Innovating with Chef Ray

Ray Sierengowski is a food scientist. You can call him Chef Ray. He works at the Meijer Innovation Center and Test Kitchen, located at 70 Ionia SW as part of GRid 70. The state-of-the-art facility has everything a group of chefs need to dice, chop, bake, puree, cook, steam, broil and what-have-you a plethora of edibles.

For four years, Ray worked with Sara Lee and Kellogg as lead scientist. Prior to that, he was a corporate chef for Morton's Restaruant. He is a graduate of Oakland University, studying Culinary Arts and Food Science. He also does voiceovers on the side, something you might be able to guess during a casual conversation.

The difference between what Ray does in the innovation Center and what students of culinary arts are doing is that Ray's team is charged with taking a product from "inception to shelf," he says. "We [at Meijer] will get customer feedback that says, 'why don't you have a snickerdoodle cookie?'" he explains. "So, we'll make some prototypes. We make sure they have a shelf life manageable for our customer. We test all our products against national brands to make sure they are as good or better."

This prototyping is how Ray could end up formulating and testing over 400 chocolate chip cookie recipes. The testing is done both in-house and externally. The Meijer Quality Assurance Team will conduct panel testing, using anywhere from 1-5000 people. Much of this testing will take place in the Meijer headquarters facility in Walker among their about 1000 employees. Signs reading chocolate chip cookie testing lure in participants. "It's harder when it's canned tuna," Ray jokes.

They may also test using in-store samples, incentivizing comments by offering gift cards to customers who fill out short surveys. But it's not all just about taste -- there's a lot of science involved, too.

"We make sure it holds up well, but we don't have to put any preservatives [in the food]," Ray says. "That's been our big thing. How do we make products fresh, eye-appealing and safe without tons of chemicals and food colorings?"

For example, he says, the team removed Yellow No. 5 from their deli salads. The Quality Assurance Team also for yeast and mould and determine for how long a product is safe. They may find out a salad is "food safe" for 45 days, but only looks good for 15-20 days. That's the time when the stores will pull the food.

So how does a department store in five come up with the perfect product? Ray says that even a Midwest taste profile still means a lot of different taste profiles in general. It's not just meat and potatoes that people are looking for anymore (he cites Meijer's keen attention to seafood as an example). "We have customers who look for that unique kind of item," he says. "With everyone traveling, you're exposed to so much more. Before you had to wait for culinary trends to float over, but now people see these things quickly."

When trying to create the next unique item, or even the perfect recipe for something simple, they put a myriad of ideas on paper and concept test them, sometimes online. "We send [an idea] out to a thousand people," he says. What does well goes from verbiage to a prototype. It's dialed in and tasted. "Going through that level of testing is going to ensure that once it hits the market, it's going to do well," Ray says.

What's interesting about the Meijer Innovation Center is the cross-collaboration. When launching a new product (a Polish sausage, to be precise), Ray and his team grabbed 40-50 people sharing their larger office space. These people may work for companies like Wolverine and Amway, and they all come with different palettes and experiences. "They look at food differently than I do," he says, "although everyone in this building looks at product innovation."

This group of innovators, Ray says, have no knowledge of his barriers as a chef or food scientist. He might be confined by the barriers of what equipment exists, but those who do not work in food wouldn't know those limitations. "When you get enough people to start thinking, you have to take a second look," he says.  "If it seems innovative, we're going to find a way to engineer it. And we hope that we give the same help when it comes to shoes or chairs or things like that."

After all, no one tests a slip-reistent, comfortable and fashionable shoe for kitchen work better than a group of chefs who work in a kitchen right next to a group of creatives from Wolverine.

"If people can push you outside of your normal flow," Ray says, "it makes for more innovative products."

Chef Ray will be joining Rapid Growth's team of bloggers in the coming months ahead, bringing us more insight into the arenas of food science and innovation. And who knows? He might just ask us to try something.


J. Bennett Rylah is the Managing Editor of Rapid Growth Media.