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In this mini episode of the Startup CPG Podcast, host Daniel Scharff sits down with Ian Haworth, Business Development Director at FlavorSum, to talk all things flavor—timed with the launch of Startup CPG's first-ever Product Developer Directory. FlavorSum is a fast-growing North American custom flavor manufacturer built specifically for growing food and beverage brands and the formulators who serve them.
Ian breaks down what custom flavors actually are and when you need them, how FlavorSum's "solutions model" covers everything from marketing insights and regulatory affairs to sensory and analytical support, and why their "Amazon-like" approach—samples within 48 hours, pricing within 24—sets them apart. He also shares a great example of a father-daughter duo who came in for an in-person tech session and walked out with a finished non-alcoholic beverage concept in hours.
Whether you're a brand trying to understand what to look for in a flavor supplier or a formulator evaluating partners, this episode gives you a quick but packed look at how the right flavor house can accelerate your go-to-market.
Listen in as they discuss:
- What custom flavors are and when off-the-shelf options aren't enough
- The FlavorSum solutions model: marketing insights, regulatory, sensory, and analytical all under one roof
- Why response time matters—and how FlavorSum built their business around 24–48 hour turnarounds
- FlavorSum Access: a 24/7 portal for technical and safety data sheets
- What brands should be asking about their flavors: claims, heat and pH stability, shelf life, and retailer compliance
- How to get ahead of supply chain disruptions before they delay your production
Episode Links:
Ian Haworth – Business Development Director, FlavorSum
🔗 Company LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/flavorsumllc/
🌐 Flavorsum Website: https://www.flavorsum.com/contact
Startup CPG Product Developer Directory: https://startupcpg.com/product-developer-directory
Don't forget to leave a five-star review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify if you enjoyed this episode. For potential sponsorship opportunities or to join the Startup CPG community, visit http://www.startupcpg.com.
Show Links:
- Transcripts of each episode are available on the Transistor platform that hosts our podcast here (click on the episode and toggle to “Transcript” at the top)
- Join the Startup CPG Slack community (35K+ members and growing!)
- Follow @startupcpg
- Visit host Daniel's Linkedin
- Questions or comments about the episode? Email Daniel at podcast@startupcpg.com
- Episode music by Super Fantastics
Creators and Guests
What is The Startup CPG Podcast?
The top CPG podcast in the world, highlighting stories from founders, buyer spotlights, highly practical industry insights - all to give you a better chance at success.
Daniel Scharff
Welcome everyone to a mini episode with our friends at Flavorsum. As you probably heard, we recently released the first ever directory of all of the product developers out there. That's hundreds of formulators and food scientists who could make your product dreams come true. We did it with the support of our friends at Flavorsum. They are the fastest growing North American flavor company. They partner with growing food and beverage brands and formulators seeking custom flavor solutions without the cost or complexity of those large scale suppliers. So brands developing beverages, dairy, bakery, confection or sports nutrition products could benefit from their responsive support, their fast lead times and scalable liquid flavor portfolio. So today on the podcast, we're talking a lot about what makes a good flavor, how do formulators work with flavors and flavor houses?
00:52
Daniel Scharff
Really interesting stuff and all the things that you just generally want to know about flavors if you want to get in touch with them. Their website is flavorsum.com that's flavor and then sum.com it's in the show notes and so is our new product developer directory. All right, enjoy. All right, Ian, my friend, welcome to the podcast. I'm so excited to have you here because we have released this incredible database, product developer database, which for the first time ever, this has never been done before, lists all of the product developers, formulators, food scientists out there that we could find. And we couldn't have done it without your help. So would you mind first just telling us who is Flavorsum and who is Ian?
01:35
Ian
My name is Ian Haworth. I am the business development director with Flavorsum. Flavorsume is a North American based custom flavor manufacturer focused on servicing the needs of fast growing food and beverage manufacturers.
01:46
Daniel Scharff
Okay, so can you tell me first, what does it mean when you say custom flavor? Because if I'm an early brand, am I like, well, do I need custom flavors? Do I just need regular flavors? What do I need?
01:56
Ian
I think the idea really comes from what do you want your finished product? The idea of we can manufacture a strawberry flavor, which is fantastic and everybody would enjoy it. However, various applications would require different types of strawberry type flavors. So we would create it based on application.
02:15
Daniel Scharff
Okay, so if I can use something off the shelf, great, like I need a strawberry flavor for a strawberry skew that I'm developing, fantastic. But I might need a different kind of strawberry or something that has a different functionality. That would be something I could work with you to develop just the right.
02:30
Ian
Flavor, a hundred percent. We would have a conversation about your specific application and then we would, we could certainly send you something that is off the Shelf, you may come back and say, hey, I liked a little bit of flavor B and a little bit of flavor C. Can you combination these two flavors together and do this one at 60% or 40%, and then this is your custom flavor that we've developed for.
