Porridge Melts is a start-up food company based in Bangor, Co Down who are on a mission to jazz up your morning porridge using a variety of ready made chocolate shells with various flavourings including fudge, granola, almond, hazelnuts, raspberry, lotus crumb, Nutella, peanut butter, blueberry, strawberry, chocolate orange and mixed seeds.
The company wanted to develop new flavours of porridge melts and get help from the NWRC Foodovation centre to speed up their production time and get advice on labelling and packaging.
To assist with the development of their concept, Porridge Melts was supported by North West Regional College (NWRC) Business Support Centre (BSC) through the InnovateUs programme which is funded by the Department for the Economy.
NWRC Foodovation Technical Consultant Linda McClean provided 60 hours of upskilling support in sourcing and costing of ingredients, developing recipes and calculating costings, including chocolate shell sourcing, producing larger production batches & calculating nutritional values and suggested legal labelling.
On completion of the project the company was able to develop new flavours of porridge melts (including vegan options), using ready-made Belgian chocolate truffle shells. Porridge Melts are now available to purchase through their Instagram page and via local food markets.
Jenni Brennan, Owner of Porridge Melts described the benefits of working with NWRC’s Business Support Centre via the InnovateUs Programme: ‘’Innovate Us was invaluable in helping me develop my food product, Porridge Melts. Linda McClean from Foodovation has helped me to create new Porridge Melt flavours, calculate nutritional values and labelling. Porridge Melts is beginning to become a well-known brand and this is thanks to the continued support from Linda.’’
