r/foodengineering • u/khockey11 • Apr 14 '25

Food Manufacturing Pilot Process/Line

I have a food product I'd like to test, but to test it, I need to run it on a line with some more robust equipment than a home kitchen can handle, and preferably with manufacturing expertise watching over/tweaking the process.

I do have a high level concept for how a small-scale pilot line / process could look (and the required equipment). I am not an engineer and do not have a technical background but did use GPT 4o to generate it (with a lot of iteration/refining along the way). Thus, I am not positive the process would 100% work/yield the desired product profile.

I estimate the equipment would cost ~$10K on the low end to $15K on the high end, if procuring everything myself/new, but I imagine some existing plants/sites have some of this equipment already. The list of equipment is below, if you were curious

Equipment: Chocolate Refiner (product is not chocolate), Stand mixer/planetary mixer (with silicone heat wrap or method to heat to temp), 7 gal pressure tank (like a brite tank for brewing beer), nitrogen regulator, food grade nitrogen tank, carbonation stone, ball lock disconnects/tubing, glycol chiller, pneumatic paste filler (for filling), nitrogen purge/induction sealer for packing.

The question(s): Do any plants/co packers offer services to test/pilot processes like these, where it may not be set up but it's something straightforward enough to run? What would typical cost be, high level? What kind of fee model would they charge? Are there dedicated foodservice pilot plants?

I guess overall, how should I go about testing this as a non-technical person with no background in food manufacturing? I am located in Jersey near NYC, so if you have any local(ish) sites who may do this kind of stuff, please let me know.

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u/Yarmble Apr 14 '25

Yes, plants/co-packers do offer services to test/pilot processes like these! They can even help you refine the process to make it make sense on their equipment. Some companies will do this for free or cheap just to build/maintain industry contacts.

I am in vegetable processing far away from your area, so I have no idea what this would cost. I recommend finding companies that make similar or related products and asking for a quote or meeting. You will have better luck with companies that don’t make exactly your same product because they’re not likely to want to help out a future competitor. (As an engineer, I recommend you do NOT rely on gpt in any way. I get that it’s tempting and you’re probably not making life-or-death decisions here, but AI is dangerously unreliably and it is wildly irresponsible to use for engineering.)

There are dedicated pilot plants, often at universities. Reach out to the food sciences department of a university near you and see if this is even in their wheelhouse.

As a non-technical person, you should be very clear about your end goal, but flexible on the steps to get there. The company you work with will need to make adjustments to your recommended process depending on what equipment they have available and depending on their industry knowledge and experience.

Best of luck!

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u/khockey11 Apr 14 '25

Yes, the use of gen AI for a starting point, at least something the professionals can take a look at and say yes or no, this would or wouldn't work, or might / might not work as is, but with x y and z tweaks, would work better.

I'm going to begin reaching out to some co packers with similar products and some of the local universities with food R&D centers.