Sensory & consumer science · Austin, Texas
Designed experiments, discrimination testing, descriptive panels and shelf-life methodology for food and beverage — led by the Ph.D. sensory scientist who ran 300+ studies a year at Cargill and set consumer insights strategy at Tyson Foods.
Each one has a correct method and several wrong ones that produce a confident answer anyway. The work is choosing, powering and reading the right test.
Is plant 2 making the same product as plant 1? Did lot 4 drift?
Difference tests powered to the risk you can tolerate, and descriptive profiles that show where a lot moved — salt, roast, texture — not just that it did.
Tetrad · duo-trio · descriptive analysis · d′ and confidence
Will consumers notice the change?
Ingredient swaps, supplier changes and cost reductions tested against the current product with the same protocol used to match highly variable systems such as meats — work that returned $1 million in savings.
Consumer product matching · discrimination testing · CLT
How much of an ingredient maximizes liking before cost and structure suffer?
The answer is a surface, not a point. Structured designs model consumer liking across the formulation space and locate the optimum — the approach behind a U.S. patent.
Response surface methodology · designed experiments
When do consumers actually stop accepting the product?
Rejection is a distribution, not a cutoff. A probabilistic shelf-life technique, presented at the Pangborn Symposium and adopted across North American meat plants, gives an honest date with a confidence band.
Probabilistic shelf-life modeling · behavioral science
How does the product perform against the category leader — and with whom?
Central location and home-use tests with liking, purchase intent and attribute diagnostics, read for significance where it matters and segmented where preferences split.
CLT · HUT · liking & purchase intent · preference segmentation
Does the idea land? Which health claim is believed, and which quietly damages trust?
The most expensive mistakes happen before the product exists. Concepts, pack and claims tested before formulation spend — alongside a sensory study or on their own.
Max-diff · TURF · concept & claims testing
Below: the shape of a batch-consistency deliverable. Two production lots from plant 1 and one from plant 2, profiled by a trained panel and tested for a perceivable difference.
Read: Lots A and B are interchangeable. Lot C runs saltier and more roasted with less crunch — consistent with a longer bake at plant 2, not an ingredient issue.
Read: Consumers can tell plant 2 apart. The profile shows why, so the fix is a process setting, not a reformulation.
Response surface methodology, modelling consumer likeability across the formulation space to locate the optimum instead of tasting toward it.
Consumer rejection treated as a distribution, grounded in behavioral science, and presented at the 10th Pangborn Sensory Science Symposium.
Owned the sensory standards program for the McDonald’s franchise; formulation design for the breakfast burrito, Campbell’s chicken noodle reformulation, Taco Bell beef flavor QC.
Multi-market duo-trio and tetrad studies, and a training program built with Cargill’s global statisticians on selecting and powering discrimination tests.
Anything needing minimal preparation: bars, meat snacks, functional beverages, powders and supplements, yogurts, frozen and microwaveable meals. Refrigeration and a microwave on site; NDA before any sample ships.
We talk through your product and the decision in front of you. Sometimes the answer is that you don’t need a study yet — we’ll say so.
Sample size, presentation order, attribute scales, screening, analysis plan. Randomization, blinding and carryover controls are built in — not added later.
Products served blind and coded. We handle recruitment, scheduling, moderation and data capture.
Data is interpreted, not just tabulated: significance where it matters, consumer language where it helps, a clear recommendation.
Who designs your study
“What people say about a food and what actually drives them to buy it are rarely the same sentence.”
Roxana Yglesias led global consumer insights, sensory science and analytics at Cargill — a team of eight across five countries, 300+ studies a year — and set consumer insights strategy across Jimmy Dean and Hillshire Brands at Tyson Foods on a $4.5M research budget. Ph.D. in Behavioral & Food Science with a minor in experimental design; co-inventor on a U.S. patent.
That is who designs your study and reads your data. Not a junior analyst with a template.
Also for growing brands
Fixed-scope sensory and consumer studies delivered in one to two weeks, using a standing panel of health-conscious adults 30–65 in Austin. Same design rigor, scoped to a single decision. See rapid studies and pricing →