02:50
Daniel Scharff
That makes a lot of sense to me. Probably for a lot of the early brands listening, it's not that it's necessarily going to go to you directly, but it might go to this formulator that you find through our database, and they're the ones trying to get this just right for you. And so I think it's really cool to hear this from Ian because it's a good reminder to you of, like, what happened to me. I got a mint flavor, and I was like, yes, I want mint, but I don't think this is the right mint. Like, I don't know. This is like a what experiment? And I think what I want is a. Like a different kind of mint. Can you give me a different kind of mint? And that might be the kind of scenario where then the formulator goes back.
03:23
Daniel Scharff
It's like, all right, let me see if I can get with these guys from Flavorsum and get you something not off the shelf. They might need to put a couple things together here to find exactly that flavor that'll hit the way you want it to.
03:34
Ian
Exactly. And I think what we love to do is just send a couple of different options because we don't always know the type of profile. What I'm thinking could be very different from what you're thinking. So we just send out some options for you to taste.
03:45
Daniel Scharff
Okay, so one question that I have all of these formulators out there, of which we have already over 200 in our database. How do they decide? Oh, I'm a flavorsum kind of product developer. Like, those are the guys I like to work with for certain kinds of things. Like, how do they make those decisions? How do they decide? Yes, I love working with Flavorsum over other people that are out there. What makes a great supplier?
04:08
Ian
Right. I think what I would do is look at the organization holistically. You know, what can the flavor house do for the formulator? Or what's most important to the formulator? So beyond, like, large library options or the ability to manufacture custom flavors, having an ingredient and raw material supplier that you can trust is essential in launching your new food and beverage innovation.
04:29
Daniel Scharff
Okay, so hit me with that then. If I'm a formulator, I'm like, what can you do for me holistically? What is the answer to that.
04:36
Ian
Well, because we recognize this, we offer what we call our solutions model. It's a full suite of services, everything from marketing and consumer insights, regulatory affairs, custom flavor creation and matching capabilities. We offer extensive libraries to support in house development, process validation and sensory and analytical.
04:55
Daniel Scharff
Well, that does sound like a nice place to go shopping where they just take care of your every need.
05:02
Ian
You know, you speak of shopping like we always kind of reference. What we're building is essentially like the Amazon experience. Data is available 24 hours a day, order confirmation, shipping details, delivery information. We built the business to ensure you're responded to within a timely manner. So samples within 48 hours, confirmation of your order within 48 hours, pricing within 24. All of these things we found are incredibly helpful for the partners that we have. And we created it for them specifically.
05:35
Daniel Scharff
That sounds pretty good. Now all you need is a TV streaming service and you really will be like Amazon. Exactly. I would watch that. By the way, if anyone ever starts a formulation TV streaming service, I'm interested.
05:46
Ian
So one of the things we did develop was what we call flavorsum access. So it allows for organizations or formulators to sign in 24 hours a day so that they can pick up a lot of their technical data sheets or safety data sheets or C of A. All of that is at their fingertips whenever they need it.
06:04
Daniel Scharff
I like that it's 24, 7. For some reason, when I envision a formulator, I sort of envision like a coder, you know, just in their basement late at night, up at late, just hacking together the latest products. I bet that's really very appreciated by them. So what does that interaction look like, by the way? I'm always curious, like when the formulators are reaching out to you for help with stuff because I mean, they're very technical and your team is incredibly technical. What would be the kind of things they're actually asking for help with?
06:31
Ian
Yeah, so we really pride ourselves on our service. We always take a collaborative approach with everything that we do. We overcome go to market challenges by expanding our partners in house capabilities. Our flavor experts understand flavor complexity. We have an incredibly deep bench that is a sports reference. Anywhere from like three to four times the industry standard of what you would find for flavor houses. Most cases you would wait for somebody to get to your project. We have nine internal flavorists. These flavorists go through extensive training. Their education spans the length of some physicians and it continues to be ongoing for them.
07:11
Daniel Scharff
I like the sound of that. Because when you're developing a new product, you do not want to the month or two months to wait for an iteration of it. Like my whole world is going to change by then. I got to get this product out to market before expo. Like what do you mean I got to wait? So I do like to hear that, especially of the deep bench and the formulators just waiting at the ready to knock out this new sku.
07:33
Ian
Yeah, we have a full team of application specialists so we can put them into your finished products. We really promote what we call tech to tech sessions. We can do them either virtually or in person. I love the in person ones because what normally would take anywhere from two to four to six months to actually accomplish, when you come in house and you have a conversation with our experts about your specific application, what you want the profiles to taste like, you can get a lot done in a short period of time. A really cool example actually. We had a father daughter duo come in and they were looking to develop a non alcoholic beverage brand. Right. A full concept, a number of different on trend mocktails. So they came to us and they said, hey, this is what we're thinking.
