I’m a flavour expert and food scientist with 10+ years’ experience helping food & drink brands create products that taste as good as they promise.
In this podcast, I share how to Create clean-label, planted-based and allergen-free launch-ready products, Choose the right flavour direction, and Fix underperforming products.
No jargon, no off-the-shelf solutions, just food science, flavour strategy, and expert insight to make flavour your competitive advantage.
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You've spent weeks perfecting your lab sample. The flavour profile is spot-on, the balance is beautiful, everyone loves it.
Then you get the scaled-up version from your co-manufacturer and... it's completely different. Too sweet. Flavours have disappeared. The whole thing feels off.
Sound familiar?
I've been there more times than I can count, and honestly, it's one of the most frustrating parts of food product development.
If you're a food and drink brand working with a contract manufacturer or doing the production in-house, this episode will save you time, money, and a lot of stress.
Understanding why scaling up changes everything and how to plan for it is crucial for any FMCG.
Your lab sample isn't just a recipe you can copy-paste at scale. It's a delicate equilibrium. And when you disrupt that balance through different equipment, processes, and ingredient interactions, your flavour profile changes too.
In this episode, we'll cover:
Why your scaled product never tastes exactly like your lab sample (it's normal!)
How sweetness, flavouring, and base ingredients shift during scale-up
Why you can't just "decrease the sweetness" without consequences
How to plan for testing and tweaking
Practical tips to minimize surprises and protect your budget
If you want to design food or drink products that taste perfect for your consumers, hit those repeat purchases, and see your sales go through the roof — there’s no luck or miracle involved. You need a flavour strategy.
👋 Hi, I am Manon Galizzi, a food scientist and flavour expert with over 10 years in the food industry.
In each episode, I share what I’ve learned from helping food and drink brands create new products from scratch, choose the right flavour direction, or fix products that just aren’t performing.
Because flavour isn’t just a nice-to-have — it’s the number one reason people buy.
If you enjoy this podcast, leave a ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ review on Spotify or Apple Podcast, it really help developing the podcast, and share with a fellow food or drink founder that will benefit from it! 🙏
23 November - How Ingredients Change Your Flavour Profile
Ever wondered why your flavouring tastes completely different in one recipe versus another? You're using the same amount, the same brand but somehow it just doesn't work the same way.
If you're a food and drink brand developing products and struggling to get your flavour profile right, this episode will be a game-changer.
If you are doing product development in-house, understanding how your ingredients affect flavouring is absolutely essential.
Your recipe isn't just a list of ingredients. It's an equilibrium. And tiny changes in moisture, fat, sweetness, or saltiness completely transform how your flavours come through and how your consumers experience them.
In this episode, we'll cover:
Why dry products trap flavours (and what to do about it)
How fat delays flavour release — and why chocolate needs to melt slowly
The shocking impact of sweetness and saltiness on flavour intensity
Liquid vs. solid products: completely different tasting experiences
How to think about your recipe as a balanced system
Stop guessing. Start understanding your product from the inside out.
Ever sat in a food or drink product tasting where no one says a word? Or worse, one loud voice drowns everyone else out and suddenly you're second-guessing everything? I've been there and honestly, it's one of the most frustrating parts of food product development.
If you're a food and drink brand struggling to make confident decisions during tastings, this episode is for you.
Whether you're fixing a failing product, choosing the right flavour profile for a new launch, or just trying to get constructive feedback you need a tasting culture that actually works.
As an F&B development consultant, I've seen how bad tastings lead to delayed launches, wasted batches, and products that miss the mark. But it doesn't have to be this way.
In this episode, we'll cover:
Why silence and "big mouths" are sabotaging your tastings
How to create a respectful tasting culture (it starts at the top!)
Why everyone's palate is different — and that's actually a good thing
The role of your target consumer in making final decisions
Practical tips to get objective, useful data from every tasting
Let's fix your tastings so you can move faster and launch with confidence.
Got this question on Instagram: "My functional food product isn't selling. What should I do?"
Here's the truth: if people bought your product once or twice and then stopped buying, the number one reason is ALWAYS taste and flavour. Nothing else.
Not your branding, not your packaging, focus on the taste of your product.
People want healthier and more functional products with tons of health benefits, but if your product doesn't taste good, they won't buy it again.
Remember: you're not selling medicine. You can't get away with bad taste. You're selling a food or drink product, and people buy them for enjoyment, to fulfil an emotion, as a pick-me-up, or to give as gifts (Christmas is coming soon!).
In this episode, you'll discover:
🌟 The real reason functional products fail: one of my clients sold plant-based, clean label sports nutrition for 10+ years with great sales, until the market got saturated and health benefits alone weren't enough anymore
🌟 Why having health benefits at the centre of your messaging is not enough for repeat purchases
🌟 The three most common flavour problems killing functional products
🌟 My process for fixing your product
If you're a functional food or drink brand struggling with sales and repeat purchases, this episode will show you exactly how to fix your product and why flavour can never be secondary to health benefits.
