McCormick & Company takes home SBR International Business Awards for food manufacturing solutions

McCormick’s spicy flavour-inspired products were eventually turned into permanent items on their customer’s menus due to overwhelming popularity and high sales volume.

Global flavour leader McCormick & Company bagged the Food Manufacturing Solutions category win at the recently held SBR International Business Awards for its successful incorporation of McCormick’s spicy sauce flavours into ready-to-eat meal products. The result - Ghost Pepper Chicken Noodles and Flaming Mac & Cheese meals expanding on the range of ready-to-eat meals of retail store 7-Eleven.

McCormick is well-equipped to help customers deliver on customised flavour solutions. Leveraging best-in-class insights as inspiration, our trend-trackers, research chefs, flavour technologists and sensory scientists, the McCormick team was seeing spicy flavours being hugely popular across many different product categories, which was in line with 7-Eleven’s consumer feedback that saw many on the lookout for more sensorial consumption experiences.  McCormick’s spicy sauce products had exceeded expectations and quickly became a consumer favourite. 7-Eleven was highly satisfied with their customers’ reception of the product. Based on these insights and consumer feedback, the idea to create a spicy sauce that is suitable to be applied to 7-Eleven’s already hugely popular noodles as well as Mac & Cheese was born.  This product feeds into Asian consumers’ propensity for spices while giving consumers the option of noodles or a more westernized Mac & Cheese, which are now extending into ‘modern’ consumption preferences. Research shows that Asian crowds are more experimental and prefer authentic, bold and spicy flavours more so than other cultures. 

“To innovate flavour extension around our popular core meals has always been our goal to continue to build a strong sales base. We are very pleased with the launch of Ghost Pepper Chicken Noodles and Flaming Mac & Cheese meal which has driven the overall category sales and attracted a new group of customers to use our products regularly. It has been an experience that we are most happy to continue in the near future to launch great products together,” 7-Eleven Head of Commercial, Angela Fong said.

The Ghost Pepper is a returning favourite on a thematic campaign basis and 7-Eleven launched flaming mac and cheese as a line extension immediately following its success.

“McCormick’s expertise in getting the ‘right’ level of heat to help expand on 7-Eleven’s existing range of ready-to-eat meals had exceeded expectations and quickly became a consumer favourite. We are so pleased that 7-Eleven is highly satisfied with their customers’ reception of the product. Asian consumers’ love for anything spicy has driven growth in inherently hot foods like spicy sauce, but we observed that consumers also wanted a balanced pairing of flavour and heat.  This new product created in collaboration with 7-Eleven exemplifies how we differentiate our brands through innovation to drive growth and maintain our industry leadership,” McCormick Asia Pacific Vice President of Flavour Solutions, Betty Juliana Tan, said.

SBR International Business Awards honours foreign companies in Singapore and recognises their outstanding projects that successfully earned them a foothold in the city-state.

The SBR International Business Awards is presented by Singapore Business Review Magazine. To view the full list of winners, click here. If you want to join the 2024 awards programme and be acclaimed for your company's outstanding contributions in your organisation's growth, please contact Bianca Peñaranda at [email protected].