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Margaret Conte, of the Drink Up STL team, offers samples of her product to a group of judges at the Deli Star Food Dietary Center on Aug. 11.
Daniel Neman is a retail business writer for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
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The City Foundry STL was the intersection of entrepreneurship and culinary excellence on Thursday.
Nearly two dozen graduate students in St. Louis University’s Innovation in Dietetics Practice class met at the Deli Star Food Dietary Center there in a hard-fought but friendly competition. Divided into eight teams, the students pitched their ideas for a new food product to sell.
More precisely, they pitched their ideas for new food products that they had already developed, produced and sold over the summer.
A group of judges from Deli Star Corp., Schnuck Markets and the SLU nutrition and dietetics program listened to the presentations and judged them on criteria ranging from their descriptions of the product to their marketing plans to their financial strategy.
One award was given for best entrepreneurial spirit, based on those standards. Another award was given to the team that made the highest return on their investment.
The competition wasn’t fierce, exactly — the students are all classmates, and many bought each other’s products — but it was spirited.
In one metaphorical corner was Hawaiian mochi butter cake, a soft and very chewy sweet treat made from glutinous rice flour and coconut milk; it is popular on Hawaii but has yet to make much of a splash on the mainland.
In the other metaphorical corner was paczki, the traditional Polish baked good that resembles a jelly-filled doughnut, but with a slightly denser texture. The team that made it used an authentic Polish recipe and filled it with traditional jam flavors of rose and lingonberry.
This was an eight-way competition, so there were more corners: One team of women who had played sports in college developed flavored, roasted chickpeas to help athletes’ performance and recovery, and to reduce inflammation.
Remember, these are graduate students in nutrition. They know how to do that.
Another team made vegan, plant-based sushi that used only fresh vegetables, not meat substitutes such as seitan. A woman from Saudi Arabia, acting as a team of one, sold miniature versions of a traditional Arabic date cake with a homemade caramel sauce and almonds.
One team made herbal tea blends that they packaged in clear glass jars to best display their gorgeous colors. But one of the judges pointed out that a clear package, in the long term, will cause the delicate ingredients to lose some of their flavor.
The winner for best return on investment — they call it “doubling down” — was a team that created four flavors of microwavable noodles. They began with a school-provided investment of $100 (they could receive anywhere from $50 to $200) and saw a net profit of $1,320.69.
The team of Parker Lane, Haley Jensen, Cassidy Landry and Ellie Enderle called their company Saucy Noods, which was a bit of marketing genius. All the teams looked to social media to spread the word about their product, but only Saucy Noods could use a marketing slogan of “Let us send you noods.”
Lane said they picked microwavable noodles because they wanted to sell something that was shelf stable. Jensen added that they wanted a product that was easily modifiable; customers can add chicken, salmon or any other protein to make the food match their taste.
The winners of the entrepreneurial spirit award was a team called Drink Up STL, consisting of Margaret Conte, Kai Wan, Selena Oum and Linda Pham. Their product was a fruit concentrate, in matcha and mango flavors, with added collagen.
The class is part of a program that combines a yearlong academic curriculum with a yearlong internship that for many includes clinical experience in a hospital. The Drink Up team was specifically created as a way to make protein drinks more palatable for hospital patients.
Protein drinks such as Ensure and PediaSure tend to be milk- or milk substitute-based and are usually limited to chocolate, strawberry or vanilla flavors, Conte said.
“We think there should be another option,” she said.
According to Wan, “We’re trying to expand the flavor choices, the texture choices and the ingredient choices,” adding that patients were asking for more variety.
One of the judges, Anthony Breitbach of the SLU Department of Nutrition and Dietetics, said the team was given the entrepreneurial spirit award in part because they identified a problem in their clinical internship and then addressed it with their product.
Most of the students in the class have already graduated, and some of the teams are already making plans to continue selling their products. But others are looking to a more immediate future.
Jensen, of Saucy Noods, said, “Right now, we have to focus on our (Registered Dietitian) exam and passing our RD exam before we can think about noodles.”
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Daniel Neman is a retail business writer for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
Email notifications are only sent once a day, and only if there are new matching items.
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Margaret Conte, of the Drink Up STL team, offers samples of her product to a group of judges at the Deli Star Food Dietary Center on Aug. 11.
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