20 November - How to Adapt Your Product to the UK Market (Family Recipe or Foreign Trend)
"Just take the emotion out of your product", I know, easier said than done, right? This is your baby. Maybe it's your grandma's recipe, a family heirloom passed down through generations, or you've spotted a massive gap in the UK market with a trend from another country.
There's always going to be emotional attachment, and that's completely normal. But here's the reality: if you want to succeed in the UK, you may have to adapt to the British palate, and that means compromise.
I've spoken with SO many food and drink founders who brought their culture into the products they wanted to sell in the UK: Sri Lankan, Jamaican, North African, and more. They all started with family recipes, and they all told me the same thing: they realised very quickly they needed to adapt to reach a wider audience.
In this episode, you'll discover:
🌟 Why you can't completely remove emotion (and the frustration that comes with product development), but you MUST stay objective
🌟 The brilliant strategy one Jamaican drink business owner used to target both audiences
🌟 How to be crystal clear on who your target consumers are (not your family, not your friends, not yourself)
🌟 Why you need to ask your target consumers directly for their opinion, and here's the hard part, actually LISTEN to their feedback
🌟 The compromises you might have to make on flavours that are very familiar to you (but unfamiliar to your UK consumers)
19 November - Why Non-HFSS & Meat/Dairy Vegan Products Fail?
I still remember that massive tasting at the flavour house when vegan became popular, sweet and savoury products everywhere.
And at the end? We all had the same conversation: every single product was trying to copy something that already existed. Vegan steak, vegan ham, vegan chicken, vegan pudding - all trying to replicate the exact same taste and texture.
And guess what? They all failed. The texture was wrong, the flavours were wrong, it was just very unpleasant.
And it's EXACTLY the same problem with non-HFSS products.
And here's the kicker: these are treat products! They're pick-me-ups, they fulfil an emotional and mental need. But these reformulated versions just leave you with an unsatisfying taste compared to the original.
In this episode, you'll discover:
🌟Why trying to replicate existing products with vegan or non-HFSS versions is scientifically impossible
🌟 The shocking truth about some plant-based products that everyone thought were "healthy", were full of additives, fat, and sugar just to make them palatable
🌟 Why big food brands lost MILLIONS on non-HFSS products
🌟 The real reason consumers are going back to eating meat after giving up on plant-based substitutes
🌟 What you should be doing instead: creating something NEW, nutritious, and interesting rather than a disappointing copy
"Can you send me a few vanilla flavours?" If this is how you're briefing your flavour house, you're doing it wrong, and I'm telling you from experience because I've worked on both sides of this mess.
I've seen this exact problem again and again: when I worked in a flavour house, in the corporate food industry and now with my own clients.
Food and drink businesses ask for generic flavours with some iterations, but there's NO indication of flavour profile.
They let all the responsibility fall on the flavour house to decide which flavour profile is best for their product. And guess what? It doesn't work.
It creates hundreds of back and forth emails until you either give up, pick a flavour just because you have to, or completely cancel the product because you can't get the flavour right.
In this episode, you'll discover: What a flavour house actually is (and why flavourings are your friends) 🌟 Why you lose SO much flavour through processing 🌟 The real problem: when I worked in a flavour house, I'd receive requests for "strawberry flavour" and have to choose from hundreds of options in the flavour library - and that decision should NOT have been mine to make
🌟 Why letting the flavour house decide your flavour profile is setting your product up to fail 🌟 The exact information you need to give your flavour house to stop the endless back and forth (I'll tell you what to include in your spreadsheet) 🌟 How this connects to my CREATE, CHOOSE, and FIX packages and why taking ownership of your flavour profile is non-negotiableIf you're working with flavour houses or contract manufacturers and getting nowhere with your product development, this episode will show you exactly how to brief them properly and take control of your flavour strategy.
17 November - Best Flavours for Pea & Rice Protein Products | Vegan Product Development Tips
Got an Instagram question: "I'm creating a vegan product using rice protein and pea protein, which flavour do you think will work best?"
Perfect! Because this is exactly what I help my clients with in my CHOOSE package, and I'm sharing the process with you today.
Here's the thing: most plant-based products using pea and rice protein have nutty, earthy, roasted, and beany notes (and I'm not talking about lovely vanilla bean - I mean kidney beans, black beans... not exactly pleasant).
So if you just throw in trendy flavours without understanding your product base first, you're going to end up with something that tastes like play doh. Yep, I said it.
