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Food product idea, ingredient question...

Idea threads

Healthfulness

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As this is still on idea level, won't make seperate post.
Idea is to create a food product, can't specify what exactly this is, as this us upcoming trend and I see huge potential in this.
The thing is, that It's specific product that needs many different ingredients and is pretty hard to make, even harder to just plan the ingredient list as It's extremely important to have right balance of minimum 10, but more like 20 ingredients.
Is there any risk, when taking ingredient list from another producer (few are already doing it, but it's very new niche and very low competition)?
Like I would make 95% the same ingredients in exactly the same quantities and will remove like 2 and replace with something similar. Can there be any issues in this?
It wouldn't be easy to spot that I have copied It as every producer needs 80% + of the same ingredients, just the rest 20% can be customized. Exact use of product requires specific ingredients, that's why everyone who offers this product has very similar ingredient list.
The question is - can there be any problems with copying ingredient list?'
EDIT: To make It more clear, It's specific pet food.
 
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MJ DeMarco

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I've moved this to a new thread, I think it is a good question and warrants its own thread.
 

Healthfulness

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I've moved this to a new thread, I think it is a good question and warrants its own thread.
Thank you! Thought It's not fitted for a post, as It's just on idea level.
It's pretty hard to get started on this, because It needs pretty decent startup capital. I'm really working on It, but It will take more than few months as my income is still just time-trade, but actively working on creating more income sources.
First, I wan't to start with designing product Itself, that's why the question about ingredient list. Plan is to buy the best, already existing product, and create the same with minor changes and market It better (there really low competition even globally), It's also related to niche where I am already focusing all my other products (kinda action stage products, but still nothing finished) and blog (started and will use traffic to market and build brand around product). I am also working on becoming certified nutritionist, this will greatly help to make product much more trustworthy as It's food niche.
EDIT: To make It more clear, It's specific pet food.
 
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ItsAJackal

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IANAL, but from just a google search:

"The identification of ingredients necessary for the preparation of food is a statement of fact…. Thus, recipes are functional distinctions for achieving a result and are excluded from copyright protection."

From Are food recipes protected by copyright?

In my mind, entrepreneur 101 is to take an existing idea and do it better/faster/cheaper/etc.

Plenty of smarter people than me around here though.
 

Healthfulness

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Than
IANAL, but from just a google search:

"The identification of ingredients necessary for the preparation of food is a statement of fact…. Thus, recipes are functional distinctions for achieving a result and are excluded from copyright protection."

From Are food recipes protected by copyright?

In my mind, entrepreneur 101 is to take an existing idea and do it better/faster/cheaper/etc.

Plenty of smarter people than me around here though.

Thank you! My common sense told that too, how can something like food ingredient list be copyrighted, and especially what issues could I encounter, If I do switch some ingredients to different ones. I found that producers in this niche are required to be totally open about every ingredient and one even has everything written to micrograms in downloadable list. (I guess every food producer has to list down every single detail)
Now It even feels kinda dumb that I asked this..
This is why I didn't really wan't new post and I thought It's pretty "small" question and I can't execute on this anytime soon, unless I win in a lottery.
 

YoungPadawan

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As far as copyrighting an ingredient recipe, I don't think that is something that can be copyrighted.
 
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scott.legendre

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There's more than 1 brand of pumpkin in a can, and when you look at the ingredient list of the different brands, it's literally "pumpkin".

The quality in the food realm depends on the source, so even if the ingredients are the exact same, the flavor can turn out completely different.

The ability to copyright a recipe would be a terrible thing. Thankfully it is not an issue.

You can make staff sign non-compete and confidentiality contracts as a way of protecting your business if needed.
 

Scot

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@UnrealCreative thanks for tagging me in this.

Like I would make 95% the same ingredients in exactly the same quantities and will remove like 2 and replace with something similar. Can there be any issues in this?

The question is - can there be any problems with copying ingredient list?'

As @GradyS pointed out below, food products and recipes cannot be patented or copyrighted. So legally, you're free and clear there.

"The identification of ingredients necessary for the preparation of food is a statement of fact…. Thus, recipes are functional distinctions for achieving a result and are excluded from copyright protection."

When you're creating any recipe at home or for mass production, you're not creating a new idea everytime. It's already been done. When I created my Ranch, I obviously used existing recipes and modified them to suite my particular needs.

If you really wanted to, you could copy someones ingredient list exactly, but have different concentrations of ingredients. A cake is the same ingredients, but knowing how much chocolate, sugar and salt are what makes it a better or worse recipe.

EDIT: To make It more clear, It's specific pet food.

So, here's the big elephant in the room. I'm one of the few guys here on the forum with a food business and my wife happens to be a veterinarian.... I was hesitant to respond to this thread because honestly, boutique pet food brands are killing pets. Companies like Eukanuba, Iams, and Science Diet put millions into food studies and research, but brands like Blue haven't done any food studies (check their package, no claim of feeding studies) and have been responsible for many deaths and have had several recalls.

I'm writing this to point out, be careful. When we're talking about human food, if you make a bag of chips that is extra salty and has a weird protein in it, the harm is minimal, because your consumer might only eat a bag a week. But with a dog, or cat, this is their ONLY source of nutrition. So just messing around with ingredient concentrations for what sounds like a specialty diet is very very dangerous unless you have a very in depth grasp of animal nutrition (not human nutrition). This isn't a matter of tweaking ingredients to make it taste good, because you're probably not going to taste test this food. Its about serving a specific population and providing adequate and SAFE nutrition. I'd highly recommend you find a food scientist AND veterinarian (who specializes in nutrition) if you're going to start formulating this product.
 

