Women with Cool Jobs
Women with Cool Jobs
Insights and Innovation Manager (Food Scientist) Uses Sensory Science to Create the Drinks You Love, with Nikki Wollak
Nikki Wollak is an Insights and Innovation Manager (a food scientist) at a flavor and beverage development company. Her job is all about making things taste amazing. From running taste tests to translating TikTok food trends into real product ideas, Nikki’s work lives at the intersection of science, creativity, and what consumers will be thirsty for in the future.
Nikki shares how flavors are developed—from a spark of inspiration to a fully launched product on store shelves. She helps the scientists at her company make great tasting flavors and products by running taste tests, conducting other research studies, and helping to identify trends. She literally gets paid to eat and drink things! Plus, she observes and ask questions of others who are doing the eating and drinking.
Whether it’s recreating the vibe of a childhood snack or exploring a bold new flavor combo, Nikki’s job is to help brands create products that are relevant, saleable, and desirable.
Nikki dives into the fascinating world of sensory science, market trends, ingredient innovation, and how consumer feedback drives the flavors we love.
We chat about:
- How considering viral Instagram drink hacks and TikTok cooking videos can show emerging trends that leads to innovation and future products
- How her team uses sensory science to measure taste, texture, aroma, and mouthfeel
- How she combines data with market research and consumer feedback
Contact Info:
Nikki Wollak - Guest
Nicole (Nikki) Wollak (LinkedIn)
Julie Berman - Host
www.womenwithcooljobs.com
@womencooljobs (Instagram)
Julie Berman (LinkedIn)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I absolutely LOVE being the host and producer of "Women with Cool Jobs", where I interview women who have unique, trailblazing, and innovative careers. It has been such a blessing to share stories of incredible, inspiring women since I started in 2020.
If you have benefitted from this work, or simply appreciate that I do it, please consider buying me a $5 coffee. ☕️
https://www.buymeacoffee.com/julieberman
Thank you so much for supporting me -- whether by sharing an episode with a friend, attending a LIVE WWCJ event in Phoenix, connecting with me on Instagram @womencooljobs or LinkedIn, sending me a note on my website (www.womenwithcooljobs.com), or by buying me a coffee! It all means so much. <3
The customers that we work with are everything from, you know, private label for stores to food service companies to some of the biggest CPG brands that you're probably already buying, and we're kind of the ones behind the scenes. So the trends that we share with them, or the feedback that we help give them end up coming to life in the products that you see on the shelf six nine months later. So we might do something on nostalgic flavors being trendy, and things like sherbet and popsicles and creamsicles being things that people love, or candy flavors that are throwbacks. And then six months later, you might see things on the shelf that have those flavors. Because we saw nostalgia as a trend, and it's now manifested in the products that we've developed.
Julie Berman - Host:Hey everybody, I'm Julie, and welcome to Women with cool jobs. Each episode will feature women with unique, trailblazing and innovative careers. We'll talk about how she got here, what life is like now, and actionable steps that you can take to go on a similar path, or one that's all your own. This podcast is about empowering you. It's about empowering you to dream big and to be inspired. You'll hear from incredible women in a wide variety of fields, and hopefully some that you've never heard of before, women who build robots and roadways, firefighters, C suite professionals surrounded by men, social media mavens, entrepreneurs and more. I'm so glad we get to go on this journey together. Hello, everybody. This is Julie Berman, and welcome to another episode of women with cool jobs. So today, this is one of the episodes that I just I love learning about the things that you never thought to think about. And I I think about, sometimes we walk into the grocery store and we're picking out the things that we want, whether it's for specific meal, whether it's for for me, like, I always love going places, especially like even home goods or other like other places, like Trader Joe's that just have really interesting foods that change often. And I love discovering new things. I think of it as like an adventure, like a discovery, and I'm on a treasure hunt. So I just love these types of things. And so thinking about this in relation to this next episode of women with cool jobs that you're listening to with the amazing Nikki Wallach, it's really fascinating to think about the things that we see on the shelves in our grocery stores and other places where we make purchases for food and drink. So Nikki Wallach has a really cool job. She is the insights and innovation manager, and she focuses on sensory and market insights and new ingredient innovations for a flavor and beverage development company. So essentially, this means that she thinks about the ways that consumers want to have their foods, how they want to experience them, like what the sensory experience is going to be, how they taste, how they smell, you know? How do they feel? So she's paid to eat and drink things, and then she's observing what others are thinking about and experiencing as they eat and drink things and collecting their feedback. So she works with scientists. She works with creators who are creating these, these food and drinks. She's running taste tests, she's conducting research studies, and she's identifying trends. So she's thinking about things like, what flavors are going to be popular a year or two from now? She is really amazing at being the voice of the consumer, and so she has essentially, like an influence over the types of products that get made, which is really, it's really fascinating to think about, because she's thinking about, like, Okay, if we're in March of 2025 what are the products that you're maybe going to be wanting to drink A year from now, and like, forecasting that out. So it's really, I mean, isn't that interesting to think about? And then the other thing is, is that she has a really unique combination of education and experience. So she got her Bachelor's in food science from Michigan State University, and then she got a master's in integrated marketing communications from Northwestern and what's really fascinating is you listen to this interview, is that she's a phenomenal communicator. She's a phenomenal storyteller, and her ability to not only understand the nuances and the details in the science and like, be able to translate that and then communicate it to people who don't have that background, and to be able to say, like, Okay, well, this is what you know, we can help you create on the science side of things, and this is the sensory experience that people are going to have, and this is why I think we should do it. And then on the flip side, being able to say to the people who are creating it, like, this is why I think people are going to love it and translate that in a way that makes sense. Sense, being able to communicate in a really understandable, relatable, simple way is such a powerful tool thinking about, how do we how do we consume things as just like an everyday person? Why do we choose the things that we're choosing when we go to the grocery store, when I go to some place like home goods and see all their fun foods, or like Trader Joe's what? What do I think of? And then, like, what is that experience in relation like, does it match what I thought it was going to be? And the fact that she talks about in this interview that there are so many different types of mango flavor, like, there's just so many options that I never even really thought to think of. And yet, she considers this with all the things that they create, whether it's like drinks or food. So such a fascinating episode. And if you do end up liking this episode, go back and listen to also my episode, where I interview an ice cream scientist. It's really fantastic and also so interesting, along the same lines of like, how do we create the flavors of the foods and drinks that we eat and love. So I hope you enjoy this episode, and if you do, please make sure that you are sharing it with a friend who you think might love it, who might find it so inspiring and fascinating. Thanks so much for being here and enjoy this episode with Nikki Wallach, hello, everybody. This is Julie Berman, and welcome to another episode of women with cool jobs. So I have a wonderful guest for you all today. I'm so excited to introduce Nikki Wallach, and she has a super cool job. So she is a food scientist. She her official title is an insights and innovation manager, and you focus on sensory and market insights and new ingredient innovations at a flavor and beverage development company. So thank you for being on the podcast. Thank you
Nikki Wollak:so much for having me. So I want to have you describe
Julie Berman - Host:a little bit like when people ask you, what is your job? Like, what do you do? How do you describe it to people?
