It takes about 21 ingredients to make a Totino pizza roll. This bite-sized snack skyrocketed in popularity during the pandemic as people wanted an easy-to-make meal.
And on any given day since last winter, at least one of those ingredients, if not many, has been difficult to find or very expensive.
At some point the shortage became so bad that General Mills, which makes Totino’s, simply couldn’t produce enough.
“There were a lot of empty shelves,” said John Nudy, the company’s president of North America. “Every time I fixed something, something else appeared.”
General Mills are not used to empty shelves. The company sells $19 billion worth of food annually, including his Chex and Cheerios cereals, Annie’s organic cheddar bunnies, Betty Crocker cake his mixes, to Blue Buffalo brand pet food. With 26 factories in North America, he uses 13,000 ingredients from around the world for many of his products.
That’s why the company’s scientists, supply chain chiefs and procurement managers started meeting daily late last year. solution? The company has found 25 ways to make pizza rolls – recipes if you prefer, but with a slightly different list of ingredients for each. another starch.
The pizza roll conundrum is the epitome of a problem that pervades the food industry. It’s one thing to deal with the rising prices of most ingredients in cookies, chips and pizza. But for many food industry executives, a bigger headache now is contemplating which ingredients will or won’t show up in their factories each week.
For a while last year sugar low-calorie sweeteners such as ErythritolIt is used in products such as yogurt and cereals . Then there is palm oil, which is tasteless and odorless, and is found in about half of supermarket packaging. hard to findAfter Russia invaded Ukraine, global supplies of sunflower oil produced in both countries disappeared. More recently, the bird flu that swept the United States this spring has led to skyrocketing egg prices and a shortage of eggs.
Food companies have long had to manage shortages of one or two ingredients, partly because droughts have reduced crop yields in parts of the world, but recent ongoing shortages have , affecting multiple ingredients for a variety of reasons. And it’s not just the ingredients that are MIA. Some packages, such as aluminum cans, have been difficult for soda and beer manufacturers to find.
Many executives blame climate change, global transport and labor problems, the war in Ukraine, rising energy prices, and an increase in extreme weather patterns due to ever-changing consumer patterns in the post-COVID-19 environment. It is said that Years of data collected to predict trends become essentially useless.
“All these wrinkles are chained throughout the food system and I don’t think anyone expects them to resolve themselves in the next 12 or 18 months,” said JPG, who works with food companies. Resources partner Joe Colyn said. and its supply chain. “Supply beats price now. We can’t shut down a factory just because we don’t have what we need, so it’s more important to have a reliable supply.”
After years of reducing the number of suppliers to get better prices and maintain quality control, food companies are racing to find alternatives. Just-in-time inventory systems that have worked have been overhauled, with companies adding warehouses, silos and storage tanks to store raw materials and finished goods for longer. They are looking to reduce shipping costs by finding nearby manufacturers or by removing the water from commodities such as vegetable and fruit juices commonly used in beverages and shipping them as concentrates.
And like General Mills, they’re reinventing the recipe. In other words, they are “recombining” in industry parlance. It’s not as easy as it sounds. Replacing oils and emulsifiers can change the texture and shelf life of a product, as well as affect nutrition and allergen labeling.
The Food and Drug Administration, which ensures that nutrition labels and other information about foods are accurate, temporarily guidance To allow manufacturers to make “minor formulation changes” without updating ingredient lists due to supply interruptions or shortages.
The allowance does not apply to changes that pose a safety risk because they contain food allergens or gluten, or changes that replace key ingredients or names or those featured in marketing. Products claiming to be made with “butter” can no longer be made with margarine, and raisin bread must contain raisins.
Before the pandemic, Ingredion, which makes sweeteners, starches and other ingredients used by major food companies, had 500 scientists and 26 laboratories across the country working on new products for businesses. did. But in recent months, far more time has been spent figuring out what happens to the taste, texture, and shelf life of food when you switch one or two ingredients.
Beth Tormey, Ingredion’s vice president and general manager, Systems and Ingredient Solutions, said: “You have to meet the texture and taste parameters to please the consumer, but you also have to fit into the regulatory and nutritional boxes,” she said. .”
take the egg According to her Leaslie Carr, Ingredion’s senior her director, they’re a key protein source in many products, but they’re not the only one. For baked goods, for example, it provides moisture and volume, helping the cake to be light and fluffy.
“Salad dressings also use a lot of eggs for richness and texture,” Carr said. “So we’re trying to find ways to use different emulsifiers to reduce the amount of eggs used, perhaps even halving the amount of eggs to produce dressings. It gives us the flexibility to continue manufacturing products.”
General Mills began noticing disruptions in its supply chain late last year.
The company’s Wellston, Ohio factory that made Totino’s pizzas and pizza rolls was working to keep up with the surge in sales that accompanied the pandemic, but suddenly a key ingredient was unavailable.
“First, it was the starch we use in cheese,” Nudi says. “Then it became difficult to find specific packaging and oils.
By February, Totino’s pizzas and pizza rolls weren’t enough to keep the grocery freezer section full.
By then, the company had started daily meetings with its R&D, procurement and supply chain departments to find ways to improve and substitute materials. For example, when starch became harder to find, the company began substituting and combining different starches to figure out how to make pizza rolls look and taste the same. .
Nudi said the freezer was full again in March.
But the lessons learned from the “new normal” of supply chains are being felt across the company.
Prior to the pandemic, the packaged food industry was a stable environment with consistent levels of growth, Nudi said. This has facilitated the safe and stable supply of ingredients.
Today, General Mills has multiple suppliers in line for each ingredient and more ingredients on hand.
“Just-in-time deliveries no longer work,” Nudi said. “Right now, it’s hard, but we’re stockpiling more dry ingredients and fats. We need tanks to store those liquids, and they’re not readily available.”