BusinessTN

In a lab bristling with sophisticated testing equipment, a group of grown-ups gathers round a row of ice cream containers, each tasting a spoonful of frozen dessert. While these members of the Mayfield Dairy inspection team in Athens, Tenn., perform their daily duty, the flavor committee has been working since May on new products, which won’t appear in stores until February, when most retailers do product resets for new flavors.

“Our new products for this coming year are still in the process of being narrowed down; formulas are still being tweaked,” says Scott Watson, manager of Mayfield’s Athens plant and ice cream team leader. “We have to get employee feedback, get the formulas finalized and go through another approval process, get cartons made, and there is lead time on that for the carton suppliers. Bringing out a new product is a long process.”

Fifteen years after becoming part of Dean Foods, the top dairy processing company in the country for the past two years according to industry journal Dairy Field, Mayfield remains a regional brand competing with private labels and specialty brands. “The brand is huge in the South, and I expect it will remain so,” says James Dudlicek, editor of Dairy Field. The Athens home base and the former Barber Dairies plant in Birmingham, Ala., produce over 28 million gallons of Mayfield ice cream each year, which account for 31% of the company’s more than $300 million in total yearly sales.

No doubt, some of Mayfield’s recent success stems from formalizing product development. “Dean changed the process a little,” says quality assurance manager Barry Derrick, a 38-year Mayfield employee. “We used to just come up with new flavors on our own, but now the suppliers have market information, national trends, what people are buying, what people want.”

New products are taken to the Mayfield visitor centers in Athens, the new milk plant in Braselton, Ga., and to the ice cream plant in Birmingham for two days of employee taste-testing. “We encourage the employees to taste the new ice creams, and to give us names for them,” Watson says. “All their input goes into making the final decision.” he says. “Our employees take this seriously.”

Development of a new Mayfield ice cream product may take almost a year from the time new flavors are introduced by flavor and component vendors. Such was the case with one of Mayfield’s biggest successes of late, Snow Cream. “Perhaps the best evidence of Mayfield’s grasp of the market is its recent [October 2003] launch of Snow Cream, based on the traditional Southern treat,” Dudlicek says. “Intended as a limited seasonal offering, Snow Cream became a top seller, a permanent addition to the ice cream lineup, and begat related frozen novelty and milk products.”

“In the past, we have brought out products without all that participation, and the product gets on the line and somebody tastes it and says, ‘Hey, this is not all that good,’” Watson says. “This gives everybody the opportunity to have input before the product gets into production.” Fortunately for Mayfield, its 1,800 sets of taste buds seem to have a knack for spotting future, top-selling ice cream flavors.