October 12, 2014: A New Kraft Product! And Pederson's Natural Farms

MY LIFE WITH BACON continues this week with a very exciting product announcement from Kraft, and a review of Pederson's Natural Farms Uncured Hickory Smoked bacon.

 BACON IN THE NEWS is very exciting this week.  Kraft made this announcement launching a new Philadelphia Brand Cream Cheese flavor - BACON! The announcement is great, but it's just a tease: this stuff won't be available until next year. 

You'd think it'd easy to stick bacon into cream cheese:

"Not so fast, though—apparently, inserting bacon into cream cheese isn’t as easy at it sounds. And it doesn’t sound that easy. The product, which contains bits of bacon, took roughly 18 months to develop.

According to senior director of Kraft for Philadelphia, Chris Hjorth, bacon is a hard flavor to get just right. The brand wanted to make sure the bacon was apparent enough, while still being balanced with the cream cheese. This is the stuff that keeps food scientists up at night."

If you're in the retail product space, you know how important it is to ONE - verify that your new product introduction and promotion is being executed properly in the field, and TWO - to understand  what consumers are really thinking about your new item. 

That's where Field Agent comes in - the single best tool - mobile auditing and mobile research - capturing consumer sentiment in the moment, not recall, and auditing execution at the same time.  Take 90 seconds and watch the video!

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I had a pretty great weekend.  On Saturday, my son Jack had a great game against the Lake Zurich HS freshman team. I don't brag much, but check out a short highlight video here; he's #4.

After that early start, I installed a trailer hitch receiver and light socket on my Jeep and then ripped off the top of a 55-gallon drum and burned it out in preparation to turn it into a smoker - for BACON and other porcine products.




On Saturday night, we went with friends to Flemings, and part of the menu appears below along with the Pork Belly appetizer.  Amazingly outstanding.  Our friends said it was unbelievable.  Of course - it's BACON!


THIS WEEK'S BACON EVALUATION is Pederson's Natural Farms uncured Hickory Smoked bacon. 

The package is 10 ounces, and weighed in very wet at 9.6 ounces - gypped of .4 ounces!  Bad QC right off the bat.  It had a VERY fresh smell upon opening, solidly bacon-y.  It did NOT STICK to the pan at all; very unusual and easy to cook.  Post cooking, it was 3.8 ounces and produced 50ml of bacon fat.

This bacon was pretty pedestrian, despite initial impresions.  It wasn't crispy  - below average rating of 2/5.  More chewy than expected at 4; flavor just average at 2.5, as well as average succulence.  The fatty parts didn't burst with bacon goodness... overall, a bit disappointing.

Next week, I'll review D'ARTAGNAN uncured Smoked Duck Bacon, in a serious deviation from tradition.  I cooked it on the pan I used with Pederson's this week, in an effort to impart some bacon flavor.  See you next week with that review!