Developing a New Ready to Eat Dessert :: Business and Management Studies

Developing a New Ready to Eat Dessert I was asked to design and make a ready to eat dessert. My target group was all ages of people, specifically people aged between twenty and sixty as they tend to have more money to spend than teenagers or pensioners. In order to gain an insight into the type of products that could be available to me to design and make I first had to do some research. First I created a questionnaire, and handed it out to fifty people of different ages. My questionnaire asked a variety of different questions such as â€Å"do you like chocolate based desserts?† â€Å"Do you like sponge?† Do you prefer hot desserts to cold?† The results of this questions formed the foundation of my project. I wrote letters to managers of supermarkets asking them to send me information on existing products, this helped me understand the type of cost that was suitable for my product to be sold at. From a range of magazines I made a collage of different desserts and annotated it, I used this as a kind of brainstorm of ideas, such as the different layers and colours that could be used. The internet was a big help to my research as I used the supermarkets websites to find out prices of products and ingredients. In order to condense the range of desserts I was considering I made myself a speciation table, this stated the criteria my product should meet. I decided that I would prefer my product to be chilled rather than frozen, which cancelled out some of my previous ideas such as ice-cream dishes. My specification stated that my product should be: Cold Chilled Available in individual portions Cheap to produce Of a standard quality Have a topping Have a creamy filling Have a crunchy base Have a variety of textures Must be sold at a maximum cost of  £2 Must have layers Next I had to design ten different products, I illustrated them and annotated them. Referring to the recipe of the dessert. To make my decision on the final product I tested a few of the suggested ideas. I decide to make a cheesecake. I had to make sure my cheesecake fit my product specification. To my delight my finished design actually does meet the majority of my criteria. So overall my cheesecake has been a success. The only area that did not go as planned was the portion size. My cheesecake ended up as a family size portion. This was due to the complication of the packaging, and sizing. I found it very hard to get the individual portions exactly the same size each time, it was easier