Why Our Kids' Food Drink Shelf Life ChangedNEW

Our Food Drink is a milk mix for kids. It continues to have the same recipe and same ingredients as before, but we changed the shelf life from 4 months to 6 months. Here’s why that happened.

Why was it 4 months to begin with?

The short answer: We were being extra careful. The first tests ran on small batches, made before Food Drink was produced on our actual factory floor. Since this product was for kids, we decided to be extra safe.

For the longer answer, it helps to know how we decide shelf life in the first place.

There are 3 things we check for in the lab every time:

1. Safety: The most critical thing and a dealbreaker if this fails. We check for microbial growth of organisms such as E. coli and Salmonella etc.
2. Protein Content: Whether what we say on the label holds true over time.
3. Rancidity: Two separate checks for Peroxide Value and Free Fatty Acid levels, which tell us whether the milk fats have begun turning rancid.

We check all these in two ways:

First, accelerated testing. The product sits in a lab chamber at 40°C and 75% humidity, ageing on fast-forward. This lets us see how it behaves months from now, in just a few weeks. It showed the product holding up fine for 8 months.

Second, real-time testing. The product sits on a normal shelf and is periodically checked for the 3 parameters listed above. These test reports also came back fine for 8 months.

Lastly, there’s sensory testing. We call it the open-pack study, and it matters just as much to us as the safety checks. Our team consumes Food Drink exactly like you would at home – regularly opening and closing the pack while scooping the product out for use. We check whether the product continues to taste and feel consistent with how we want it to over time. This too came back fine for 8 months.

Here’s the key part. All three of these ran on smaller batches, made before Food Drink was ever produced at the scale our factory line actually runs at. Our usual rule is to set shelf life at about 2 months under whatever the tests show. At 8 months, that rule alone would’ve meant launching at 6. But since this product was for kids, we wanted to be extra careful. So we went further and cut the number in half. Hence, 8 months – 4 months = 4 months.

So what changed? Why 6 months now?

Full scale factory line production of Food Drink began once we launched early this year. We tested samples from batches that were actually out on shelves and in people’s homes. By our standard rule, the numbers already supported 6 months. But we wanted to check something specific: would that same number still hold up once tested on the batches actually being made at full scale.

We repeated the 3 tests again with the factory-made samples. All 3 tests gave the same answer: the product held up fine for 6 months both from safety and experience pov. So we moved the shelf life to 6 months.

Oh, and what happens if the 3 tests don’t agree on a timeline?

We go with the shortest of the 3 tests. Safety is paramount, so whatever is the safe duration for consumption becomes a cap on our shelf life. But equally, we use the sensory evaluation of the open pack test to decide whether you are getting the best experience possible.

Even if the lab says it’s safe, if the sensory experience isn’t great, we reduce the shelf life to the point where we think the experience holds up. This is what happened with our Tiramisu bar – safety testing told us the bar could hold up longer, but we felt the flavour became less intense over the safety window. So, we went with a shorter shelf life based on the sensory evaluation.

Shelf life isn’t just the day a product turns unsafe. It’s the day we stop being fully sure the product is still exactly what we promised.