Nikki Wollak:That's a great question. So a lot of times, I'll start with just grounding them in an experience they understand. So when you go to a store and you pick up a beverage on the shelf, and that beverage has flavors in it, someone is creating those flavors and ingredients that are going into that product, and that's what my company does. So my role is to help make them as delicious as possible, and collect data to help us inform those decisions of how to make the best product we can. So essentially, as a sensory and insight scientist, I'm creating taste tests or doing interviews and figuring out what exactly is it that people want and what makes things taste great, and then how do we translate that into a product that they really love.
Julie Berman - Host:Wow. Okay, that was a great explanation. Thank you. And when you So, when you do this job like I'm curious, what are, you know, the kinds of people you're working with, because it seems like you do work, you know, not only with potential customers. What? What are the other sort of groups of people who you collaborate with to do this work?
Nikki Wollak:That's a really good question. So right now, the company I work for, we supply ingredients, so we do business to business a lot, which means there are lots of different stakeholders. So obviously, the brands that we work with and the people who work at those companies are our stakeholders, and we do research with them on what they like and what they mean when they say they want a new orange flavored product. But we also then get to work with, sometimes directly, consumers, so people who consume those products and understanding what they like, as well as within the company, I have a lot of cross functional partners who I work with. So sensory and insights kind of toes that line between marketing and science, where I'm kind of the voice of the consumer, and I'm making sure that what we're doing is relevant and saleable, so more marketing driven things, but I also need to be able to communicate with people who are flavorists and product developers to help them refine the products that they're making and make them really great, and take those learnings and translate them to the chemical compounds that go into the flavors, or the exact recipes and formulas that we create. So it's a little bit of our a little bit of science. And the best part of it is that you do get to interact with that many different groups, and it's a really fun social role that helps explain and connect and do a lot of storytelling to get people on the same page. Wow,
Julie Berman - Host:yeah, it sounds like it. That's so interesting. It's, it's interesting to think about all those different, I guess, like components is not quite the word I want, but it's the one that's coming to mind. So I'll go with it. But like all the different sort of components that go into your job, but also, like the different people in the different roles that you're coordinating with, and, yeah, that that, like, you have sort of different functions, even within your role of, like, who you're talking to and for what purpose. So, yeah, thank you for such a great explanation. Right, like, right from the beginning, that was so wonderful. You mentioned the idea that you get to, like, Help, kind of taste things. Just all day, and it was like such a fun part of your job. So I'm wondering if you can just give us like we're we'll get into more of the details, but like, can you just give us a few examples so we can kind of imagine what, what sort of things are you like tasting or thinking about in this role for people who just literally have no idea what some of the examples could be,
Nikki Wollak:of course. Yeah, I tease my husband all the time when I see his work calendar, I'm like, there are zero slushy tastings on your calendar. I don't know how you go to work every day, but it's everything from when we're working on a new ingredient, innovation, understanding, you know, does this ingredient do what we say it's going to do? So when I say this is a sweetness enhancer and I put it in a sweetened drink with and without the ingredient we're adding, does it actually taste sweeter? So on a really scientific level, sometimes it's evaluating, do these things say what we say they're going to do, and are they performing in the way that we expect? But other times, it's about tasting these finished products. So it's here's three different versions of cherry cola. Which one do we all prefer? Why do we prefer it? Which one has more cherry more cola? What's the character of the cola, and how do we capture notes and come to an alignment on the way we're talking about those flavors and ingredients, to figure out what we actually want and how to move it in the direction of the thing that we had in mind when we started on the project. So everything from ready to drink, things you find in store to builds for food service. Of you know, what is this frozen coffee drink going to taste like? Or what is this Margarita going to taste like? When we mix in the alcohol, we do tastings for those so it is a lot of either guided tasting, where I'm asking questions and taking notes, or where we're collecting survey data as we taste, and we're tasting individually and then analyzing that data to figure out, what did we learn when we weren't biasing each other of what people actually want as they're filling out these surveys?
