today, my esteemed colleagues are going to walk through from the uh formulation to the final sip. We are going to use our premium cold brew base as the, the carrier today because cold brew is such a trending flavor which we'll talk, trending ingredients, which we'll talk about further. So we're going to start with the insights or the why this category is growing so fast and furious. We're going to outline the key development steps, our new product development questionnaires that we need to make sure that we efficiently develop your product and optimize your time to market. We're going to sample a couple different versions of using cold brew as a base for a basic RTD all the way to a functional ingredient RTD. And then we're also going to show the concentrate and something that you can come and try and make because now our desks at home have kind of become our coffee house. So, and you'll hear about why concentrates are so intriguing right now. And then finally we'll go into the commercialization process and where we start and finish and bring that all to life. So we encourage interaction, questions, but just so you know, we have left time at the end and we'll be milling about here as we hand out samples. So feel free to hit the QR code, grab one of us, and we'll, we'll be happy to answer any questions that we can. So on that note, I'm going to turn this over to Kylie to go ahead and kick us off.

Speaker 2 [04:45] Great. My name is Kylie Appel. I'm the category manager for our food, beverage, and nutrition ingredients. So I am the one deep in the insights and trends. I call myself a bit of a data nerd because I get really excited about what's happening across the beverage category, but like Joanne said, today we're going to really focus on coffee. And the reason we're focusing on coffee and cold coffee specifically is because that is where the explosive growth is happening, very specifically in cold brew. As you can see up here, the consumption of cold brew alone in the United States has increased over 300% in the past 7 years, and there are no signs of it slowing down. Cold coffee and cold brew is really an easier entry to coffee. It can be sipped over long periods of time. The clear cups that it's served in really lend themselves to an age of social media where colors, aesthetics, inclusions are being added, and there's no surprise that this is really being driven by the Gen Z demographic. They love to sip their cold coffee throughout the day, and they love to share about it on social media. Consumers are also prioritizing their spending on cold coffee and coffee in general, even in an inflationary economy. In fact, 38% of consumers surveyed said even if the price of coffee goes up, and I think many of us are aware of the coffee market, yeah, it did today, we're afraid to look. So even if the cost goes up, which is happening currently, 38% of consumers globally say they will still purchase. 40% of consumers in the US say they will still purchase even if the cost goes up. So shifting consumer preferences towards high quality, the fact that consumers will still spend on that daily need, means considering the attributes of your RTD coffee base is paramount. I'm gonna pass this over to Brad, and he's going to talk about how we walk our customers and have really are hand in hand with you in new product development. Thank

