Episode
R&D Radio: Consumer Research, Product Platforms, and How to Scale Food Products the Right Way with Guru Hari of Guru Food Design
- Podcast
- The Startup CPG Podcast
- Published
- Jul 6, 2026
- Duration seconds
- 1548
- Processing state
not_requested- Canonical source
- https://share.transistor.fm/s/6439f07c
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Summary
In this episode of R&D Radio, hosted by food scientist Adam Yee, Adam sits down with Guru Hari Khalsa, founder of Guru Food Design — a product development and innovation consultancy helping CPG brands move from creative product vision to commercially scalable food and beverage products. Guru has over 40 years of experience in food and beverage product development, food science, manufacturing scale-up, and innovation, with experience across brands like Yogi Tea, Trader Joe’s, Kraft, IQBAR, and more. Guru’s path started with a love of cooking, biology, and curiosity about how things are made. After beginning on the culinary side of food, he moved into production, food science, stability, packaging, and large-scale manufacturing — building a career around the challenge of taking something that tastes great in a kitchen and making it work at commercial scale. Adam and Guru get into all of it — why consumer research matters more than founder passion alone, how to think about cost of goods from the very beginning, why building a product platform is more powerful than building one product, and how founders can follow science to spot future trends before they become mainstream. Guru also shares examples from Yogi Tea, Trader Joe’s, plant-based mousse, and the microbiome space to explain what great product development looks like in practice. Listen in as they cover: ● Guru’s path from biology and cooking to food production, food science, and product development ● The difference between making food in a kitchen, a restaurant, and a packaged product that needs shelf life ● Why most early food founders underestimate marketing, sales, and consumer validation ● Why friends and family feedback can be dangerous if it is the only research you rely on ● How founders can run scrappy…