Scot

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Ps. I saw you're in Denmark, so I cannot speak to the EU laws on animal food nutrition...

But in the US, food labels and nutrition panels do NOT follow the same regulations. For example, in US labels, ingredients are listed in order of percentage concentrations, from largest to smallest. In pet nutrition, they are listed from largest to smallest for pre processed ingredients, i.e. a whole chicken is weighed, including feathers, water, guts, bones.. but only 5 oz of cooked meat is used. The entire chicken weight is factored in. So, the largest to smallest on an ingredient panel really doesn't mean much.
 
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Healthfulness

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@UnrealCreative thanks for tagging me in this.





As @GradyS pointed out below, food products and recipes cannot be patented or copyrighted. So legally, you're free and clear there.



When you're creating any recipe at home or for mass production, you're not creating a new idea everytime. It's already been done. When I created my Ranch, I obviously used existing recipes and modified them to suite my particular needs.

If you really wanted to, you could copy someones ingredient list exactly, but have different concentrations of ingredients. A cake is the same ingredients, but knowing how much chocolate, sugar and salt are what makes it a better or worse recipe.



So, here's the big elephant in the room. I'm one of the few guys here on the forum with a food business and my wife happens to be a veterinarian.... I was hesitant to respond to this thread because honestly, boutique pet food brands are killing pets. Companies like Eukanuba, Iams, and Science Diet put millions into food studies and research, but brands like Blue haven't done any food studies (check their package, no claim of feeding studies) and have been responsible for many deaths and have had several recalls.

I'm writing this to point out, be careful. When we're talking about human food, if you make a bag of chips that is extra salty and has a weird protein in it, the harm is minimal, because your consumer might only eat a bag a week. But with a dog, or cat, this is their ONLY source of nutrition. So just messing around with ingredient concentrations for what sounds like a specialty diet is very very dangerous unless you have a very in depth grasp of animal nutrition (not human nutrition). This isn't a matter of tweaking ingredients to make it taste good, because you're probably not going to taste test this food. Its about serving a specific population and providing adequate and SAFE nutrition. I'd highly recommend you find a food scientist AND veterinarian (who specializes in nutrition) if you're going to start formulating this product.

Totally agree, this is much more complex than any human food, but in my envisioned product there is definitely strong need and It's rapidly growing trend. I'm personally working on becoming certified nutritionist, pretty much sure that my whole life will be dedicated to nutrition and health, but I'm talking about human health here.
As I said this is on idea level, to even make the first test product, I need to go trough massive, complex proccess, but the result could be massive business, that will fix this need for 100s of thousands or even millions of people.
Currently the biggest problem for me is that It requires serious investment, which I simply don't have. It is possible to start It on really small scale, but It would still take me like a year to just be able to have some kind of start.
Would I just buy existing product and copy every ingredient, mix them up and have product ready? Not really, I found that I can become certified in creating this exact product, which I would do, aswell as contacting every authority that regulates production of this product, obviously reading dozens of books (okay, maybe bit less).
I will admit, complexity of the ingredients and process Itself kinda scares me, but as this has so high potential, I'm planning to go for It, "planning" as I haven't commited yet. I really need to think about this and create some kind of process structure I would have to go trough, with some financial points included.
Thanks to all of you! Answered my question perfectly and got me into thinking much deeper into this idea, let's not turn this into execution yet, but I hope I will be able to do that in the future.
At the moment I'm working on smaller projects, these will probably have thread/s somewhat soon.
I hope current projects will be able to fund the one I'm talking about here.
 

ZeroTo100

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Great question...

How many companies out there making seltzer water?

Think about it lol

Do the number of ingredients matter?
 
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Healthfulness

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Great question...

How many companies out there making seltzer water?

Think about it lol

Do the number of ingredients matter?

True, now seems like pretty dumb question. Not sure why I thought that there might be issues with that, especially when most ingredients MUST be the same, as they are essential for that product and just few can be customized, but even then, there's not too much freedom of choice as there are specific nutritional requirements where only few options make sense.
Basically every producer has pretty much the same nutritional value/ingredients. As I like the shortcout of literary copying the product, I thought that might cause the issues, but creating It fully on my own would create the same result (If everything is done right), therefore I choose to create the same way and just educate myself on why It has to contain exactly those ingredients and what are their roles. Doing full research would make me more knowledgable about It, but would take insane amount of time and research.
 
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ZeroTo100

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True, now seems like pretty dumb question. Not sure why I thought that there might be issues with that, especially when most ingredients MUST be the same, as they are essential for that product and just few can be customized, but even then, there's not too much freedom of choice as there are specific nutritional requirements where only few options make sense.
Basically every producer has pretty much the same nutritional value/ingredients. As I like the shortcout of literary copying the product, I thought that might cause the issues, but creating It fully on my own would create the same result (If everything is done right), therefore I choose to create the same way and just educate myself on why It has to contain exactly those ingredients and what are their roles. Doing full research would make me more knowledgable about It, but would take insane amount of time and research.

No question is a stupid question bro. Thought it was a great question. I always wondered why my mom never wanted to give me her pie recipes lol
 

Healthfulness

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No question is a stupid question bro. Thought it was a great question. I always wondered why my mom never wanted to give me her pie recipes lol
Cool, sorry, I got It somehow wrong :D
Now, I'll start researching about how complicated this actually is.
 

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Companies like Eukanuba, Iams, and Science Diet put millions into food studies and research, but brands like Blue haven't done any food studies (check their package, no claim of feeding studies) and have been responsible for many deaths and have had several recalls.
What do you know about nature's recipe?

Am I killing my dog?
 
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Scot

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