Pictured: UCB students with AVA guru Steve Collins.
The AVA and University College Birmingham’s annual Culinary Product Development Challenge is well under way and last week, students had an opportunity to pitch their ideas to a panel composed of vending gurus.
Forty-eight final year students, divided into eight groups of six, were allocated ten minutes with to confer with eight industry experts to discuss products, ask questions and hear advice.
The contest, now in its third year, sees teams of UCB final-year students in Culinary Arts Management tasked with developing a new vending product which demonstrates creativity and most importantly, passes the taste test.
At the end of six weeks of lectures on all aspects of product development and vending, the teams have now crystalised their initial thoughts and kitchen trials are ready to begin.
The ‘vending gurus’ included Roger Williams from Coinadrink, (you can read his PV blog here); Dominic Creamer from Unilever and the AVA’s own Steve Collins, Dave Ward, (Dave’s latest PV blog post is here) and Mike Saltmarsh. Two of the university’s lecturers also took part and each panellist was able to offer a specific insight on a key aspect of the challenge, from manufacturing and marketing to nutrition and packaging.
‘We were really impressed with the dedication and enthusiasm of this year’s students and it was great to hear all about their ideas and offer them advice’, Steve Collins, Membership Services Manager at the AVA, told PV. ‘The competition is stronger than ever and we’ve seen some really innovative products brought to the table using interesting ingredients and innovative marketing ideas. We’re all looking forward to seeing the finished products at the judging event in December and wish all of the teams the very best of luck.
Bernhard Schumacher, Module Leader at UCB said ‘the ‘Gurus’ event provided students with a unique opportunity to obtain lots of extremely useful feedback from industry experts which can only aid the development of their culinary creations. ‘The students came up with an exciting variety of very innovative product concepts, so competition is definitely heating up’, he told PV.
The winner of this year’s products will be chosen by a panel of vending industry experts in December when students will be asked to simulate a product launch.