Speaker 3 [07:08] you. Morning, everybody. Uh, Brad Petersmeyer, Vice President of Product and Solutions, been with, uh, FFP a little over 19 years now. Uh, so very excited to kind of walk through the process. We're gonna stick to the theme of, uh, a cold brew coffee, so the new product development and what that means. Uh, generally, a formulation will come to us in many different ways. A lot of times an existing brand will come with a formula in hand, or they'll rely on us to get them to that final formulation, and we can use different ingredients to get there. We have stock items that we can get to that final application quicker. We have a smorgasbord of extracts already produced, coffee extracts to be more specific, generally concentrated, and we'll start there and then we'll work to that. Drinking brick application of what it what it's going to be because bricks is very important in terms of specification of what that final application's going to talk going to speak to and here you know what is bricks you know I've heard a lot of people ask that question in the last couple of days, but bricks is just basically a measurement of dissolved sugars in solution. It's been used in the industry for for a long time, but why is it important? Speaking specifically to cold brew, if you have just a straight black cold brew that's a drinking brick of 1.4 compared to a 2.0, it's going to be a totally different product. So it's very, very important that you have a specification that gets you to where you need to be and it's consistent. So for that coal manufacturer or a manufacturer, that's going to be your aim and that's where you're going to try to get to every single time. Um, because of that, you know, you'll start at whatever that final application's going to be in terms of drinking bricks, and then we kind of work ourselves backwards, you know, what extract do we produce? Do we have a patent patented extraction process for cold brew. It's very authentic, I think Joanne mentioned it's just straight water and raw material. Believe it or not, we have a lot of companies that come to us with a blend of roasted coffee already in hand, and we'll extract it for them. If not, we can provide one for them. We do extraction of our own coffee as well as customer coffee, and we do a concentrate without further processing, so it's very authentic. It's a single pass extraction, low temperature water, so straight cold brew. From there we'll decide with the client what type of certifications are you looking for. Does it need to be organic? Does it need to be fair trade? Usually cost and use becomes important at this point in time. What's your final cost need to be? From there, then we'll determine what's your packaging going to be. Is it going to be a retort process? Is it going to be a HTST process that's going to determine if it's a shelf stable, how you distribute it, if it's a refrigerated? Is it going to be a multi-serve bottle? So many different ways are going to kind of determine where you go because obviously commands are very specialized in what they do, you know, with that final application, then we'll work with that command, and we can deliver a very concentrated product that saves on freight. Uh, we'll work with the coal man. Whatever works best. Is it a 5 gallon pail? Is it a tanker? You know, we have a lot of customers that think tankers of coffee that we can just, you know, put it into a refrigerated tank at their site, and then they can make a cold brew straight from there. We finished that that formulation based off of Adam and his team to get where we need to get. At the end of the day it's simple, right? We want to make things simple. That one extract. You can make 4 different skews, you know, different flavors. You have a vanilla, you have a hazelnut, whatever it may be. You can take that base and you can make 4 different skews with it to save on freight on that raw material or the extract to it. So Adam's going to show you a little bit of what that whole process is in terms of what you're going to be tasting here today. Um, this is that single origin Ethiopian, but I'll let Adam talk to it. This would kind of fall in that refrigerated supply chain. Because it hasn't been thermally processed at this point in time, but I'll let Adam take it from here.

Speaker 4 [11:04] Morning, everybody. My name is Adam Fike. I am the uh product development director for FFP um and uh I've been with the business for 22 years. Actually, uh this month will be my 22nd anniversary. So. So my colleague Doug passed around some uh product, uh, you can see in front of you on the table, you can grab it, you can grab a cup. It is a single origin, uh Ethiopian from the Yergeev region and it is at a medium roast profile. So this exemplifies our single pass cold brew extraction process. Uh, we utilize purified water, uh, roasting ground coffee, and thyme, that's it. And you have a pure cold brew concentrate. The roast profile is at a medium roast, which is about a 41 ron. 40 the ron is a measurement of the, of the roast color. Some of you may be familiar with that. The lighter you go, the more acidic notes you'll pull from the coffee. Medium, you'll get less acidity. Some of the chocolate notes, once you go to a dark profile, you get more of a char, the darker chocolate notes. Um, so, uh, this particular product is a, uh, very unique product. Uh, I don't know if you can taste the profiles in there. You should get some fruity notes, some almost blueberry notes, uh, pleasant acidity. And um The other benefit of using this product is your label can say cold brew. So your, your ingredients statement can say water, you know, cold brew coffee, cold brew coffee, water, and coffee.

Speaker 2 [12:50] Not only can your ingredients statement say that, but it can be a claim on front of package. We always tell our customers to work with their regulatory team on labeling, but as I talked about in the trends in cold brew, calling that out on front of package is very impactful in the retail marketplace and with your consumers.

Speaker 4 [13:11] Yeah. Does anybody have any questions so far? Yeah, hi,

Speaker 2 [13:16] um, is there A standard of identity for a cold brew in terms of temperature. So she's asking, is there a standard of identity for the cold brew claim in terms of temperature or anything like that? And

Speaker 4 [13:34] Well, one doesn't, one doesn't exist, uh, clearly right now. There's nothing defined by, um, at least FDA standards, if you will, for a cold brew standard. But we utilize cool, cold water to do the extraction. We have, with, within our extraction process, we do have the capability to go higher temperatures as well. So we can go anywhere from 70 degrees up to 180 degrees, and that's gonna be determined by the profile that you're looking for in the coffee.

