Acheiving a Less Assembly-Line Look

Food manufacturers are attempting to make their products look less mass-produced and more rustic and homemade.

June 19, 2013

NEW YORK CITY – How do you achieve the artisan look for a food product that’s mass produced? That’s the question food makers are struggling to answer as more companies market their products as “homemade” or “artisan,” the Associated Press reports. 

For example, when making Domino’s Artisan Pizzas, employees try to not make sharp rectangles, but have pies with softer edges. McDonald’s Egg White Delight McMuffin should have a looser shape than the traditional roundness of the original sandwich. Kraft Foods spent several years to figure out how to make the edges of its Carving Board line of lunch meats appear to be homemade “leftovers” and not assembly-line ovals. 

Americans still crave packaged food and fast food, but they now want to seem like their consuming homemade foods. Some food companies are stripping down the ingredients and assembling part of their foods to achieve the wholesome appeal, but others are tweaking existing product lines for the same result.

“Food manufacturers are adapting by the way they mold the product or the end color or texture they want the product to be,” said Michael Cohen, a visiting assistant professor of marketing at NYU’s Stern School of Business.

However, some argue that by changing the appearance — and not the ingredients — of foods can trick consumers into thinking the product is more natural than it really is. “They can’t change the fact that they’re making processed products so they have to use these other tricks to pretend,” said Michele Simon, a public health lawyer and author of “Appetite for Profit: How the Food Industry Undermines Our Health and How to Fight Back.”

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