Julie Berman - Host:Oh, wow, yeah, that's so fascinating. You know, it's funny, like, it came to mind when you said slushies. I was like, she's a she's a slushy sommelier
Nikki Wollak:with people in the lab. You know, we work a lot on functional nutrition and sports and energy drinks, and so I do joke about being like an energy drink sommelier. Sometimes that maybe a little less glamorous than talking about terroir and things if you're talking about wine. But like, are you picking up on the cooked juice, notes of this orange. Yeah, about where we're at most days. Yeah, that's so
Julie Berman - Host:funny. Oh, I love that. That's super fascinating. And I'm curious, like, I want to go back a little bit and talk about, you know, if, if you knew about this field growing up, or, like, how did you, how did you get into doing this job, because it is, I don't. I actually, you know, interviewed another food scientist. But before that, I actually didn't know that it existed as a field. So I'm curious. Like, what, what is your, your sort of story? And, like, how did you get here? In that regards, wow,
Nikki Wollak:my food science origin story. I also did not know about food science growing up. So at the end of high school, getting ready to go to college, I was a kid who loved math and science, but I also loved more creative things too. And at some point, I was that kid who also loved food network and thought maybe nutrition or dietetics was an interesting space. And I was at the school that I went to, Michigan State. I was there for like, a scholarship weekend, and you had to go to these open house information sessions for the college you thought you were going to. And I was an undecided major, and so I had to just pick one. And I picked the College of Agriculture because dietetics and nutrition was there. But there were also these really other interesting fields that I was like, they all got jammed into agriculture together. They were like, forestry and zoology majors and interior design majors. And I'm like, this seems like a unique group of varied majors to just go hang out with. And I get there, and they asked who's here for food science, for going on a tour of the ice cream plant? And I said, Yes, me. That is me. I go on a tour of an ice cream plant. They give me cookies. They talk to me about food science as a career, that it's a really in demand job where you get to develop new products or improve food safety, or all of these other amazing things, to bring the products that we all know and love to life. But if you haven't met someone in that field, you're not really thinking about the fact that there are smart scientists doing the work behind it, and I was hooked, so I declared a major and went into food science first thing freshman year, and loved it and never looked back, because it really was that combination of practical application of science to something that I already really loved, that also felt a little bit creative.
Julie Berman - Host:I love that. What a great way to get people interested in and ask you how to go on a tour, right? I mean, like, I feel like everyone at every age, like two to whatever, you know, 95 would be like, yes, please, yeah. So yes. I love that. And how, like, as far as your your education, in your degrees, can you tell me a little bit about that? Because I see here you have quite, quite a few degrees under your belt, so I'd love to hear about that. And like, why you know why you chose to get them, if you if you felt like you needed those for your career, or if it was just like an enhance, you know, what you were wanting to focus on, or become a leader in in some way?
Nikki Wollak:Yeah, absolutely. So obviously, my first degree is in food science. I have a Bachelor's of Food Science from Michigan State, and that, to me, was really the entry into figuring out, what do I want to do in food science and is necessary to become a food scientist within that I kind of worked in an undergraduate lab that did a few different things, but one of the things we focused on was sensory science. So I was the one setting up the taste tests and labeling plates and cups and administering the test to people. And I really, really enjoyed it. So when it came time to go to work full time. I ended up doing a bit of a rotational program where I got to try four different jobs with an R and D in my first two years, and one of them was sensory. And when I tried it at an actual company, I still loved it. And being that voice of the consumer and having to translate what people say they want to a really technical outcome was something that I just enjoyed. So I fell into a role in sensory for several years, and while I was there, decided that the other kind of side of the research coin is doing market research, so understanding outside of the product and the experience that you're building. What are the unmet needs of the consumers? What do people not even know they want yet, but you're you can develop something that's going to solve a problem for them. So I decided to go back to school for a degree in integrated marketing communications at Northwestern and that was really not, you know, a necessary step for being a sensory scientist or an insights researcher, but it felt like a good enhancement. So it allowed me to see from a more business and marketing and communications driven perspective. How do you construct research? How do you build brands and products that have similar touch points across every place you see them? How does the product reinforce what the brand promises? And I felt like it would give me a little bit more range as a researcher to understand the more business and marketing sides of a company and how you develop a product. So it allowed me to take on some roles that I otherwise might not have had in my career, and really broaden my experience. And all of that has kind of brought me here to my current role at imbibe, where I get to focus on a little bit of everything, where I'm getting to do product and sensory research, market and consumer insights and trying to figure out what's next for ingredient research that I feel like I get to wear all those different hats from the different educational experiences I've had. Yeah,
Julie Berman - Host:that's fascinating. It's really interesting too. I love that you I mean, it's interesting that you went that route, because when I was, you know, reading about your experience, and I was like, Oh, that's so interesting, because I have, like, a PR journalism background and still have been in communications for a while. But it's interesting because not often do you see, like, the science combined with communications. So I love that, because I can see also you talking about just the ability to tell stories, it's like, you know, but also the science behind things. And I could see how those would maybe unexpectedly go together for some people, but that how it actually allows you to do a more sort of comprehensive job of, like, not only, you know, having one side of things, but then being able to tell the story around it, and also maybe interpreting what people, what people are sharing with you. And being like, I think actually, you know, like taking pieces of that, like analyzing it a little bit further. So that's really cool,
Nikki Wollak:yeah, and it's so critical for me in so many different places. So I think being able to story, tell and communicate difficult, technical things in a way that resonates with people is really relevant when I get data back on a study of what products did people like and how do we change the product, but it's also really relevant in creating new products of this is what people said they wanted. How do you build a brand or a comms message around a new product that's launching, that's going to resonate so that this great product ends up in the right hands and with people who want what the product says it's going to do. And how do you communicate that, and even internally, for me, as we're launching new ingredients, how do we figure out what ingredients and technologies are emerging and are cool and can do something neat, but how do we translate that to meeting a consumer need or meeting a product developer's requirement on the bench, so that it's actually something that's saleable in the future? Because there are so many really cool ideas that without a translation of, how do they become relevant, or how do you talk about them in a way that gets people excited, might never see the light of day? So I. Think being able to have something in communications is a bit of a superpower to help in most roles, to translate to why is this relevant, and why does this mean something? Yeah, I could
Julie Berman - Host:see how that would be applicable in so many ways. And you are like such an amazing storyteller, just you know, in the time of the short time that we've been talking. So I love that. And then for your job now, like, in your role, can you talk about, kind of, some of the roles and responsibilities that you have, you know, maybe some of the the pieces of it, in regards to, you know, like, if there's a process that you go through, typically when you're developing and like, who those different people are, and then kind of the translation between also the kind of the in house work that you do at your company, and then what we see in the, you know, in the world, like on our shelves and things when we go to our local grocery store or, you know, or convenience store,
Nikki Wollak:yeah. So on the Insight side, a lot of what we're doing is trying to understand what's trending in the marketplace. So we'll look at things like search trends or what people are hacking together on Pinterest and Tiktok and other data that we have from companies that come to us, and what do we get asked for? And we kind of triangulate all those pieces of data to say, here are the topics we think are really resonant and things that are going to continue in the marketplace. And so from that, we'll build, kind of like insights reports or things that we share out with our customers and put together blog posts or other collateral or stories that we tell, that we help them understand where might they want to take their portfolios and what new products might they want to launch. So we'll do a lot of that, and it's a lot of that taking multiple pieces of data to figure out, what are the insights you can derive from it, and what's the story you're going to tell, and how do we think it's going to come to fruition? And then on the product side, it's a lot of we're already working on these customer product development projects that we've been commissioned to do as a consultant, and so they have asked us for something, and so it's, how do we take what they specifically asked for, combine it with what we know is possible, and create a bunch of prototypes that we can get feedback on. So then I might be setting up surveys that I'm sending to our customers that I say, get 10 people at your company to taste it. I'll compile all the data. I'll figure out what you actually all think you want, and how we did based on what I know our development team sent. And then our development team will go through the results with me and say, Okay, well, we tried variation A, B and C. They're different in these ways. They like this one. We think that means we should do this for our next round of revisions, because that's what they liked, and we think that's going to get them to the product that they're going to like the best, and we'll present that back to them and say, we'll send you more samples in another week, based on what we learned here. So that's how that comes to fruition. And then what does that mean for the marketplace? The customers that we work with are everything from, you know, private label for stores to food service companies to some of the biggest CPG brands that you're probably already buying, and we're kind of the ones behind the scenes, so the trends that we share with them, or the feedback that we help give them end up coming to life in the products that you see on the shelf six nine months later. So we might do something on nostalgic flavors being trendy, and things like sherbet and popsicles and creamsicles being things that people love, or candy flavors that are throwbacks, and then six months later, you might see things on the shelf that have those flavors, because we saw nostalgia as a trend, and it's now manifested in the products that we've developed.
