Extenders

Out of stock, back ordered, short supply, world shortage. Unfortunately, the list of ingredient availability concerns goes on and on.

What do you do when you find out the “gold standard” ingredient you have been formulating with isn’t available? You need to find a fast solution.

Using an extender has helped me in these situations. An extender is a product that enhances or replaces the flavor or functionality of the benchmark ingredient.

An extender can be used at a percentage of the gold standard, reducing it up to 50 percent. For example, let’s say cocoa powder is in my blend at 10 percent; if I remove half of the cocoa powder and add in 5 percent of an extender blend, which does not contain cocoa powder, it will bring me back to my 10 percent cocoa powder level. This extender blend mimics cocoa powder.

An extender can also be used to replace the gold standard ingredient. For example, using a specific tomato paste extender at one percent can replace up to 20 percent tomato paste in a final sauce, allowing you to decrease your tomato paste percentage and increase your water percentage.

Besides lowering the need for those hard to find ingredients, an extender can provide a significant cost savings while still capturing the same great flavor. Specifically, when combined with key functional ingredients, extenders can reduce the amount of the gold standard ingredient up to 40 to 60 percent.

Another benefit of using an extender is price stability. The market goes up and down, and lately costs are continually keep going up. When I use an extender, I know that I’m offering a more stable price with my seasoning blend and, thus, a more stable price to my customer. It uses less of the gold standard ingredient, which usually has an unstable pricing point.

To summarize, I’m able to formulate the extender to fit my project’s restrictions while maintaining the same great flavor and functionality at a significant cost savings for my company and its customers. A winning combination!

Asenzya® is very adept at working with these situations. We’d be happy to help you with a similar situation in order to deliver a more consistent and cost efficient product! Contact us at email@asenzya.com and let’s see how we can help you!