Cranswick’s Group Head of Innovation, Simon, attended Leeds University last week to attend a Dragon’s Den style competition for the students end of year NPD project. Simon was invited to join the judging panel alongside other industry experts from M&S, Asda, Healy Group, Amazon and Nestle.
There were 15 teams formed from the students at the university’s Food Science and Nutrition department, that were given a selection of briefs that could form the concept of their chosen product. The students then had to develop their product and present the finished concept to the dragons and justify their rationale, marketing plan, target customer, food safety knowledge and commercial awareness.
The phenomenal winning concept was ‘Solar Spuds’ who had created a fortified children’s potato product that was aimed specifically for children with autism to counteract deficiencies in vitamins and minerals using natural sources of swede, cannellini beans and marine calcium. An amazing all-round idea. The runner up was ‘BrewBar’ that created a caffeinated fruit and nut snack bar upcycling coffee granules from coffee shops into snack bars that deliver the same amount of caffeine per bar as you would get in a cup of coffee as well as being a source of fibre and protein with no added sugar. Another fantastic concept.
Cranswick are immensely proud to support such excellent initiatives at local universities and would like to wish the students the best of luck for the future.