Julie Berman - Host:Wow, that's so interesting. I'm thinking I just saw like a black it was like a Blackberry soda. I think it was like BlackBerry Dr Pepper or something. And I was like BlackBerry Dr Pepper. What? What is this interesting flavor? I've never heard of such a thing. So that's really interesting, because I don't think that I paid, I guess, as much attention, maybe as as things change, as I think I do, you know, it's just like you see what you see, and you're not necessarily like noting that there's that there's these new flavors of things. And so how long does it usually take between like, when you are developing versus like when it might hit product shelves. Like, is there a certain average time frame? Or how does that work?
Nikki Wollak:It takes longer than you would think sometimes. So it kind of depends on the size of the company and the scale of the launch that they're going to have. Smaller companies might be more agile and might be buying time at co manufacturers, and they might be able to move relatively quickly. Or if they are a direct to consumer company and they control their own supply chain, they might move relatively quickly so it might be just a few months. There are other things where you might be selling into a large retailer, and they might only have a few reset Windows per year when they restock or change up the planogram for a. Certain category, and so you might be selling into those buyers months in advance. So it might take nine to 18 months between when something is first ideated and when it's actually getting out there to the marketplace. So some trends move fast, some move slow, and we see kind of everything in between, wow,
Julie Berman - Host:and when, when you're developing a flavor. Like, I don't know, do you have an example that you're able to share with us? Of, like, you know, when someone is wanting to either create something from scratch, or maybe, like, change up a flavor, like, you're doing something, yeah, that you are seeing based on a trend, like, how, how does that work? Like, you know, are you kind of, you know, creating new things and just like, adding it in, drop by drop, or, like, how does that actually work, that whole process? What's
Nikki Wollak:really interesting is that we don't, if you're not in the flavor world, you're probably not thinking about how many different ways there are to deliver mango. For instance, you're probably thinking mango's mango, and someone comes to you and says they want mango, and you give them a mango flavor, right? But what we find is it's really important up front to align on what that means, and there's a few different ways to do it. So one of the easiest ways is to say what out there in the market tastes similar to what you want. Is there another product, or is there a specific varietal of that fruit that you want as the thing that we're targeting when we're creating this flavor, and we can then figure out what's in it, what compounds are really characteristic to it. How do we create that flavor? Or if that's not what you're coming in with, sometimes we'll do something that we call lexicon alignment, where we're essentially saying these are all of the terms that we could use to describe this flavor. And we'll have our flavors pull example flavors, or, example, chemical compounds that create those specific attributes. And we'll say, when we say a sulfurous mango, we mean this. When we say a pili mango or a ripe mango or a green mango, we mean this, this and this, smell them, taste them. Which one is it? And sometimes we'll use that to help align on what we mean. Other times, we might just pull a bunch of different things in the category and talk to them about how we would describe each one and what they want. So an example I might have here is, let's say we're working on cherry cola. We might go pull five or six cherry Colas from the market and sit and taste them together and say what ratio of cherry to cola is in all of these. Are all of them more cherry cola or cherry forward or cola forward? When they're we're saying cola. Are they more spice or citrus type colas? Are they more, you know, true to fruit cherry or artificial or medicinal or black cherry? What kind of cherry is it? And then we can say, here's what we liked and what we didn't, and here's what we think that ideal profile is going to be. And let's start there. And then our flavorists, who are fascinating. These are people who have trained for seven years under an apprenticeship to become a certified flavorist. They just know what components go into those flavors to deliver on the different ways we talk about it. And they will create something and say, Is this what you meant? And we'll put it into the product, get feedback, and then we tweak from there. Wow,
Julie Berman - Host:that's fascinating. I did not think there were so many possibilities for mango.
Unknown:Yeah, I think I know many ways to make a mango. Yes, I'm
Julie Berman - Host:like a green What is it like? A green mango and yellow, a tufalo Mango. It's like, basically the ones I know. So that's hysterical and really fascinating. Thank you for explaining that. Yeah, the flavors sound amazing. Like, that's a lot of studying, for sure, to be able to do that with precision. Very cool. And then for you, you know, like, what do you think are some of the the aspects of your job that people also may not know about, that exist that like just really make it fun for you.
