Analytical Flavor Systems Holds the Key to an Optimized Future for Food and Beverage Producers   

How do you turn flavor into numbers? For Jason Cohen, CEO of Analytical Flavor Systems, that question guided his studies and research at Penn State – research that would become the backbone of his predictive manufacturing company.

In food and beverage production, quality and consistency are key, making contamination the enemy to successful brand upkeep and customer loyalty. And with the craft-beverage industry on the rise, quality and consistency are the guarantors of a competitive edge.

Enter Analytical Flavor Systems, whose product Gastrograph is a quality control tool with unprecedented capabilities. A blend of sensory science, data mining, and analytical chemistry equip the system to constantly monitor flavor profiles and anticipate minor flaws that could have major consequences.

After all, Cohen said, “The measure of a science is the ability to make correct predictions.” But in the realm of flavor? “Sensory science is barely explanatory at its best.” In other words, this “science” has been perhaps better defined as an art.

That’s where Gastrograph comes in. “We actually predict,” said Cohen. “We take flavor profile readings and make predictions, where before, only rudimentary techniques had existed for quantifying flavor.”

CEO, Jason Cohen

Initially, Cohen’s focus was on tea. During his studies at Penn State, he founded the Tea Institute, an interdisciplinary research institute providing experiential learning opportunities. It was then that his mission became clear: “Can I develop new techniques for making flavor something you can quantify, measure, and understand?”

Immediately, he encountered a challenge. “Large companies fund food science,” said Cohen. “It’s a field built for big business, and is not necessarily interested in new algorithms.”

In spite of setbacks and skepticism, Cohen trudged along, educating testers and amassing mountains of data. He quickly identified ways to broaden his scope. “Training people to taste tea is incredibly difficult,” he said. “We started training them on coffee, which they were most familiar with. And for obvious reasons, we switched our focus to beer.” Recruiting tasters and educating them extensively then became far less daunting.

In 2013, Cohen went through the Ben Franklin TechCelerator at Innovation Park. “At that point, we knew what we wanted to build but were still in the product development stage,” he said. Under the guidance of the Ben Franklin Technology Partners, Cohen set out to identify potential clients and understand the market. 

“One thing Ben Franklin helped prepare us for is identifying that the limiting factor, in our case, is not the technology itself, but sales and marketing,” he said. 

Armed with that knowledge, Cohen has been able to map out a trajectory for growth. “In the short term, we’re looking to bring on sales leadership and enterprise software to service sales,” he said. “Ultimately, we will improve the product and product experience.”

Producer Panel

Currently, Analytical Flavor Systems’ customer base consists of several beer and coffee clients along with a handful of upstream suppliers.

The potential to scale tenfold is real, but limitations exist for Cohen’s team. “The time to close a sale is long, often about six months,” he said. “We have about 50 leads that have seen a technical demo and have serious interest, but going from five to seven clients at various stages of up and running to even four or five more would be impossible without more help with sales, customer support, and product management.”

And as the company operates currently, Cohen finds himself juggling many hats. “I’m a data scientist by trade, but at this point I do more business development and product management,” he said. That doesn’t preclude him from “the occasional all-nighter to figure out why things are broken.”

Having worked on the backend to develop algorithms, Cohen now takes to the frontlines, dealing directly with customers to understand the analytics available on their Producer Panel, insights gleaned from human sensory and process control data.

Analytical Flavor Systems has fine-tuned Gastrograph to be able to flag and report contaminants, taints, and variations in real-time, a novelty for craft producers.

“We have an amazing technology team,” Cohen said. That team consists of seven full-time chemists and engineers and five interns. And in true new-age tech startup fashion, they’re rarely off the clock and very seldom apart.

Shortly after forming the company, Cohen and his colleagues took over the lease for a fraternity house, and have lived and worked out of this Hacker House (a concept – and name – based on the early development of Facebook) since 2013.

On the main floor, the team works busily in a spacious open office. As they move gradually toward growing their client base, Cohen ultimately foresees even greater expansion. “It’s inherently a hard problem to quantify an individual subjective experience and translate that into an objective analytical point,” he said. “If we can master that, the long-term premonition is personalized products.”

Genetic predispositions and past experiences inform individuals’ preferences, taste experiences accumulating daily, and formal training is uncommon. Therefore, Cohen explained, “It’s hard for individual consumers to be able to define their preferences. Often, they’ll select one flavor that appeals to them. But even that one flavor is complex.”

“Down the line,” said Cohen, “we could measure and store preferences so that people don’t have to communicate it and producers can engineer products for specific consumers in certain regions, even down to the individual level.”

For now, Analytical Flavor Systems remains the best kind of bad news bearer, flagging flaws in time for craft producers to fix the glitch and achieve unmatched levels of quality, consistency, and customer satisfaction.