Compass Marketing Research Debuts Culinary Research Center

Norcross, Georgia, August 6, 2010 - Compass Marketing Research debuts the new Culinary Research Center serving the national chain restaurant and food & beverage manufacturing industries. The new facilities include a state-of–the-art commercial R&D test kitchen, as well as a domestic-style kitchen with adjoining consumer research rooms.

“Our new culinary development facility design was guided by R&D chefs to support the various stages of product evolution from ideation to concepting, and through prototype development and refinement.” says Scott Taylor, President of Compass Marketing Research. “Our firm has long provided consumer research services to many of the most well-known brands in the food & beverage industry, and now we operate our own top-notch culinary facilities for a comprehensive service package.”

The Culinary Research Center which spans over 5,000 square feet was built to meet the ever growing needs of product and menu developers. The kitchen areas encompassing 1,200’ are modern and trendy and highly functional with provisions that are truly important to culinary development projects including the newest commercial equipment, abundant refrigeration, ample prep and working areas and a variety of small wares.

The number of new food/beverage product introductions in the market place has more than tripled over the past decade. Clearly innovation is a dominant trend in the US food industry. In 1994 it was reported by the Journal of Food Distribution Research that at least 61% of all new consumer packaged good sku’s were new products.

Most food and beverage R&D activities revolve around one of three initiatives; imitations, improvements or innovations. What may be surprising is that the majority of R&D work supports imitations, with improvements taking second place and innovations representing the least amount of development.

A reason for this is cost and risk, as it simply costs more to innovate and it bears the highest amount of acceptance risk. Generally, development cycle time is also a factor, as it typically takes about six months R&D time for imitative projects, about 16 months for improvement projects, and 24 months or longer for new innovation projects.

Also interesting to note is only 5% of innovation R&D projects typically result actual market launch, while 22% of improvement and 27% of imitation projects actually launch. The Culinary Research Center at Compass Marketing Research is designed to support consumer-led R&D and around each of those initiatives; new product development and refinements.

“We represent a breadth and depth of both culinary and consumer research experience and offer both field only and full service which give us a distinct advantage with our clients. Each project is uniquely different and we have the resources to customize our service offering to fit the specific needs of our clients. The key is having the resources” relays Cari Pirello, Vice President of Compass Marketing Research. “Our team is comprised of food scientists, chefs and experienced line cooks, as may be called upon by our clients for culinary support, in addition to experienced researchers in the design, execution and analysis of food and beverage research. Our new Culinary Research Center is fully equipped and provides a flexible platform to conduct simple to complex projects. Our consumer testing rooms feature lap top data collection capabilities, are easily accessible to the kitchens and offer study room client one-way mirror viewing.”

The Culinary Research Center at Compass Marketing Research is located in the diverse demographic major market of Atlanta, providing a melting pot of national representation and making it easy to assemble a wide variety or very specific target consumers for testing to participate in qualitative and quantitative food/beverage studies.

The kitchen facilities may be made available to culinary professionals for non-consumer research related purposes as well.

Tours are available to those with a need for a commercial test kitchen and consumer research services. Additional information is available by calling to discuss needs and services.

The Culinary Research Center is a division of Compass Marketing Research, a wholly owned subsidiary of The Marketing Workshop, Inc. established in 1972 to serve the marketing research needs across a variety of industries.

This content was provided by Compass Marketing Research. Visit their website at www.compassmarketingresearch.com.