Schwan’s

Preserve Freshness of Frozen Foods

Company Background
Schwan’s Company is a Minnesota-based business that manufactures and markets many popular brands including Red Baron®, Tony’s®, and Freschetta® pizzas, Mrs. Smith’s® and Edwards® desserts, and Pagoda® Asian-style snacks. 

Open Innovation Challenge
Schwan’s is seeking technologies to preserve freshness of multi-component frozen food products.

Reason for Seeking External Innovation Partnership
Multi-component food products, such as pizza and egg rolls, often include ingredients that have very different moisture levels.  Although freezing helps to prevent most of the moisture migration between components like sauce and crust, there is still a small amount of moisture migration that causes noticeable differences in product freshness over shelf life. 

Scope of Solution Space

  • Acceptable solutions must have pronounceable, pantry friendly ingredients.
  • Acceptable solutions may also include processing and packaging technologies.
  • Solutions designed to perform up to 6 months in storage at 5F.

Innovation Solutions Not of Interest

  • Decreasing the moisture content
  • Decreasing the storage temperature that the product is exposed to in the supply chain
  • Chemical sounding ingredients
  • Allergens not already inherent in the product
  • Decreasing shelf life

Proposal Response Date Deadline
August 28, 2020

Website Link
www.schwanscompany.com  and  www.boldopenmn.org

Contact Information
AURI / Bold Open – boldopen@auri.org

We are driven to bring you delicious foods and reliable services. That’s how we grew from our humble beginnings as a dairy operating in rural Minnesota to becoming a leading provider of quality foods in the United States. Our commitment shows in all we do, from careful ingredient selection and quality food-making to a great experience wherever you shop and eat.