Chris Candullo is a chef and senior scientist in the product development group at Hormel Foods. Prior to joining the company, he held positions at Cargill and Loders Croklaan as well as in restaurants and has worked as a personal chef.
We spoke with Chef Chris about trends he is seeing and the impact of technology in product development.
Q&A
Looking back at 2017, what evolving trends did you see dominate the food landscape?
Clean, Clean, Clean
Looking back at 2017, what ingredients did you see gain popularity with consumers?
Ingredients that offer consumers an understandable ingredient deck to make better purchasing decisions.
Conversely, did you notice any trends or ingredients lose momentum in 2017?
I noticed “100% organic” lose momentum in the development project requests, possibly due to high cost and lack of available ingredients.
Looking ahead to 2018, do you anticipate any interesting themes or trending ingredients in the food landscape?
“Made with organic ingredients,” “all-natural,” lower-sodium finished goods and clean, understandable ingredient decks.
How do you plan on incorporating these trending ingredients and themes into your cooking?
Continuing to find and implement newer technology ingredients that not only allow me to build an understandable ingredient deck, but also perform better than traditional all-natural/no gluten/organic ingredient solutions.