In this episode, you'll discover: 🌟 Why you need to understand your product's flavour profile WITHOUT any flavours first (this is the game-changer most brands skip) 🌟 Which flavour notes you want to enhance vs. mask in pea and rice protein products
🌟 The specific flavours that work brilliantly with plant-based proteins (and the ones you should avoid at any cost - berries and vanilla, I'm looking at you) 🌟 Why "caramel" or "chocolate" is never enough - you need to go deeper into the flavour profile (milky and buttery vs. dark and bitter makes ALL the difference) 🌟 How to get creative by mixing flavours together to create unique profiles for your product 🌟 The questions you need to ask about your target consumers before making your final decision (are they Gen Z adventurous or boomers wanting nostalgia?) If you're developing plant-based products and struggling to find the right flavour direction, this episode will show you exactly how to choose flavours that complement your base, mask the unpleasant notes, and create something your target consumers will actually want to buy again and again.
16 November - How to Validate Your Food Product Before Launch (One Person Should NEVER Decide)
Should your CEO or founder have the final say on your food or drink product? Absolutely not.
I've seen projects in big corporate food companies where a dozen multi-skilled people work for a year, do expensive consumer testing that gets approved, the product is ready to launch - and then the CEO tries it, doesn't like it, and boom - straight into the bin. Back to square one.
In this episode, I'm sharing why one person should never approve your final product, no matter their title.
You have to focus on objectives, not personal preferences. I know it's difficult when it's your baby, maybe it's a family recipe from your grandma - but you have to remove the emotional attachment and be analytical.
I'll walk you through how to actually validate your product before launch by relying on data and facts: Is the taste balanced and rounded? Does the flavour profile suit your product base (not just what's trendy)? Does it fit your target consumers' preferences?
You need to understand everything about them - what they eat, what social media they use, where they travel in London, what their breakfast looks like.
Because if you're not listening to your team and your consumers, your product and potentially your business are going to fail.
📩 and join hundreds of founders and brand teams learning how to make their food & drink products taste better, scale smoother, and sell faster.
15 November - Why Your Brain Can't Describe Flavours (And How to Train It) | Food Tasting Skills
Why is it so hard to describe what you're tasting?
When you try a product, your brain instantly jumps to "I like it" or "I don't like it" instead of actually describing what you taste - and that's completely normal. Your brain is focused on survival only: is it safe to eat?
None of us are equipped to describe flavours precisely without training.
In this episode, I'm sharing why training your brain to taste properly is crucial for your food and drink business, and how to actually do it.
I'll explain how I use bespoke flavour lexicons with my clients (whether we're creating products from scratch, choosing flavours, or fixing underperforming products) so we all speak the same neutral language and remove personal bias.
I'll also share practical tips for training your brain: being more mindful when you eat and drink, and even how to practice with your kids so they can appreciate flavours from an early age.
Because here's the truth: if you don't train your brain, your tastings will stay stuck at "I like it" or "I don't like it" - and that's useless for product development.
📩 Get my free newsletter and join hundreds of founders and brand teams learning how to make their food & drink products taste better, scale smoother, and sell faster.
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If you want to design food or drink products that taste perfect for your consumers, hit those repeat purchases, and see your sales go through the roof — there’s no luck or miracle involved. You need a flavour strategy.
👋 Hi, I am Manon Galizzi, a food scientist and flavour expert with over 10 years in the food industry.
In each episode, I share what I’ve learned from helping food and drink brands create new products from scratch, choose the right flavour direction, or fix products that just aren’t performing.
Because flavour isn’t just a nice-to-have — it’s the number one reason people buy.
If you enjoy this podcast, leave a ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ review on Spotify or Apple Podcast, it really help developing the podcast, and share with a fellow food or drink founder that will benefit from it! 🙏
If you want to design food or drink products that taste perfect for your consumers, hit those repeat purchases, and see your sales go through the roof — there’s no luck or miracle involved. You need a flavour strategy.
👋 Hi, I am Manon Galizzi, a food scientist and flavour expert with over 10 years in the food industry.
In each episode, I share what I’ve learned from helping food and drink brands create new products from scratch, choose the right flavour direction, or fix products that just aren’t performing.
Because flavour isn’t just a nice-to-have — it’s the number one reason people buy.
If you enjoy this podcast, leave a ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ review on Spotify or Apple Podcast, it really help developing the podcast, and share with a fellow food or drink founder that will benefit from it! 🙏
If you want to design food or drink products that taste perfect for your consumers, hit those repeat purchases, and see your sales go through the roof — there’s no luck or miracle involved. You need a flavour strategy.
👋 Hi, I am Manon Galizzi, a food scientist and flavour expert with over 10 years in the food industry.
In each episode, I share what I’ve learned from helping food and drink brands create new products from scratch, choose the right flavour direction, or fix products that just aren’t performing.
Because flavour isn’t just a nice-to-have — it’s the number one reason people buy.
