Scaling Up! Trial Production Recap
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This week was a pinch-me moment. It was the biggest milestone yet. We completed the trial production for Minky Muffins!
A trial production is a way to test the recipe by producing a larger volume of batter and muffins. This way, you can make sure the recipe is ready for the real production run, which is much bigger than making samples.
How’d it go? Let’s just say holding the first bag of Minky Muffins in my hands was even cooler than I thought it would be.
The same muffins that one year ago, I was making in my home kitchen with my baby blue KitchenAid mixer and a simple 3-rack oven. Now, we're working in a commercial kitchen!
And seeing my muffins made at scale with food-grade machinery felt like an out of body experience.
The same muffins that one year ago, I was making in my home kitchen with my baby blue KitchenAid mixer and a simple 3-rack oven. Now, we're working in a commercial kitchen!
I’m so happy I was able to be in-person for the trial run. It was great to meet the recipe developer/manufacturer in real life and get to know more about her and the company. I think it was also helpful for her to meet me and put a face to the name.
Me being there in person changed the outcome of the production. First of all, everything that I expected to go wrong didn’t. The packaging worked with the machine (thank god). The final item I ordered last week arrived on time. And we had enough of all the ingredients to get through the trial.
However, there was an issue that did pop up. The recipe developer had only 5-25 muffins at a time with the recipe we worked on. Not 1,000+. So, when it came to the process of making the muffins, the bake times that she had originally used didn’t work. Luckily, before we started I asked if we could try a few different bake times with a subset of muffins. Unfortunately, we made the majority of the muffins with the original bake time. When they came out, they were way too doughy. We put the muffins back in the oven again and kept adding more time until they were finished baking. But, the quality of the final muffins was affected from going in and out of the oven time and time again. I definitely got my protein fix on Monday from all the muffins I personally tested!
At the end of the day, a change in process is much better than needing to go back and change ingredients. And, the few muffins that we set aside to test different bake times tasted so good! Thankfully, we know exactly what the issue is and how to fix it for the first full production run. Sadly, that means this batch is not ready to go out to as many people as I’d hoped. I know there are inconsistencies and the quality isn’t exactly what we'd set out for.
To be transparent, I don’t want the muffins to be judged off of this batch. On the bright side, more muffins are coming soon!
Thank you so much for your patience as we smooth out the kinks in the production process!