June 8, 2021
This week, Food Processing magazine announced its annual R&D Teams of the Year Awards, including GSF’s Liquid Products North America (LPNA) product development team! Based on the magazine’s online poll conducted last month, readers voted GSF as the top nominee in the large company category, which also included Ocean Spray. The magazine’s July issue will feature GSF in a story about how the LPNA product development team supports QSR and retail customers with best-in-class service and products, rooted in technical and culinary acumen.
“I’m so grateful for this awesome industry recognition of our high-performing LPNA product innovators based in Conyers and City of Industry,” said Mitch Dingwall, Senior Director, Product Development, LPNA. “In making the best product and maintaining the highest standards, this team brings such a culture of excellence to the innovation we pursue together with our customers. We share the R&D Team of the Year honor with the leading QSR and retail brands we have the privilege to support.”
With experience in food science, culinary, food engineering, packaging and business management, GSF’s 25-person product development team balances creativity, technical expertise and business management to maximize service, innovation and culinary services. In 2020 alone, the team serviced over 700 projects, created more than 1,200 product prototypes, and launched 135 new products.
In the past year, GSF also introduced a next-gen packaging and sauce dispensing product that offers an environmentally friendly, cost-effective, and waste-reducing solution, while improving food safety. With continued innovation in the sauces, dressings and condiments space, GSF’s award-winning Zaxby’s Caribbean Jerk Sauce earned top honors in 2020 as Sauce of the Year, awarded by the Association for Dressings and Sauces.
Additionally, over the past seven years, GSF has designed and opened several new Innovation Centers, including Conyers, Georgia in mid-2020 and Chicago, Illinois in mid-2019. These hubs for innovation engage customers, quality experts, nutritionists, chefs, food scientists, and regulatory specialists in collaborative dialogue and side-by-side work sessions to develop hundreds of new products every year.