Nikki Wollak:That's a great question. I think, is really that it is at that intersection of getting to do something creative and kind of practical with a really tangible outcome, but also getting to explore and use a lot of science and data in my job too. So you know, so many times you might start down a certain path and you might really enjoy chemistry or statistics, but you might also enjoy doing something that feels more creative or applicable to something that you love. And what's really cool about food science and sensory science specifically is, you know, I'm constantly generating data, but it's for a tangible outcome, and it's to make products that I'm excited and proud to buy and I love and that tastes great, which is a really fun application for those skills. And so I think what I love so much about this space is being able to take little bits of all of those things that give me joy and apply them to something that's just a fun product category to work on. Yeah,
Julie Berman - Host:I love that. And will you explain also, like, when you talk about sensory will you explain that a little bit like, what? What does that mean? It's
Nikki Wollak:a great question, because it's exactly what it sounds like, but it's not so intuitive. When we talk about sensory science, it really is measuring product attributes using your five senses. So we talk a lot about, what aroma does this product have? How strong is it? What is the appearance like? What is the texture like as you touch it or drink it or crunch on it, if it's a snack food, and then flavor and taste. So what's actually happening with sweet, salty, with flavor, which is kind of a combination of what's going on on your tongue and your retronasal passage to experience different flavors. So it's trying to put some more qualitative or quantitative measures around the sensory experiences that we're all having every day, in hopes of measuring what we like and what we want and being able to alter a product to make it as good as possible to deliver on those expectations. Okay,
Julie Berman - Host:yeah, thank you for explaining that. And so when, I guess, like, when you're working with people, especially when you're working with people who are like, tasting it and and you're getting feedback from, you know, future customers, how do you how do you go about that process? Because I'm imagining, like, as you're speaking, I'm thinking, I'm like, I don't think I ever paid that much attention, you know, to, like, all of my senses, not at least at once, right? Like, for when I'm trying something. And so I'm curious, like, how are you going about that process? And do you find that people don't really, actually think about how they try foods. I'm just curious, like, what is that? Because I'm thinking about, I'm like, you know, if I try a new ice cream, I'm like, I either like it or I don't. And I can maybe sometimes pinpoint, like, Oh, it's too crunchy, or right, like, it's, I don't something, about it tastes off to me. Or, if, like, if I try a new bubbly drink, I might be like, there's too many bubbles for me. Or, like, you know, I It's too flat. But do you find that people often pay attention to things, and I'm just an anomaly, just curious, like, what? What is that like when you're working with with the customers. It's
Nikki Wollak:funny, because a lot of people think that they're not good tasters, or they're really afraid to try describing something for the first time because they say, I don't have the words, or I'm not going to give you good feedback, but any feedback is good feedback, and it's my job to help try and pull more out and get to something that we can then action on. So if we're giving surveys, if we're doing kind of proper taste tests, we ask questions exactly the way I just walked you through. How much do you like the appearance, how much do you like the aroma, how much do you like the flavor, how much do you like the sweetness? And we break it into those attributes, because most people might not be thinking about that, but if someone forces you to sit, you sit and go, Yeah, okay. I can actually pick out all of those elements, and I can have an opinion about them. We usually start with a broad question of just overall, how much do you like it? So we usually do start with that gut reaction of how everyone tastes things like, Yes, I like it. No, I don't. Here's why it was too bubbly, or it was too crunchy, or there were too many ice crystals in your ice cream, and that gives us something to go off of, and all of those other questions then become the diagnostics where, when you compare more than one product, even if people aren't super adept, adept tasters, but you're giving them multiple products to rate and asking them to think about it, or benchmarking against something, you can usually get enough data to then say this is the thing that stands out. Or people who say they really like this product, when we look at which attributes they're rating it well on, or the people who don't like it, which attributes are they rating it not well on? This is the thing that's driving them to like it or not like it, even if they weren't able to tell you that in their open ended comments, because we asked 100 people in this trend holds. And here's what the stats are telling us. So when we do it through a formal survey, we usually ask at all those different layers, and with numbers, you can really get an understanding of what is or is not driving liking when we're doing it through guided feedback and tastings, it's kind of incumbent on me to be able to ask those good detailed questions and to see where people are taking me and ask them about their experiences. So I usually will, if they tell me they like it or they don't. That's exactly when I would say, why not? And he would say, It's too bubbly. And I would say, Okay, what does that mean? How is it too bubbly? Is it that it's too acidic? Is it too sharp? Is it the physical bubbles you don't like, the way they feel in your mouth? And we would then start to pinpoint what about it is or is not working, and then I would be able to go back to my team and based on that feedback, say something like, oh, the carbonation level is too high, or it's coming off as too sharp and acidic. Maybe we need to take down the acid a bit and help find those balances. So even if the people don't have the words to tell me or it's not top of mind, every single meal they eat or every single beverage they consume. If we ask really good questions, we get the answers we need to make revisions and make things better.
