Students create the right recipe for success

21 February 2017

A group of Teesside University food science students have been putting their skills to the test, creating products for one of Europe’s leading food processors.

Students Nicky Fryett, Angela Anderson, Phil Douglas and Jay Ke.

Four students were selected to take part in ABP Food Group’s Dragon’s Den style burger design competition.

ABP Food Group has an established reputation – providing quality beef to customers across the world for the past 60 years.

It set the students a challenge to design a new burger which fits a gap in the market. The brief was to appeal to customers who are increasingly more educated and more adventurous. As well as produce the burger, which could be meat or vegetarian and had to adhere to strict criteria, the students also had to come up with packaging and labelling for their products.

Nicky Fryett, second year BSc (Hons) Food and Nutrition, Angela Anderson, second year BSc (Hons) Food Science and Engineering, Phil Douglas, third year BSc (Hons) Food and Nutrition and Jay Ke, third year BSc (Hons) Food Science and Engineering, all took part in the competition and presented their products to a panel of experts, including Dawn Ward, People Manager of ABP and Katrina Greenock, Senior Category Manager of ABP.

Projects such as this are great for the students as they get experience of working to a legitimate brief from an established company.

Jibin He

Phil Douglas was selected as the official winner after impressing the judges with his design of a premium mushroom burger suitable for vegetarians. The judges praised his design for creativity, flavour and research. He has now been invited to produce his burger in one of ABP’s factories.

Jibin He, Senior Lecturer in Food Science and Technology in Teesside University’s School of Science & Engineering, said: 'I would like to congratulate all of the students who took part – they did a fantastic job. The feedback from ABP was overwhelmingly positive and it is a great opportunity now for Phil to visit the company and develop his product.

'Projects such as this are great for the students as they get experience of working to a legitimate brief from an established company. It prepares them well for the kind of work they are aiming to do once they have finished studying here.'