Perfecting the Cook-Friendly Potato

FoodTrust 2008 Ltd.

April 02, 2009 — Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island

FoodTrust 2008 Ltd. isn't content to just offer its customers good, or even great, potatoes. The PEI-based company is in continual search for the perfect potato. Make that potatoes – ones with Olympic-calibre traits for baking, boiling, roasting or mashing. And with support from the National Research Council Canada Industrial Research Assistance Program (NRC-IRAP), FoodTrust has become a North American leader in the development of value-added and fresh potato products.

"The potato is thought of as a less than convenient food for consumers," says FoodTrust general manager Ivan Noonan. "Our key challenge is 'how do we make it easier for the consumer?'. What we are all looking for is the meal in three-to-five minutes."

A 33-year veteran of the potato industry, most recently as Manager of PEI's Potato Board, Noonan leads the newly privatized FoodTrust. The former not-for-profit provincially-founded corporation was recently sold in a competitive bidding process.

Created in 2000 to develop and market PEI potatoes, from the start, research and development (R&D) has been the driving force behind the company.

"R&D has been enormously important to FoodTrust's success and will continue to be so," says Noonan. "The fact is, the perfect potato is very difficult to achieve. The perfect looking potato might taste like cardboard, or might not yield enough to make it commercially viable. While a less visually attractive potato may have a wonderful flavour, unfortunately consumers buy with their eyes."

FoodTrust's first major innovation was a chilled, in-store display cabinet that has become the destination-of-choice for potato lovers at grocery stores in Ontario and Quebec. The potato display and storage cabinet is divided into different sections that hold potatoes for either baking, boiling, roasting or mashing.

Developed with NRC-IRAP support, the patented design provides consumers with the best size and variety of potato for a specific purpose at any time of the year. This has involved testing more than 100 different potato varieties, developing the company's own seed varieties, and working with PEI farmers to increase potato qualities, such as reduced bruising — for which farmers are paid a premium.

Building on the success of the potato cabinet, FoodTrust 2008 Ltd. has developed a number of other innovative value-added, fresh potato products. Each is characterized by a focus on high-quality food for discerning, busy consumers.

Chief among these has been the creation, with NRC-IRAP support, of FoodTrust's fresh packaged mashed potatoes.

Unlike instant mashed potato flakes (invented by Canadian scientist Edward Asselberg in 1962 while working for the Department of Agriculture in Ottawa), FoodTrust's mashed potatoes are not dehydrated, but modified-atmosphere packaged fresh mashed potatoes — with no added preservatives.

Developing this 21^st century potato product required extensive testing to design the proprietary process that results in the distinctive mouth feel we expect in mashed potatoes, yet with a shelf-life of about three weeks.

FoodTrust's mashed potatoes debuted in stores in Ontario and Quebec in 2006 with rave reviews. A randomized taste trial of the packaged mashed potatoes organized by the website urbanmoms.ca resulted in a "two-thumbs-up" rating from a group of two-dozen testers.

"NRC-IRAP enabled FoodTrust 2008 Ltd., as a small company, to act bigger and bolder in our research. It was this approach that led to a breakthrough product," says FoodTrust general manager Ivan Noonan.

Noonan says that FoodTrust 2008 Ltd. is now taking stock of progress to date in their ongoing mission to develop processes to deliver consumers fresh, convenient perfect potatoes.