SME Solutions Centre – Maximising shelf-life of an ambient Cowch pancake through formulation
The challenge
Cowch manufactures and retails a range of decadent dessert products directly to consumers through their restaurants. Products include buttermilk pancakes, waffles, dessert pizzas and indulgent beverages. Many factors can impact the integrity of frozen desserts, including the robustness of the initial product, temperature abuse in the supply chain, rate of cooling, rate of freezing and product composition. Their current buttermilk pancake product loses physical and organoleptic quality and has a limited shelf life. With supply chain issues hampering the food industry globally, there is greater demand for import replacement (reshoring) across the retail and foodservice industries. Cowch is wanting to capitalize on this and address the qualities issue with their products as they upscale production.
Our SME plan
Cowch, in collaboration with Queensland Department of Agriculture and Fisheries (QDAF) and Fight Food Waste CRC, will provide product and operational improvements to develop a more commercially robust formulation. This will result in substantial reduction of end-product waste by use of enhanced ingredients, formulation and packaging to improve product quality. Overall, this will provide opportunities for the business to launch into new markets with a wider geographical reach with a formulation that is optimised to reduce food waste. Furthermore, provide business confidence to proceed with upscaling the current manufacture.
Return to SME Solutions Centre main page
Timeline
August 2022 – August 2023