08:20
Ian
So first thing I love to do is go back to my marketing group and say, I have a group, they have XYZ as an idea. We sit down with them and then we go through either consumer listening or marketing insights and we find out what's on trend or more importantly, what's not. So some of the concepts were exactly bang on what we needed to do. And then there was a few that we kind of threw off to the side. Maybe a later date we could kind of revisit. And then they came in, we tasted some concepts, we made adjustments in real time and within hours we had a finished product that they could push to market.
08:54
Daniel Scharff
That is a good time. That is the best case scenario.
08:58
Ian
That's the dream, right?
08:59
Daniel Scharff
Yeah. Okay, so last question for you here, Ian. If you're a brand and you're getting these kind of flavors, putting them into your product and you know, sometimes it just goes through the formulator and you don't even really know it's the stuff until they tell you which products to buy, when you're going to production or. But what should you be paying attention to if you're a brand when it comes to the flavors going into your product, what are some things that you should pay attention to?
09:21
Ian
Right, Great question. There's several ways to really look at this and I think what claims are you looking to achieve? Are you going natural, organic? What does your process look like? Or is, you know, heat stability, ph stability Overall shelf life, and then where's your product being sold? If you're working with the Whole Foods of the world or the Trader Joe's of the world, they have very specific regulatory compliance measures that you need to meet to even have your product on the shelf. So we work with you closely to ensure that we're getting the right product in front of your ingredient deck, and we can push that through.
09:55
Daniel Scharff
Okay, and very last question here. I totally agree with that, what you just said, by the way, because then you're going for organic or some kind of claim you want to make on the label, and then you find out the flavor is a warmth instead of just straight of the flavor, meaning, like, it's not just strawberry, it's strawberry with other natural flavors. And that changes what you're going to have to say about it. It's good to know that up front. So. Okay. Yeah. The last thing I wanted to ask you is I actually, when I worked with a flavor house in the past, was really surprised when went to place the order for a new SKU and they were out of one of the flavors, and they're like, yeah, I don't know.
10:28
Daniel Scharff
There's a major lime shortage in the world, and we don't have any for you right now. And we're hopping that because it's going to. That one little flavor will delay our entire skew production. What can a brand do to try to get ahead of that?
10:39
Ian
We manufacture all of our flavors at time of order. The idea there is to provide our customers with the most fresh flavor for their finished product so they get maximum shelf life. What they can do is communicate. The biggest thing is have a conversation. There are a number of different variables that are happening. Global warming or issues with crop yield that can present a number of different challenges.
11:03
Daniel Scharff
We.
11:03
Ian
We are very much on top of our raw materials and have a solid understanding of what's happening within the market and crop yields. We communicate that with our customers if any challenges are presented. But, yeah, the biggest thing is having a conversation.
11:17
Daniel Scharff
I like that answer. And I kind of wonder almost if they're like, it is what it is. You know, if there's a line like, everyone's dealing with it. I wonder with that flavor house if there's kind of a, like, okay, just tell everyone that we can't do it and then see who complains the most. Because I did complain. I went full Karen on it because we needed it, and then sure enough, they got it for us. So I think that communication tip is the right way Although I probably could have done it more proactively and calmly instead of reactively and freak outishly.
11:44
Ian
Yeah, but it's your product and we understand that. And I think that's something that we really focus on is making sure that we do things quickly.
11:51
Daniel Scharff
All right, Ian, what is the best way for everyone to get in touch with the Flavorsum team?
11:55
Ian
You can visit our website @flavorsum.com on that site, you have access to a number of different people that you can reach out to and we can support your flavor needs.
12:06
Daniel Scharff
All right, Ian, thank you and the Flavorsum team for the incredible support that you've given us for the release of this product developer database. The first ever time anyone's ever done it, putting together this massive resource of all of the formulators out there. We just want brands to have the best access to people out there and we couldn't do this without you guys. So I just want to give you guys really a very big thank you. Thank you for supporting this important work that we do to help all the brands out there.
12:32
Ian
Well, we appreciate being a part of it, so thank you very much.
12:34
Daniel Scharff
All right, see you soon. Bye, everyone. Well, my friends, we've now arrived together at the end of another episode of the Startup CPG podcast, the top globally ranked podcast in cpg. As you may know, we're not just a podcast. We're a community of brands and experts. And you should join. You can sign up@startupcpg.com you'll then get an invite to our online Slack community. You're going to hear about amazing events near you, all of our special opportunities to get you in front of buyers, investors, brands and more. It's a free community. So what are you waiting for? I will see you there or on our next episode. Bye bye.