Speaker 3 [14:03] Yeah, I agree, but sorry, the, the NCA hasn't come out, come out with any specific guidelines as of yet, not to say that they won't one day. Uh, there's obviously a lot of companies out there that'll say it needs to be this to be authentic. Hasn't been defined as of yet, but probably will be coming one day.

Speaker 2 [14:22] Great question. Any other additional questions about the RTD coffee beverage base that we're showing?

Speaker 4 [14:31] The only thing I'll add, so the strength that we're chasing this at is at 1. 1.8. I was mentioning, mentioning before that we, you know, the range goes from 1.4 to 2. I've seen stuff even as high as 2.5, which is concentrate in, in my mind, but, you know, some people serve it at that strength. But this is a 1.8, so it's right in the middle. It's, it's, uh, uh, it's upper, upper high strength, but it's, uh, it exemplifies the profile of the Ethiopian very well.

Speaker 2 [14:58] How do you concentrate it? The question is, how do you concentrate the coffee?

Speaker 4 [15:04] So our, our, our brewing process, which involves water, roast and ground, time, um, and pressure, uh naturally yields a concentrate, uh, naturally is a concentrate. So we're not going through any secondary concentration process. Some companies will go through a vacuum evaporation or they'll go to some sort of RO process. There's multiple processes you can go through afterwards, which adds more heat and destroys the natural profile of the coffee. This, you're only going through one pass, whatever temperature you go through. We're not going through any other heating step afterwards, no pasteurization, none of that. So it's a cold chain product.

Speaker 3 [15:41] About 90% of what we produce is around that 24 brick, so that works out to be 21 to 1

Speaker 4 [15:48] ratio.

Speaker 2 [15:52] Great, great questions and perfect segue into our next segment, which is talking specifically about cold brew coffee concentrates. And this is in the retail aspect. So, what we do produce is a concentrated product that like Brad Mentioned when you go to your coman, which we have an extensive network of partnerships with co-manufacturers, so that's something again we walk our customers through in determining the correct partnership with a co-manufacturer, whether that's based on location or um. What, what their capacity, capacity is or what their specialty is, you know, in terms of can size, bottling, those sorts of things, but we're going to talk briefly about developing a cold brew concentrate. So we're seeing more and more of this on the shelf, and that is because we have seen explosive growth in the concentrate segment. We've seen double-digit growth of 19% year over year in equivalized unit sales of coffee concentrates across all grocery channels. And if we look specifically at shelf stable coffee concentrates, that growth is actually over 50%. The reason for this is because customization is key, both away from home and at home. And as Joanne mentioned, our homes and our, you know, kitchen countertops have become our offices, and so we want the same ability to customize our coffee at home as anywhere else. So that means it is very, very important that that concentrate deliver on flavor. So adding flavor is another opportunity. So we want the concentrate to stand alone and deliver on flavor. There's also an opportunity to add flavor because that's something that's a little more challenging for people to do at home is to, you know, you might have some syrups on your countertop, but you know, unless you're going to look like a barista with, you know, your stacks of different flavors. Flavor can be a little bit more challenging to add at home. So you'll see on the shelf, you know, concentrates delivered black, and you might see them in a couple of flavor profiles. And that's something we can really bring to the table as well, not only that concentrated product, but our natural flavors. So you can launch, you know, with a line of maybe 3 concentrates, one black, a couple with flavors. And then consumers can really customize at home, right, with their strength, their sweetness level, adding dairy, alt dairy to their beverage. The market for functional coffee concentrates is also growing. In fact, the adoption rate of coffee concentrates with added health benefits has grown by 17%, and this is really driven by increased interest. In products that align with wellness. And I think we're all very aware and seeing that here, seeing that um in retail, seeing that at, at various shows, functional beverages are, are everywhere and are hitting in every category of beverage. So, products with added vitamins, adaptogens, and sugar really cater to that market that is looking for now both flavor and functionality. So we do have a coffee concentrate here with us today, and we invite you at the end of the presentation to head to the back of the room and try that, and we've got some alt dairy so you can play around again with strength and, you know, really customizing that concentrate, starting with that very premium high quality base and then crafting that beverage to your own liking.