Julie Berman - Host:Yeah, wow. That's fascinating. And how like when you are coming up with questions is like, sort of the scientist part of your role? I. Like, Are there standards or sort of procedures and processes that are, I guess, like common to the food science world that you just start with and kind of automatically know, because of all your training in that area,
Nikki Wollak:yes. So we have a set of tests that we typically run. So we have what we call effective tests, which are the tests where you understand preference, or how much people like something and why they like it, and are certain things too much, too little, or just about right? So there's a whole set of questions that are kind of standard to that. We have a whole set of tests called difference tests, where you might ask whether or not two products are the same or different, or I might give you three products and ask you to find the odd one out. And those types of tests are really useful for when we're doing quality initiatives where we're swapping in different ingredients, or if we're trying to match a flavor and we want it to taste exactly like the incumbent flavor we're trying to match, we might do that type of tests. So there definitely are repeatable and routine tests that sensory scientists learn and question types that kind of underpin those tests that we all know. One of the really fun things about this job, though, is my goal is, in any way, shape or form, to help my team get data that helps inform decision making. And sometimes we have all of the ideal tools and things that we need to get the job done, and you can run the exact test that's tried and true. But sometimes you have to be a little scrappy and you need to be practical about here's how much time or resource we actually have, or here's what we can learn with prototypes we currently have. And then it's my job to be creative, to figure out, what are those questions, or what are those tests that we can run to get us anything that can feed our intuition or our gut to make those choices and move forward? So it's really great to know the tried and true sensory methods, and sometimes the fun part is figuring out where you can reapply them in new ways to learn something new or meet the needs of your team. Yeah,
Julie Berman - Host:that's really interesting and and I appreciate you like explaining that there are sort of some tried and true things, because that's what I was thinking of. How do you know what questions to ask? Like, because you could just, you could probably go on and on and on asking a million questions. Because just with mango, it's like, there's so many choices. So I want to shift a little bit too, because I'm curious when you do start working with the clients, like, on that side of things, how does that work? I am guessing, you know, you mentioned sometimes, like they're, they're coming to you and saying, I want to do something with, you know, maybe a certain flavor profile, and I want it to taste like XYZ. How do you figure out, like, you know, you said, you you have some, some ability to work with the flavor scientists. And then after you get through that process, and like, you come to, you know, you've tested a flavor, and then you work with the customers to see, like, is this something that people like? What are those next steps? How does it go from kind of like, where you guys are testing things, at what point do you decide? Okay, we think enough people are going to enjoy this, and then, because I'm imagining that, that's a pretty big decision to probably finally decide on something, because then it's like, then you're getting all the other teams involved in, like, manufacturing and then the marketing. So how, how does that come to be? And then, like, what I guess is the process after you're like, Yes, this is the, this is the final, you know, to market product. What is that like? Well, it
Nikki Wollak:really depends on the company. Some companies are really swift at decision making. And if their core team tries and loves a product and they feel good about it, they might consider themselves the stewards of their brand or kind of the voice of their own consumers, and make those choices and say, Let's lock this formula in. We love it. Other companies might then go to a larger consumer panel, so they might take the product to 100 or more consumers at a taste test facility and benchmark it against one of their existing products or against another product on the market. Or just say, we're going to ask how much people like it on a one to nine scale, and the average score needs to be seven or higher for us to want to launch this so that we feel confident it's well liked. So it really depends on their level of comfort and the amount of data they want to make that decision. So we help support them, no matter what that looks like, and then from there, normally, once they lock in a flavor and a finished formula that they like, our team will help them all the way through scale up, if they want. So a lot of times, we're making samples here in our pilot plant that we're sending to them for evaluation or for testing, if they have a factory of their own or a co manufacturer that they're working with, we might help support making sure that recipe tastes the same as they're going through a larger process and they're making 10,000 bottles instead of 100 at the bench top level or in our pilot plant. So we'll make sure it still is tasting great, and that we've scaled up our flavors to be able to supply it to the. Them in the quantities that they need, and that it continues to taste how they experienced it when they tried it with us. And so we kind of support them through that journey, until they get through commercialization and launch and their product gets out to this to the stores. Wow,
Julie Berman - Host:that's really fascinating. And I'm, I'm guessing, like, I guess, can you give examples of some of the products. Like, I know you mentioned, some of them might be like energy drinks, but what are some of the examples of of things that you've worked on in like, in the past? Yeah,
Nikki Wollak:so we work on all sorts of products which is really fun, everything from kids juice products to protein shakes, to Alt dairy products, hydration beverages, energy drinks, carbonated soft drinks and flavored waters. We've even done some hard seltzer projects. We do cocktail mixers. We do liquid concentrates, kind of, you know, like the ones you would squeeze into a bottle of water to flavor the whole bottle. So we get to work a bunch of a bunch of different product formats, which is really fun, and a bunch of different brands. So one of the things I love working for a flavor and ingredient supplier is that I really do get to see a pretty big breadth of brands and products. And it's fun that every day I feel like I learned something new, and I get forced to ask new questions I haven't asked before, and learn about these new product categories that maybe I hadn't been working in before. Yeah,
Julie Berman - Host:wow, yeah. That's like a lot more than actually I was even thinking of so that's that's really cool. And for you, do you? Do you work with, like, an equal balance of men and women. Are there a lot of women in your field? And in general, are there a lot of food scientists that exist? Because I was under the impression that there actually aren't that many food scientists in general, I
Nikki Wollak:feel like it's a growing field. So I remember when I started in college, they were saying, we have more food science jobs open than we have people to fill them. And by the time I graduated four years later, that was not the case, because it kind of started to blow up. And I think things like Elton brown and the Food Network kind of helped illuminate that food is a science, and more people have found the field. So I feel like the field of Food Science is growing. Sensory science and consumer insights and market research specifically, is a much smaller field, and there's fewer of us, and it does tend to be a lot of women, which is really great. I feel like in my roles in sensory and in consumer insights, I usually get to work in a team of smart, strong, wonderful women who are great partners and great inspiration and coaches. So I've been really thankful that it's been a great field for networking and building those kind of relationships throughout my career as well. That's
Julie Berman - Host:awesome. And for the people you work with, do you for like, a lot of those sort of either supporting roles or adjacent roles? You know, if people are listening and they're like, oh, wow, I love, I love the idea of doing this career, but maybe I don't have a food science degree. Are there other avenues that people can get into doing this type of career, like getting into this industry without having a Food Science degree, like or are there other ways to sort of get the experience that they might need to also do this job
Nikki Wollak:Absolutely. So there are lots of roles in food companies that do not need technical degrees at all, or might have very different backgrounds. And the interesting thing about sensory and consumer research is that on the sensory side, you get the majority of people who come up with a food science degree, and that's how they landed there. But on the consumer insight side, which is kind of all those same research and storytelling and communication skills, but focused more on what the consumer wants and building brands and building concepts and less about the physical product. You tend to get more people with business communications or other research backgrounds, even people like sociologists who might do ethnographic research on consumers could end up in a field like consumer insights. So I feel like even for my specific role, I've had people who I've worked with who have not necessarily come back from a food science background, but who have had those other skills that are so core to the job, and they can figure out enough of the science to be dangerous and give good feedback, but without having that been how they got there. And then the other thing is, food companies are large, so there's finance departments and there's marketing and PR departments, and there's sales, and so there are all these other adjacent activities that are happening in companies like mine that you don't have to have a technical background, but if you happen to think food is a cool field, and it's what makes you excited to come to work every day. There's something for you to do here, and then you can be on my taste testing panels and get to experience products as they're being made, even if that's not the background that you have. Yeah.
