McCains Food Testing

The Club participated in fundraising by being food tasters at McCain Foods (Aust) Pty Ltd. From 9th October to 13th November 2008 members, family and friends turned up to sample a range of food from pizza to peas to corn and roast dinners members savoured and sampled.

Our Rotary Club made an application about 18 months ago to obtain a Sensory (Food Tasting) shift at the McCain factory, Ring Road, Ballarat. While plans had been made to instruct and prepare our members well ahead of time it was a surprise that we were offered the shifts about 6 months early. Once familiar we were fine.

We were given 6 consecutive Thursday evenings from the 9th of October to the 13th of November, 2008. Each of these evenings our club had to provide 60 different people. There were 5 groups of 12 people that went between the hours of 6 to 8.30pm. We had group leaders who had control of the security cards required to get in. These people were June Driscoll, Diane Gow, Mark Bennett, my son Sean Schocroft and my Practice Manager Olivia Fletcher. Olivia did a lot of the work and kept the rosters as full as possible. Many thanks to all the people who helped on the roster.

The rosters were made up of members, spouses, our children (above 16 yrs.), work mates, friends and guests. Mark Bennett even managed to collect people off the street on the way to a shift when we were short on numbers.

The job required us to fill out forms rating and comparing the taste, texture, smell and enjoyment of the food, hence the name “Sensory”. The foods we were given were pizza, corn, peas, chips, vegetables and roast dinners. On leaving one evening one Rotary member commented that the second lot of chips she had tasted just like a competitor’s fries. A little while later a representative from McCain came as guest speaker and we found out that they did do testing of their opposition’s foods as well.

Article provided by Rotarian Dr Jeremy Schocroft.