LSU researchers at the Food Innovation Institute are making upgrades to their facilities to help local businesses commercialize and mass produce their products and handle USDA-regulated food products.
Achyut Adhikari is the interim director of the FOODii lab and a professor at the School of Nutrition and Food Science. He said the precursor to the institute was the Food Incubator Program started in 2013, designed to help people in the Baton Rouge area market, advertise and mass produce their products to see if they are commercially viable.
“Some people have really great ideas, but may not have the resources to commercialize,” Adhikari said. “But they can be an entrepreneur just by spending a couple hundred dollars and getting it produced through our lab. And these days, with internet marketing, they can easily market their food products. So it’s an opportunity for those who have ideas and want to do something with it.”
Adhikari and his team wanted to expand the Incubator Program, and with FOODii, they can not only continue helping small businesses hit store shelves but also work with larger companies by renting out space in their production facility.
“Our facilities are international and renowned in several different areas,” he said. “We want to use the resource and have a platform for other industries to use the resources.”
FOODii originally was only able to produce FDA-regulated products. The FDA regulates around 80% of all food products sold in the U.S., with the USDA controlling meat, eggs and, most importantly to Louisiana, seafood.
“We are actually adding more state of the art equipment that the tenants can use, like freeze drying, an extruder, because many different varieties of products are used by extrusion,” Adhikari said. “We will be bringing in big industries like Cargill and Pepsi.”
According to Adhikari, The FOODii lab is a multidisciplinary project with the schools of business, plant and crop science and animal science. The lab also allows for shelf life studies, where the scientists will print on a “sell by” date and determine how likely the product will be grabbed off the shelf.
He said that some major food producers have already used FOODii’s shelf life studies, including the hot sauce company, Tabasco.
One tenant at the production facility is a company called CryLick Creations, owned by Elise and Alex Kreilich. They sell high-protein, vegan-friendly snacks under the label, “Dr. Seitan’s.”
“We recently got into 35 Rouses around the state less than one year after starting at the FOODii kitchen, which would’ve been absolutely impossible without them,” Alex Kreilich said. “Having the capability to scale our production using their commercial sized appliances at a low starting cost helped us grow fast.”
The duo started the company because they said current alternatives don’t taste good and don’t have a good texture. The brand’s product, Crunchy Puffs are made with plant-based protein and comes in two flavors, Cajun Chili Cheeze and CinnaToast Crunch.
“They also have a fantastic staff of advisers that assist with all the things food entrepreneurs don’t even know, they need to know such as business plan writing, permit approvals and food safety education,” he said.
Colton Coffey, a second-year music education major at LSU, said the institute will have a positive impact on the Baton Rouge community, especially in helping businesses recover after the COVID-19 pandemic.
The upgrades to the facilities were funded through efforts from the state and federal government, LSU and a hodge podge of venture capitalists. Much of the equipment in the lab costs upwards of $600,000. Adhikari is hoping to get donations for this machinery.
Coffey said that the new upgrades can help shine a light on Louisiana seafood in a more national light.
“I know here you always advertise Louisiana shrimp, Louisiana crawfish,” Coffey said. “If we can help bring that to other parts of the country, that could be really neat, especially under the mass production scale. I think mass production also comes with mass distribution, too.”
