The food product development process

The current process for developing new food products is seriously flawed. Of the 8,077 new food products (stock keeping units or SKUs) introduced to US retail markets in 1993, only about one‐quarter of them were novel – not simply line extensions. Although there are no published data on successes and failures of new food products, it is estimated that 80 to 90 per cent of them fail within one year of introduction. These are just the products that made the retail cut; consider all the products whose efforts fell short and retail introduction never took place. This means that only about 200 novel food products introduced in 1993 will make it after their first year on US retail shelves in 1994. The failure cost to the US food industry is estimated at $20 billion. This cost results from missed sales targets, lost revenues and postponed profits in addition to wasted development resources.