But Richardson International isn’t just any big company: it’s Canada’s largest agribusiness, with over 3,000 employees working at 100 locations around the world – including right here in Manitoba, home to the company’s head office. Richardson’s Manitoba connections run deep. The company is a subsidiary of James Richardson & Sons, Limited, the first company to handle grain grown by farmers in Western Canada and the first to build grain elevators in many communities across our province. 

Richardson Food & Ingredients, a division of Richardson International, turned to us in 2021 to augment their research teams and train a new line of product developers from RRC Polytech’s culinary programs. While still rare for us, this kind of partnership is becoming more frequent as large multinational enterprises continue hiring culinary-trained product developers.

For this partnership, Prairie Research Kitchen created student-led recipe development projects that two of our students – Michael Luay and Veronica Camannong – undertook as a first step in their product development training. They were tasked with producing recipes or base formulations using Richardson products and ingredients, including Wesson Oil, the third-largest oil brand in the US.

By the end of projects like these, we want students to demonstrate an ability to:

• Understand the client’s needs, including dietary restrictions and expected timeline
• Brainstorm innovative and delicious recipe ideas, often based on current food trends and ethnic cuisines, or employing new techniques
• Communicate professionally with the client
• Develop, test, and finalize recipes, standardize them by weight and volumetric conventions, and adjust the recipe to suit at-home users
• Document each trial through photography and written observations
• Learn the importance of scientific measurement
• Prepare, plate, and photograph the final dish
• Calculate and create a Nutritional Facts table
• Write the final recipe card and contribute to the final report

We look forward to working with Western Canada’s large manufacturers to augment their research teams and train the next generation of culinary-trained product developers.