The next time a new food item appears on the grocery store shelf, don’t be amazed it if was actually created here in Griffin, on the University of Georgia-Griffin campus.

That’s exactly what the newly-created Food Product Innovation and Commercialization Center does. It uses cutting-edge science and technology to create new food products and market them.

The center, which falls under the college of agricultural and environmental sciences, is the collaborative brainchild of several UGA-Griffin Department of Food Science and Technology faculty members.

UGA professors and their collaborators not only work from the technical aspect of new food production, they also work with others on the economical concept of it all, said program coordinator Dick Phillips.

“Basically, this is a bootstrap operation that we’re trying to develop to assist the food industry in creating better products, new products, better processes,” Phillips said. “We think that with our group, and people that we know that we can bring in if we need to, we can pretty well cover the whole waterfront from new concept all the way through marketing.”

Faculty members have been creating new food products, to some degree or another, on their own for years, but now that they are working with companies, the work is done on their behalf.  

While Phillips could not share information on some of the products the program has created because of proprietary agreements, he was able to shed some light, in general, on the process and how it works.

Products are created in two ways.

“We may have come up with a prototype product — something that is not quite ready for market — but an idea that is still reduced to a physical form,” Phillips said. “Somebody with an interest in the food business might say, ‘I like that idea. Let me buy it from you.’”

The second process involves individuals and companies bringing ideas to the center. They may come to the program wanting to know how to produce something better or how to package it or how to create a longer shelf life.

“One of my colleagues developed a peanut-based snack that had a peanut in the center and layers of a kind of cracker around it,” Phillips said. “It can be sweet. It can be cheesy. It can have various flavors, and then you have that nice peanut in the middle. That’s one of the reasons we started this program. We had no way of going from the small scale to the big scale.”

Another product that Phillips expects to see commercialized in the near future came from a client Phillips worked with in West Africa for 20-plus years.

“There is a product made from black-eyed peas over there called akra or kosei, depending on which country you are in,” Phillips said. “Basically, you make a batter out of black-eyed peas after taking the seed coat off. It’s seasoned and deep-fat fried. It’s very delicious and not exactly low calorie.”

Although there are similar university-linked centers around the country, this is the only one in the southeast. Another unique aspect of the UGA-Griffin center is that, unlike most, it has no state or university funding. It is basically on its own. However, a close partnership has been formed with the Griffin-Spalding County Development Authority. Currently, there is an effort under way by this agency to raise money for the construction of an incubator and research building for the center.

The center not only works with large corporations, it also works with individuals and small entrepreneurships with unique ideas.

“We’re open to almost any kind of food product,” Phillips said. “If we don’t know how to do it, we will bring in somebody who knows.”

Got an idea? Know how to make a better cake mix or health bar? Submit it to the center at foodpic@uga.edu.