Joanne Sheehan [19:35] Kylie, I'm just gonna add to that. One thing that we're seeing a lot of, right? You're, you're starting with a, a 24x concentrate and more, now more than ever, we're seeing customers request. That there's a single SKU, then they're using it for several items in their operation or their retail items. And you know, now more than ever, you're seeing it, it, people try to optimize less SKUs versus having one for everything. So, and we can talk about that later as well, but um it's really something we're seeing and we're getting requests for.

Speaker 2 [20:14] And before we jump into functional, uh, are there any questions on retail coffee concentrates? OK. Now we get to, get to the exciting part, right? This is what we're all following and watching and seeing daily in the trends and out there in the marketplace, which, like I said, I'm kind of a data nerd, so I get in, I get into, I get excited about all these things. So functional cold brew coffee. So as we know, with the increasing awareness of health related issues, consumers are demanding a lot more from their food and beverage. The integration of health and wellness into coffee is really shifting consumer behavior in the specialty coffee market. So cold brew falls into that specialty coffee space, and we're seeing again more and more, just like we're seeing functionality in our water, we're seeing it in our coffee as well. In fact, Precision Wellness was named by Enova as one of the top 10 trends of 2025. So what consumers are looking for, you know, previously they were excluding negative ingredients. There was kind of this aspect of health halo around food and beverage. Things are getting very precise and Very specific. So consumers want very specific benefits from their food and beverage. So what's in the product is just as important, if not more important, than what is excluded. They want benefits. They want multifunction in the same serving, and it's really all around positive nutrition. In fact, 82% of consumers are saying they want functional in their everyday beverage, and this is a stat I heard earlier in the year, probably at least 6 months ago, so I would anticipate that that number has even grown slightly since. And then kind of peeling back the layers and getting very specific into ingredients. High protein is the number one claim, most appealing for consumers in the US and Canada, and I think protein, we all know, it has universal recognition. It is a macronutrient. Really has not been argued for its health benefits, you know, I think it can get the landscape of ingredients can get very confusing for all of us. One day we hear about an ingredient that is good for us that we should be consuming. We go all in and purchase, and then the next week there's 5 articles as to why we should not be consuming that ingredient. That's really not the case for protein. In fact, we're seeing now the more protein, the better. I'm seeing, you know, more than double, triple digit protein numbers, but You know, protein numbers on package were at 10 g of protein per serving. I'm seeing that jumping into 20 and 30 g of protein, even in coffee products. So, consumers are really looking for that added benefit and know again that they're very familiar with it and it has not been argued in terms of benefits. Another area of interest is brain health. 36% of consumers globally say mental or emotional wellness is their top health priority for 2025. Stress management, anxiety management, you know, decreasing. That, that go, go, go is very top of mind for consumers and it is really driving what's happening in the ingredient space specifically for an ingredient, L-theanine. Again, we're seeing this here, we're seeing this across the board. Consumers really have grasped onto this ingredient. They know about the health benefits, and we're seeing it added more and more in multiple spaces. We've got a product here, we'll talk about it a little more about ththeanine. Bringing it into coffee has the benefit of really that sustained energy. It can also be brought into products for that calming benefit. Sotheanine is pretty impactful in multiple applications. So, this convergence of coffee with wellness trends is a real opportunity to differentiate and disrupt in the marketplace.

Speaker 4 [24:43] So we've passed down, passed out a uh salted caramel uh protein cold brew. This product utilizes a single origin Brazil dark roast cold brew. Uh, why do we use a dark roast Brazil instead of, say, the Ethiopian you tasted earlier? You're adding cream, you're adding flavor, you're adding sugar, you're gonna drown out the natural characteristics of the coffee. So you don't wanna, you don't want to use something very high quality, um, something like, something, something like Ethiopian, you want to just serve black. So, um, the protein source is milk protein concentrate. There's 2% milk in here. This is obviously using cane sugar. There's about 25 g per serving, 12 ounce serving right now. We can formulate this with any, any type of protein source. We can formulate it using any zero calorie sweetener of you're choosing. The Lthenium that's also fortified with 100 mg of L-theanine from our green tea extract, and there's 150 mg of naturally occurring caffeine from the Brazil cold brew. What would be the serving of protein? It's 15 g of protein per 12 ounce. Um, is this commercially available right now? This is just a demo. This is just something we put together to show you, uh, uh, the, the coffee, the flavor. We have a caramel flavor in there and a, uh, uh, pecan flavor in there and our LTanine. But uh it it's, it's something we can develop anything uh utilizing our ingredients from our portfolio.

