Students Create Rice Innovations

Second Year Food and Consumer Management and Food Marketing Management students have reached the end of a semester long project working with Mars Food to come up with new ideas for Uncle Ben's Rice.

The project that began in October saw them being given a brief to create a new meal idea, each using a different Uncle Ben's Rice product. 

Once given their product to work with the students embarked on extensive research, looking at what’s already on the market, target markets and what those consumers want. The research stage was followed with taste tests across the college before finally coming up with their final concepts and linking into different modules on their courses; including Practical Science for food Industry where they looked at how the food would be processed and packaged on a commercial scale.

The culmination of the project saw representatives from Mars Food come in to give feedback and most importantly see and taste the final food concepts. Austin Haruna (pictured far right) had his wholegrain stir fry assessed by Vince Kearney, Innovation Manager, Mars Foods (pictured) whose feedback was positive, in fact he wished he could have the whole dish for his lunch!

Other dishes included a Southern American inspired vegetable and rice, cheese topped casserole, from Rachelle Kelly (also pictured) who admitted the project was a difficult one to start with but really got her thinking out of the box.

Vince Kearney said of the project:

"It’s great to see inventive ideas from the students who will become the product developers of the future, deciding what we will see on our supermarket shelves.  A lot of energy, effort and flair has been demonstrated to marry market trends and creativity to develop creditable products".

Past students from Food and Consumer Management and Food Marketing Management have gone on to careers in a variety of areas from Food Stylists, Food Marketing, teaching and recipe development. For more information visit our course pages.