As a highly regarded executive in the specialty food industry, Beatrice Schneider has some invaluable advice for cannabis businesses interested in the creation of edibles. Schneider is the co-founder and
creative director of Chicago Culinary FX, which has been making custom molds for the food industry for 15 years and is well-recognized for its high-quality, creative products.
Marijuana Venture recently had the opportunity to speak with Schneider about her company and how manufacturers of cannabis-infused edibles can improve their products.
Marijuana Venture: How long have you had the business and what direction do you see it heading?
Beatrice Schneider: We founded the business more than 15 years ago and have specialized in manufacturing high-quality silicone and plastic molds for professional chefs. In the culinary field, we have an established reputation for creating world-class molds based on thousands of successful collaborations with chefs both here in the U.S. and internationally.
Before we started Chicago Culinary FX, our co-founder and master mold maker, Michael Joy, worked 10 years in a wide range of industries, mastering techniques including those used for ceramic, resin, bronze, architectural restoration, museum archiving, giftware, awards, laboratory and medical applications. In total, he has been making molds for more than 25 years.
By collaborating with so many of the top innovative pastry and savory chefs around the world, we’ve learned a lot about what professional chefs want and need in their kitchens. From concept to production, innovators are always looking for ways to be more effective with their limited time and push the boundaries of what’s expected. They recognize our design expertise and see our precision hand-crafted molds as valued tools that provide ease of use, consistency and durability.
As the need for regulatory markings and branding increases, we understand the need for many of our customers to be nimble to keep up with the ever-evolving laws and markets. We really have been very successful with providing solutions for our clients, from building test molds for their research and development to creating food-shaping molds designed to scale up for production. Because our daily mold production is already in place making more than 200 food-contact-safe stock molds as well as our constant stream of custom mold-making projects, we are well-prepared to meet customer demands in our company-owned facility here in Chicago.
MV: How can your company help those in the fledgling cannabis edibles space?
BS: For the companies still in the process of building a brand, we have ready-made, food-contact-safe molds available online. They include geometric molds, half-spheres, spheres and cube molds in a variety of common sizes. If more fanciful shapes are desired, our 20-plus designs of button-sized artisan Pastry Impressions molds are great for testing and experimentation.
As we specialize in creating food molds, we take care of our clients by providing product design and food casting advice, as well as creating R&D test molds, which really gives our customers the confidence to make the commitment toward molds for larger production.
MV: Are you seeing mistakes made in the cannabis industry that you’ve seen others make in the past?
BS: Yes, some of the more obvious mistakes we see edibles companies making is coming up with shapes that are fun and playful, yet not practical for food casting, let alone for production efficiency. Just because a shape can be molded and translated into food doesn’t mean it’s a good shape for the company’s bottom line. Casting the wrong shape can result in a costly labor choke in your daily production. We can help foresee which shapes will be both beautiful and efficient for production.
We have experience developing candy shapes for global companies and know really great ‘edible’ products begin with a strong concept that also addresses the necessary regulatory requirements. It’s good practice to check off those priorities during the concept and design phase. Once you have determined a shape that communicates your intentions, the next step is to have your shape made into a 3D prototype. You want to physically handle your shape and study how your customer might experience it in advance of making any production molds.
Some questions to ask yourself might be: What information does your shape relay (the dosage and/or flavor)? What will the customer expect based on the shape, markings and color? How will your edible be consumed? Is it hard candy that needs to be sucked? If so, how will it fit in the mouth — logged on the roof or tucked in the cheek or is it chewed, bitten in one bite or two? Do you want texture for more flavor or smooth for a soothing mouth feel? What size is just right considering the dose in proportion to the candy?
Here is a key example of why these details matter: if you expect your customers to keep hard candy in their mouth while it dissolves, don’t feed them a shape with sharp corners like a cube. Think about your user’s experience, mouth-feel and texture. When you think through these steps, you’ll discover issues before they become expensive lessons to be learned.
MV: What opportunities are edibles manufacturers missing?
BS: When it comes to shape, we find edibles manufacturers are missing the opportunity to brand, dose and provide an edible with great mouth-feel. Keeping in mind we don’t want to appeal to kids, manufacturers could be thinking about what other information or ideas they could convey through shape to produce clever, valuable, adult-minded edibles, both for medical and recreational markets. Manufacturers could also consider ‘white labeling’ for retailers.
MV: What opportunities are retailers missing?
BS: Most business owners probably don’t even know what’s possible when it comes to shaping edibles via the use of custom artisan molds. They may see larger companies with custom logos but do not know how to source that themselves, so as default, they may go to Amazon.com and settle for a few cheap ice cube molds. Unknown to those people, having a custom handmade mold produced is not a difficult process, and in fact, many of our customers are first-time mold buyers. We know how to walk buyers through the process step by step so they can make confident decisions.
Regarding custom candy molds, almost anything is possible. While respecting regulatory marking and our resistance to making shapes that could appeal to children, production limitations are more dictated by the consistency of the food ingredient being put into the mold rather than what shape the mold can be. For example, making a rectangular mold with a logo is easy, but using that mold to push a heavy granola mixture into is more difficult because granola does not shape well.
Through our experience, we have learned a lot and try to guide our clients to designs and shapes that will cast well into food. Their success continues our success. Of course, retailers would do well to ask their buyers about use and lifestyles needs. Listening to the input of their customers will lead to innovations and better products. Being in tune with their customers and the community at large can make all the difference.
As the industry evolves, we see many possibilities in the recreational market as well as the medical. Having come from the top end of the culinary world, we are very excited to help cultivate a connoisseurship like that of wine and celebrate extraordinary experiences responsibly.
MV: What is the single most important piece of wisdom you can give to someone making — or thinking about making — edibles in the cannabis space?
BS: After securing your providers and factoring in your legal requirements, take advantage of standard packaging solutions first, then design your food shape to fit into that packaging. When you are ready, we can provide costs to make test molds which will help you see how custom molds can work for your process.
MV: How do your products differ from your competitors? Do you have a lot of competitors?
BS: When it comes to food-content-safe molds for shaping food, both silicone and PETG plastic molds, we have a world-class reputation in the culinary industry. For plastic thermoforming, we have developed proprietary processes that enable us to put incredible detail and lettering into our plastic PETG molds. For silicone molds, we use premium raw materials manufactured in the USA — not China. Combined with our good manufacturing practices and successful extraction test results (regulatory testing), our molds are clean and safe for use for both freezing and baking. All our molds are made in our facility here in the USA by our skilled craftspeople. This enables our entire work flow to move rapidly and cleanly from start to finish.
We are aware of home-based mold makers that can make shapes into workable molds. Yet, people who bought those molds often come to us when they need to scale up production or to have molds remade to be more consistent from dose to dose, candy to candy. It’s humbling to be considered industry experts in the niche market of creating artisan molds for casting food. We are so grateful for the numerous chefs who have collaborated with us over the years, leading to great technical improvements and keen insights into food shaping that other industrial mold makers simply do not have.
We are excited to share our expertise and make great molds for our customers.
This story was originally published in the November 2017 issue of Marijuana Venture, on sale now.
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