It was a school holiday programme with a difference when a group of intermediate students got a taste of the food business by creating a product in a commercial kitchen to present to a panel of judges.
The programme was instigated by The Food Factory’s general manager Olivia Martyn who wanted to inspire children to become involved in the food business.
Usually, The Food Factory in Stoke is the domain of entrepreneurs in the food and beverage industry who use it to kick start their business venture. The facility was originally prompted by Pic Picot from Pic’s Peanut Butter World to give the fledgling businesses the opportunity to hire the facilities and get advice from the voice of experience.
This was the first time that school-aged children have used the facilities to get an insight into the food business and Olivia is planning to repeat the programme during the October holidays.
Students had spent the morning at a netball holiday programme before being grouped into teams at The Food Factory, given a recipe, and told to create a product with a name, proposed packaging and costings.
“They talked about pricing and yield – because it’s important if you run a food business that you make the right amount. They spent a lot of time calculating the margin and not just the cost of ingredients, but labour, power and rates to see how much you pay for the end product.”
Each group was given a brand name which they had to incorporate into their product and then made a pitch to the panel of four judges including Pic Picot. In their pitch the groups needed to give a reason for why their product would be a good snack for refuelling after netball.
Olivia says the students showed how creative they could be within the limited time of one-and-a-half hours between cooking and presenting their products, coming up names such as Pop O Mallow and Pic Sin. The judges decided the overall winner was the Oatalisios Banana Bliss Balls.
