Have You Ever Wanted to Eat Chocolate For A Living?

Many people have heard of sommeliers, or wine experts, but have you heard of sensory scientists? Global Organics has a team of trained panelists who conduct sensory evaluations on products such as dark, white, and milk chocolates. Our team’s knowledge of chocolate is extensive and our sensory program is one way we can become your organic chocolate experts. So yes, part of our job is to eat chocolate!

We work directly with our organic chocolate suppliers and our customers to collaborate on research and development (R&D) projects, quality assurance, and marketing. The world of sensory science is incredible and we are excited to talk about our sensory program with you.

What Is A Sensory Program?

Sensory programs are often found in food manufacturing facilities. The panels are made up of trained personnel who come together to evaluate products. These evaluations may look at how similar a new batch of product is to an older batch, if a new product fits R&D project goals, or discover how a product ages.

Sensory programs are an important part of quality control. If you are purchasing a 48% organic dark chocolate chip with coconut sugar, then you want caramelized sugar, chocolate liquor, and molasses notes every time! Your finished product depends on consistency. Sensory panelists assist with systematically ensuring that the organic chocolate chips you purchase conform to your expectations.

What Does A Distributor’s Sensory Program Look Like?

Global Organics is a distributor and importer which puts us in an incredibly unique position. We have the ability to evaluate product quality before it even gets to you. We can import and distribute bulk organic chocolate chunks, chips, and couvertures with complex profiles from white, milk and dark chocolate varieties.

The Global Organics sensory program consists of a cross functional team of panelists. Therefore, our understanding of the supply chain, Foreign Supplier Verification Program (FSVP)regulations, food safety, quality control, customer service, and supplier management all plays a role into how we assess our products.

We put a lot of time and effort into continuous improvement initiatives for our sensory panelists. Through annual proficiency testing and calibration sessions we use proven methods to keep our panel aligned on sensory attributes. For example, we understand “basic sour” vs. “lactic sour” and how the intensities of chocolate liquor differ from product to product.

Our Italian organic chocolate supplier sends us “pre-ship” samples from every production run. By working so closely with our suppliers and our customers, we can use the sensory evaluations of the pre-ship samples to reduce customer complaints, saving both money and time. Since we verify sensory profiles we provide invaluable feedback to our suppliers, which only helps our customer relationships.

What’s Ahead for Global Organics?

So, you now know how much we love organic chocolate! Global Organics is also dedicated to the growth of our sensory program. Organic chocolate is not our only product category for sales, so the expansion of our sensory program to other types of food ingredients just makes sense.

Our sensory panelists have been training with our Mexican organic coffee supplier to understand the subtleties of various origins and blends. Also, new organic fruit and vegetable purees get sent our way all the time so we can diversify our product range.

We are very proud of our collaborations with our organic coconut suppliers. Whether we are conducting a matching project for aseptic organic coconut creams or evaluating the texture of organic desiccated coconut chips, we are passionate about our ever growing product knowledge.

In short, our sensory program is an invaluable asset to both our suppliers and our customers. The dedicated sensory panelists are a proud part of Global Organics. When you work with us, we help work with you to make your ingredient needs and dreams come true.