What's interesting about this story is that it starts out seemingly like it's going to be about devious marketers devising a way to turn a product nobody wanted into a hot seller strictly through marketing, in much the same way that clever marketing turned the universally reviled Patagonian toothfish into a big seller by bestowing upon it the more upscale name "Chilean sea bass" (see http://priceonomics.com/the-invention-of-the-chilean-sea-bas...).
But then you get into the meat of it (sorry) and find that the root of the turnaround is an actual technical accomplishment -- a method to cook and distribute pre-cooked bacon that wouldn't rob the bacon of its flavor:
> The early 1990s was a time of great advancements in precooked bacon technology. Pork producers, food labs, and agricultural schools such as Iowa State University began investing substantially in precooked R&D. Hormel and Swift worked on microwaveable precooked slices for home consumers, while Chicago’s OSI and the now-defunct Wilson Foods poured their efforts into bacon spirals that would fit perfectly atop a hamburger.
These technical innovations turned out to be the key, because the pork marketers were pitching bacon to fast-food chains as a "flavor enhancer," but the chains that tried it mostly came away dissatisfied: the hassle of adding bacon-cooking to their highly regimented kitchens created expense and added time to the burger-assembly process, while existing methods for pre-cooking bacon yielded a tasteless product. Pre-cooked bacon with taste intact (that came in shapes ready to plop on top of a hamburger patty, no less) took all that friction away.
My only regret is that the whole thing is written from the perspective of the Pork Marketing Board, which funded the research into pre-cooking bacon, but doesn't really tell you much about the research itself. That seems like it'd be an interesting story, for those of a technical bent; here's a problem, how do you solve it?
Exactly, pre-cooked bacon was the thing. And it is a thing, at least in my house where it is trivial to put some chopped pre-cooked bacon onto the pan next some stir fried green beans and spinach and poof really tasty side dish.
Maybe your brand is different but in Ontario pre-cooked bacon is gross and tastes like McDonald's bacon. The texture is all wrong, it's thin and weird.
Agreed. Food science is an amazing field that has been making huge advances in recent decades. But where can you find anything written about the actual research, outside of highly technical journals?
I misread the title to be about Beacon (since a story about it was trending earlier on HN), and your quote really threw me off, like why is this guy talking about pork :P thanks for the comment, it both fixed my mistake and provided insight once I got on the actual story :)
But then you get into the meat of it (sorry) and find that the root of the turnaround is an actual technical accomplishment -- a method to cook and distribute pre-cooked bacon that wouldn't rob the bacon of its flavor:
> The early 1990s was a time of great advancements in precooked bacon technology. Pork producers, food labs, and agricultural schools such as Iowa State University began investing substantially in precooked R&D. Hormel and Swift worked on microwaveable precooked slices for home consumers, while Chicago’s OSI and the now-defunct Wilson Foods poured their efforts into bacon spirals that would fit perfectly atop a hamburger.
These technical innovations turned out to be the key, because the pork marketers were pitching bacon to fast-food chains as a "flavor enhancer," but the chains that tried it mostly came away dissatisfied: the hassle of adding bacon-cooking to their highly regimented kitchens created expense and added time to the burger-assembly process, while existing methods for pre-cooking bacon yielded a tasteless product. Pre-cooked bacon with taste intact (that came in shapes ready to plop on top of a hamburger patty, no less) took all that friction away.
My only regret is that the whole thing is written from the perspective of the Pork Marketing Board, which funded the research into pre-cooking bacon, but doesn't really tell you much about the research itself. That seems like it'd be an interesting story, for those of a technical bent; here's a problem, how do you solve it?