Julie Berman - Host:Okay, awesome. Thank you for sharing that. And I want to ask like, you know, in regards to. Your industry, are there certain places, if people are listening and they they want to learn more about the field, like that, they can either find like resources or associations or organizations, just kind of things that will help get their you know, get their feet wet, or help connect them to maybe some people in the field that they can start asking some more questions and getting more education about about what you do and like how to get started.
Nikki Wollak:Yes, so IFT or Institute of food technologist is an organization for food science, more broadly, that a lot of people join, especially when they're in college, and that they have local chapters that you can join. There are non member rates for events that you could go to, theoretically, if you wanted to to be able to understand what kind of lectures are they giving, what kind of topics are they covering, do you want to go do a wine and chocolate pairing and learn about the flavor compounds in cocoa? Maybe. So those are things that you can sign up for or look for locally if you're interested in learning more specific to sensory there's the Society of sensory professionals, is an organization that has a lot of information on their web page about sensory programs and the lingo that goes with sensory and more about that as a proper science and then for market research works, is an interesting site that has lots of opportunities and interviews with people who are in the market research field. They have some cool ongoing series and interviews with people about their diverse backgrounds and things like, What hobbies do they have that they bring to their work that makes them good at what they do? So a little bit of that, you know, bringing your own personality to being a good researcher, and how there are many ways to get there, and not just one way. And so I would recommend those three as interesting places to look kind of as a first go to see if there's anything that piques more interest, or anyone you would want to connect with. Yeah,
Julie Berman - Host:those sound, Those all sound really great, and actually super diverse. So I love that all three of those, like are part of your job. That's so cool. Yeah, yeah. And then I have to ask, because I think, just think it's such an interesting question for you, when you're out in the world, not at work, but you know, you're just eating and doing your everyday thing, are you analyzing, or are you just experience, do you feel like you're experiencing food differently? Or are you just like, kind of like, tune it out because you're not at work? How do you like? How do you go about that? Or is it just ingrained?
Nikki Wollak:It's a little bit of both. So I do joke that because I my background has been in sensory I think people assume that I'm going to be this really discerning taster and have all of the right language to talk about everything, and I just happen to be the person who wants to eat everything I ended up in food and beverage, because I like to eat. I like to cook. So No, it doesn't stop me from enjoying all of my food experiences. I will say, though, it becomes a bit of a hobby that, like, you enjoy going to tastings for things, or you love to sit down and talk about what you're experiencing when you turn that part of your brain on, but it doesn't by any means, take over. While I'm eating, I'm still just thinking, wow, this is delicious, and I'm enjoying this meal, I will say, though, at the grocery store, you've turned into that person who's constantly scanning every category to see what's new and who's launching what what flavors do you see? What claims do they have on pack? So I probably take longer to do my grocery shopping than most, because I'm also just there for my own learning on top of trying to pick up the things I need for the week.
Julie Berman - Host:Yeah. And do you feel like in general, for a lot of foods, you know, including drinks, because I know that's what we talked about a lot, because that's a lot of what you do. But do you feel like in a lot of food categories, especially things that we see, whether it's like cereal or soup, pretzels, like that. Actually, there are a lot of food scientists behind the things that we see in the store that we might not realize that there they exist. You know that they're creating these things with an intention behind it?
Nikki Wollak:Absolutely so so many products. There are so much research going into what they're launching from. What new flavor do we think we should launch next year? Is our limited time offering to how do we optimize the quality of this and make it a better product? There's constantly renovations happening of now longer lasting or even better texture and things like that. So all the products that are in the store were either developed with a lot of thought from food scientists, are still being renovated and optimized with a lot of thought from food scientists. And so that's one of the fun parts about working on brands too, is that when I worked on the branded side, the projects I would work on, I would go to the store and be like, I know the developer who made that, he made a really great flavor of that candy, and it's amazing. And he sits 10 feet from my desk, and I'm super proud to buy it, and I ran the sensory test on it. So that's a really fun part of being at the store, that it becomes this personal experience of having emotions from working on those products and feeling a lot of pride that you know the people who did it and how much work went into making something great, and when you see someone else buying it too, that's even more exciting to be like. Yes, okay, someone out there in the wild loves our product and is putting it in their cart like, job well done. Yeah.
Julie Berman - Host:And does that mean you'd also work with buyers as part of this role, like, or is that sort of a different function as well? Like, do buyers help decide what products they think will be of, you know, of interest in, you know, in the future, like in a year or so down the line,
Nikki Wollak:they absolutely do. So we don't see as much of that on our end, being an ingredient company. But again, having worked on branded products in the past, if you're working for a big company that is selling into a retailer, you do have people in your sales team who have relationships with those retailer buyers, and they are dictating what ends up on the shelf. And so oftentimes, especially when I worked in market insights, we were helping to craft what we call a sales story. So essentially, here's why we think this thing is going to be big. Here's the market trend that's happening. Here's other data to support why we think it's going to do well, here's the research study we ran on why we think this is a great product and why it should slot in for this other thing we're taking off the shelf, or why we should get incremental space for it, and they're trying to keep their pulse on what does the shopper of my store want in the future? Is this relevant to them? Yes or no. And so we would help gather that data to say, hey, we know you have limited shelf space, and you get to pick what goes here. Here's why we think this product is really great. So we need to be thinking about their consumer and reflecting their consumers wants to them, to try and help build support for why those things deserve to be there.