If you enjoy this podcast, leave a ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ review on Spotify or Apple Podcast, it really help developing the podcast, and share with a fellow food or drink founder that will benefit from it! 🙏
If you're bringing a family recipe or a trend from another country to the UK market, this episode will show you how to keep your target consumers front and centre and adapt your product so thousands of loyal customers keep buying it again and again.
If you want to design food or drink products that taste perfect for your consumers, hit those repeat purchases, and see your sales go through the roof — there’s no luck or miracle involved. You need a flavour strategy.
👋 Hi, I am Manon Galizzi, a food scientist and flavour expert with over 10 years in the food industry.
In each episode, I share what I’ve learned from helping food and drink brands create new products from scratch, choose the right flavour direction, or fix products that just aren’t performing.
Because flavour isn’t just a nice-to-have — it’s the number one reason people buy.
If you enjoy this podcast, leave a ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ review on Spotify or Apple Podcast, it really help developing the podcast, and share with a fellow food or drink founder that will benefit from it! 🙏
If you're a food and drink business struggling with non-HFSS or if you're a plant-based brand trying to mimic meat or dairy, this episode will show you why that strategy is setting you up to fail, and what to do instead to actually succeed.
📩 Get my free newsletter and join hundreds of founders and brand teams learning how to make their food & drink products taste better, scale smoother, and sell faster.
If you want to design food or drink products that taste perfect for your consumers, hit those repeat purchases, and see your sales go through the roof — there’s no luck or miracle involved. You need a flavour strategy.
👋 Hi, I am Manon Galizzi, a food scientist and flavour expert with over 10 years in the food industry.
In each episode, I share what I’ve learned from helping food and drink brands create new products from scratch, choose the right flavour direction, or fix products that just aren’t performing.
Because flavour isn’t just a nice-to-have — it’s the number one reason people buy.
If you enjoy this podcast, leave a ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ review on Spotify or Apple Podcast, it really help developing the podcast, and share with a fellow food or drink founder that will benefit from it! 🙏
📩 Get my free newsletter and join hundreds of founders and brand teams learning how to make their food & drink products taste better, scale smoother, and sell faster.
If you want to design food or drink products that taste perfect for your consumers, hit those repeat purchases, and see your sales go through the roof — there’s no luck or miracle involved. You need a flavour strategy.
👋 Hi, I am Manon Galizzi, a food scientist and flavour expert with over 10 years in the food industry.
In each episode, I share what I’ve learned from helping food and drink brands create new products from scratch, choose the right flavour direction, or fix products that just aren’t performing.
Because flavour isn’t just a nice-to-have — it’s the number one reason people buy.
If you enjoy this podcast, leave a ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ review on Spotify or Apple Podcast, it really help developing the podcast, and share with a fellow food or drink founder that will benefit from it! 🙏
📩 Get my free newsletter and join hundreds of founders and brand teams learning how to make their food & drink products taste better, scale smoother, and sell faster.
If you want to design food or drink products that taste perfect for your consumers, hit those repeat purchases, and see your sales go through the roof — there’s no luck or miracle involved. You need a flavour strategy.
👋 Hi, I am Manon Galizzi, a food scientist and flavour expert with over 10 years in the food industry.
In each episode, I share what I’ve learned from helping food and drink brands create new products from scratch, choose the right flavour direction, or fix products that just aren’t performing.
Because flavour isn’t just a nice-to-have — it’s the number one reason people buy.
If you enjoy this podcast, leave a ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ review on Spotify or Apple Podcast, it really help developing the podcast, and share with a fellow food or drink founder that will benefit from it! 🙏
Get my free newsletter
If you want to design food or drink products that taste perfect for your consumers, hit those repeat purchases, and see your sales go through the roof — there’s no luck or miracle involved. You need a flavour strategy.
👋 Hi, I am Manon Galizzi, a food scientist and flavour expert with over 10 years in the food industry.
In each episode, I share what I’ve learned from helping food and drink brands create new products from scratch, choose the right flavour direction, or fix products that just aren’t performing.
Because flavour isn’t just a nice-to-have — it’s the number one reason people buy.
If this podcast hits home, don’t forget to leave a ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ review on Spotify or Apple Podcast, and share it with a fellow food or drink founder! 🙏
If you want to design food or drink products that taste perfect for your consumers, hit those repeat purchases, and see your sales go through the roof — there’s no luck or miracle involved. You need a flavour strategy.
👋 Hi, I am Manon Galizzi, a food scientist and flavour expert with over 10 years in the food industry.
In each episode, I share what I’ve learned from helping food and drink brands create new products from scratch, choose the right flavour direction, or fix products that just aren’t performing.
Because flavour isn’t just a nice-to-have — it’s the number one reason people buy.
