Students awarded for fish sausage canape innovation
Apéro’Fish is the winner of the competition Grand Jury “New Products” organised by Isema, an agro-business management school based in Avignon, France. The contest was first organised in 1994 and each year groups of students from the school design an innovative food product as part of their studies. Eight teams are selected to take part of the competition.
The winning product is a fish sausage of cod and salmon with tomato flavour and herbes de Provence. The team was composed of four students: Charlotte Loiseau, Laurie Reversat, Loic Cousy and Romain Poli. They envisage their product to be eaten as canapé - an original finger food type of product that is characteristic of the French aperitif.
“Fish charcuterie is very innovative and quite difficult to achieve. The group had a solid dossier. It was well thought through and organised. And they had an amazing stand” said Jean-Paul Malleval, the school director (translated from French)
“The competition is an illustration of the work done by our students. It also puts into practice what has been taught in our school” said Malleval.
The jury was made of Isema teaching staff and industry professionals, as well as local authorities and fellow teachers from engineering and business schools from all over France.
They evaluated the product based on four main criteria:
- Innovation and originality of the product
- Presentation and stand animation
- Interest and relevance of the product
- Gustatory qualities
“There were no restrictions or specific conditions. It only has to be an innovative product that can be commercialised. We have to be able to launch it to any food market,” explained Malleval.
The conception of the product takes up to 18 months and does not only cover the making of the food: each product comes with a complete dossier that describes the recipe, benchmarking, financing, packaging, processing and marketing. The students themselves cook their dish.
“We received 300€ to purchase the raw materials and the ingredients we needed. We met with manufacturers in the area and found one who helped us with the process of our product,” said Loic Cousy.
“Unfortunately I don’t think we’ll be able to take it further at the moment because of the costs of intellectual property fees. But we’ll think about it later. We have just won, we are not sure yet of what will be next,” said Cousy.
In the meantime, the school is likely to select this project, and one other, to compete at the national food innovation contest Trophélia, also taking place in Avignon in June this year.
Since its creation, 192 food products have been showcased at the competition. One even made it to the frozen food market according to Malleval. A range of frozen sauce balls, developed for last year’s Isema contest, has been launched by French manufacturer SCAL .