Julie Berman - Host:Wow. And in regards to future casting, I don't know if that's a proper word for this scenario, but like looking at the future, how do you actually decide, or, you know, guess, with a lot of research behind it, what is going to be popular, you know, one or two years down the line? Like, how do you find those data points to support creating something
Nikki Wollak:it's a really good question, and it's one of those things that's like a little bit of our am science and triangulating a lot of data. One interesting thing in the food and beverage space is kind of looking at adoption curves of different flavors. So a lot of times, what might be trending in the future is what's happening in fine dining, or what people are cobbling together themselves at home right now in these really interesting experiences that aren't mainstream yet. And so those then might end up getting picked up by less high end restaurants and maybe being simplified a little bit, and they eventually work their way to mid tier chains and into fast casual. And next thing you know, they're also being sold at the grocery store for you to take home. So that's kind of one way that those things happen. And then it becomes incumbent on a researcher to understand what's showing up in that space of people who are looking to the future and doing these interesting high end things, and which one of them are based in other mega trends that are happening that might then also become bigger or have more relevance to a bigger part of the population, and some of them are just going to be interesting things that happen once or twice and never make their way through that adoption curve. So you kind of have to try and triangulate with other data to say, Okay, here's culturally what's happening right now. Here are some other adjacent things outside of food that are showing trends, like maybe Scandinavian design is showing trends, and maybe that's also going to translate to Scandinavian flavors. Or maybe it's a tough election year and there's an economic downturn and people are turning to nostalgia because nostalgia is comfortable, and we think that those flavors are what's going to be next. So it is this bit of what's going on in food, what's going on in culture at large, and then what do you see in other adjacent areas to help you say, and now, consequently, we think these are the things that are going to hit and stay for a bit in food and beverage. Wow,
Julie Berman - Host:yeah, that's fascinating. And is that when you're pulling in also, like, you know, whether it's people who are blogging or like things from Tiktok or other social media, just kind of like trying to see what's happening in those places. Yes,
Nikki Wollak:our marketing team loves to stay on top of what's going on, and I have other people who keep me cool and tell me what's happening on Tiktok. But I mean, when water talk blew up as a thing, and people were customizing their waters in all different sorts of ways, or whipped lemonade showed up on social media like we're always trying to watch those things to see. Okay, the reason people are going on Tiktok or on Pinterest and doing something themselves is because it doesn't exist at the store. And so when they're doing that, is this an ongoing behavior where they're solving a real problem or a real pain point, or it's an ongoing behavior they want to continue to have, and will developing a new product in that space be a solution for them that's a sustainable thing they want to continue to buy? Or is it something that's interesting for a couple weeks, and there's some cool Tiktok videos, but it's not going to be a sustainable trend that we see going on, so we do try and. Watch those things, try them ourselves, and understand if they're going to influence the flavors and products that people are going to want a year from now. Yeah,
Julie Berman - Host:that's fascinating. Yeah, so so cool how everything, kind of, like, combines together. Well, I like, I've loved talking to you. It's just been so much fun, and I feel like I've learned, you know so much, is there anything that we didn't touch on that you feel like you would also love to share about? You know what you do your cool job? Either that's like, maybe people wouldn't know to know about it, like, even I wouldn't know to ask about it, or it's just something like, maybe surprising or unusual.
Nikki Wollak:That's a really good question. I think it really for me, food is one of those things that we all have this touch point with, and we have such an experience with, but we aren't often thinking about how much thought is going into it, and how many people cared about getting something out there, and how hard they tried to find something that we would really love and be delighted by. And I think that's probably true of a lot more categories than just food. So if you're someone out there who loves another category, you love beauty products, or you love fragrance or something else, just know that there are probably roles like mine in those other categories too, where if you have a passion for something and that's the category that gets you excited to come to work every day. And you're also an awesome scientist who loves to do chemistry, like you might be a really good perfume maker at some point, or, let's say you're a statistician and you're super interested in clothing and fashion. There's probably a need for someone who's doing trend analytics at those types of companies. So these interesting like science and analytic and consumer research roles are in all these different industries, and sometimes we don't think about the intersection of them, or the fact that there's a place for us to have our interests and our passions and our professional training and find where they go together to create a job that's really fun to come to every
Julie Berman - Host:day. Yeah, I love that. That was fabulous answer, because I wouldn't have thought about that at all. So I I love that, and I think it's such a good point that in a lot of industries that we think about, you know, there's all these people behind the scenes who are passionately trying to create the things that we come to love, and yet we don't know that they maybe exist and and what they're doing to develop the products we love.
Nikki Wollak:Yes, absolutely awesome.
Julie Berman - Host:Well, thank you so much. Well, I want to end with a question I always ask just to get get a little bit of like, either the alphabet soup or, like, the jargon of the verbiage that you often use in your careers that you know might be like something you just use every day or all the time, but that is something that we might not have ever heard before. So to end our conversation, will you please share a sentence that uses verbiage or jargon from your field and then translate it so it's understandable to us?
Nikki Wollak:Sure, I'm going to come back to one of my favorite topics, or, I think, one that's probably people like to talk about the most. So I'm going to go with we need to align on a lexicon to describe the character of the flavor they're looking for. And essentially what that means is we need to have a shared set of terminology and be aligned and come together on what each of those terms means, so we know exactly what it is that you're looking for, because a mango is not a mango is not a mango, and it's our job to understand that. So as a sensory scientist, understanding lexicon, aligning on what they those terms mean, and helping bring those things to life in a really tangible, physical format, is kind of at the intersection of what we do. And I think the thing that people get excited about when I tell them I do that of like, What do you mean? You make things taste great. You talk about what they taste like all day long. So I think that would be my, my parting sentiment. I
Julie Berman - Host:love that, yeah, and it's, I mean, I never will think about having mango flavored something again, in the same way I will be thinking, I wonder what type of mango This is? There you go. Yes, well, thank you so much. Nikki. It was such a pleasure chatting with you and learning about your cool job and how you get to just like, yeah, create all these really intentional things in and you know that we see out in the world that we maybe didn't realize had a food scientist behind it?
Nikki Wollak:Well, thank you. I really appreciated being here, and it was very fun to talk about my job.
Julie Berman - Host:Hey everybody, thank you so much for listening to women with cool jobs. I'll be releasing a new episode every two weeks, so make sure you hit that subscribe button, and if you loved the show, please give me a five star rating. Also, it would mean so much if you share this episode with someone. You think you would love it or would find it inspirational. And lastly, do you have ideas for future shows, or do you know any rock star women with cool jobs I would love to hear. From you. You can email me at julie@womenwithcooljobs.com, or you can find me on Instagram at women cool jobs. Again, that's women cool jobs. Thank you so much for listening and have an incredible day. You.