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May 2008
Flavor Rich
Kraft Food Ingredients Corp. occupies a savory—and profitable—niche in the food
By Donnie snow
Food additives offer little in the way of sex appeal, but without them, grocery shelves and
restaurant menus would be about as appealing as haggis. Not to knock Scottish cuisine—who
doesn't love sheep innards and oatmeal?—but when one realizes that additives not only make
preserving food possible, but also can make something like haggis taste like sausage pizza
(possibly), one begins to see why analysts expect the additives market to reach nearly $30 billion
over the next two years.
A dominating industry force is Memphis-based Kraft Food Ingredients Corp., part of Kraft Foods. With
about 100 employees, Hoover's estimates KFIC had almost $30 million in sales last year.
KFIC makes it money by adding flavor to dishes, predominantly savory flavors. (They don't do much
with sweet enhancers, says industry analyst Donna Berry, senior editor at Dairy Foods.) Its
product line ranges from a charbroiled flavor for meat to a kaleidoscope of cheese flavors added to
almost anything.
Industry periodical FoodProcessing.com found that KFI overwhelmingly topped its "Readers'
Choice Awards" this year for cheese and cheese ingredients, capturing nearly one quarter of the
votes—but then, what else would you expect from the company that made macaroni and cheese a
staple in every school cafeteria and meat-&-three restaurant in the country?
It's something of a misnomer to call KFIC a subsidiary of Kraft, says Berry who, before becoming an
industry reporter, specialized in cheese product development at Kraft.
"The big difference is that KFI can not only supply back to its owner, Kraft, but can also supply
innovative ideas to direct Kraft competitors [despite the fact] the ingredients that KFI deals with
are often from technology derived from Kraft Corporation."
The line KFIC walks is tricky. "If they are a leader at what they do," she says, "if they are doing
as well as they want to do, then they are enabling Kraft competitors to do well and probably hurting
their sister corporation. I've never been able to understand [the benefit of the two being sisters]
myself."
Interview requests by BusinessTN were repeatedly declined by KFIC, but Berry says that's
standard.
"Most ingredient companies aren't very well known in their own neighborhood," she says. "Some try to
stay invisible."
KFIC doesn't make overtures to the local press. And despite the fact food-tech companies are going
for hyper-localized tasting products, there's little interaction between the company and the
culinary-steeped Bluff City, according to Berry.
Pity. Barbecue-flavored haggis might taste good.
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