Joanne Sheehan [26:22] Yeah, all of those, it's ingredients stacking on this one, right? All all of those ingredients are, are things that we supply, so.

Speaker 4 [26:32] Is a standard MPC or instant? Uh, it's a, it's a standard FPC.

Speaker 5 [26:40] Do you have brands in the market that your, your clients that you could, could share with?

Speaker 2 [26:48] I'm sorry. Do you want to, let me bring that mic. I want to capture. She's

Joanne Sheehan [26:51] asking if we have clients that

Speaker 2 [26:54] brands. Yes,

Joanne Sheehan [26:57] I would love to, you know, we're kind of like, we're not the stars. Our customers are the stars, and we don't share who they are. We keep it very confidential, but you're probably eating or drinking us in some shape or form. You know, across these ingredients that we carry. It's, it's, it's interesting because it's not a one stop fits all. That's why we really focus on customization and working in collaboration with, with our customers. We don't have our own brand out there, no, we, it's, it's, it's everybody else's brand that we support, so, but not everyone's, but not ours.

Speaker 3 [27:39] But we're, you know, just imagine, you know, retail QSR, food service, we're some, you know, in a little bit of all that.

Speaker 2 [27:49] Great questions. Any other additional questions about the functional cold brew you're trying, and then we can wrap things up and, and open it up for larger um scale questions.

Speaker 6 [28:04] So, are there any recommended types or processes for the nitrogenated cold brews, whether it's canned with a widget or just shipped bulk to a coffee bar that, you know, uses nitrogen and maybe a creamer tap to, to pour?

Speaker 4 [28:22] Yeah, so the, that, that's going to be, you know, subjective. So the profile of the coffee that you want exemplified with the creamy uh note that nitrogen provides. The only thing I would say is nitrogen does tend to dilute the product a little bit at the same time, so the strength of the product utilized for a nitro application is what matters. So higher strength, ready to drink strength.

Speaker 3 [28:50] It's very similar to beer. You know, plumb a keg or when nitrogen's introduced right then and there, you're gonna probably get your best cascade, uh, a widget obviously would be your, sorry. Your widget would probably be your next, uh, best case, you know, we have a lot of customers that will not even use a widget because of the cost of the can. It's an extra, you know, 10 to 15 cents a can. Uh, you can get some cascading, you know, if you agitate the can a little bit, uh, but similar to beer, you're never going to get that same reaction as you would when it's out of a keg. There are some dispensers out there now. There's Bun Nitron from the food service in the world that actually does a really good job in terms of cascade. Um, but you know, back to, you know, they're the cans are good, but they're just not quite the same as draft.

Speaker 2 [29:41] Additional questions? OK. Oops. Well,

Joanne Sheehan [29:50] there we go. Yes, thank you all for coming. I think the one thing that we, you know, that hopefully you can take away is that we have the capabilities to develop beverage systems, and we really can, we can really help you develop these, and that's what we do best, working with you collaboratively to identify what, what you're trying to target, and then we'll work with you to get there. You have QR codes. You can reach out to us. We'll stay, stay around here if you want to ask questions to us. I wanted to introduce Doug Ming in the back there by the clock. He leads our CPG sales team. So he's also available and, and again we are very appreciative of your time today and happy to answer any questions. We'll just mill about. Thank you.

Speaker 2 [30:42] Yeah, make sure to come to the back and try to concentrate. That is one that we left in the back again so you can play around with the strength and, and uh add-ins to that concentrate. Thank you.