From
to
London
cape town
And so began our 24-month journey of scientific trial and discovery to bring this quality product to WW customers back home in South Africa. Given the IP sharing agreement that WW has with M&S, it was possible for Finlar to meet with the M&S suppliers in their factory in England to learn the art of Southern Fried Chicken.
A turbulent journey
We encountered a spanner in the works when the appointed vendor in the UK was no longer able to supply the coatings. We had to match the UK coating quickly as a launch date for the product had been set. Our dynamic Finlar product development team immediately worked with global coating suppliers to re-create the product at our local plant. After intensive research and many experiments, we identified a specialist flour and the most suitable aromatic herbs and spices from South Africa to match the specific flavour profile of the M&S product.
Sheetal Singh, R&D manager explains the product development process: “The coating was developed in KZN, applied to chicken portions in Johannesburg, and flown down to Cape Town for WW approval. It was not easy - It took us about three rounds of testing, modifications, and taste panels to get it just right. We developed a highly specialized Southern fry flavour profile that could adhere to chicken portions. The next piece of the puzzle was securing the succulent chicken from a top supplier, which we did with the help of WW.”
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