Food
The AURI Food Team helps food entrepreneurs, farmers, and businesses transform ideas into commercially viable food products and sustainable businesses.
Overview
The AURI Food Team helps food entrepreneurs, farmers, and businesses transform ideas into commercially viable food products and sustainable businesses.
We are a team of scientists, engineers, and business developers that work at the intersection of food science and business development to turn agricultural feedstocks and ingredients into market-ready solutions.
Our team offers hands-on, tactical support, including food-safe product design, regulatory and labeling guidance, and go-to-market strategy development, and conducts public initiatives to address shared challenges and opportunities across the food industry.
Whether you are just getting started or scaling production, AURI has the tools and expertise to help you move forward with confidence. We help identify solutions to scale food businesses and advance food ingredients to advance value-added opportunities.
You can meet our team, explore our bios, and learn more about our facilities, reports, and activities at Scaling Food & Beverage Businesses and Food Ingredients.
Free Tools Overview
A short informational video on how AURI’s Food Team can assist unlicensed food vendors and entrepreneurs
Services
AURI provides several free resources to support food entrepreneurs that can be accessed via the links below.
- Ask an AURI expert – Open Office Hours
- AURI’s Virtual Assistant – AVA
- One Point Lessons
- Food Guides
- Small Meat Processing Resources
- Nutrition Facts Panel Database for Grains
AURI provides individualized support to businesses, with fee-for-service expertise, to accelerate their product development and market opportunities.
The following links provide information and steps to work with us:
- AURI Food Brochure
- Register for a Free Consult
- Request our Online Application
AURI is connected with several food ecosystem service providers that provide free or paid resources to help scale food businesses.
The following are resource pages for entities that also support food entrepreneurs.
- Naturally MN
- MN Department of Agriculture
- Food Ops
- Market Fresh Food Testing Laboratory
- UMN Extension
- Medallion Lab
- MN Farmers Market Association
- MBOLD Protein Catalyst
- Plant Protein Innovation Center
- 4 Access Partners
- Kate Labrosse, Brand Strategist
Business Development
AURI’s commercialization services are designed to help farmers, entrepreneurs, and small- to medium-sized businesses introduce new products or scale market opportunities. Business development staff support businesses with several activities to better understand value-chain considerations as they enter the marketplace, such as:
- Value proposition
- Go-to-market strategy
- Feedstock availability
- Manufacturing readiness
- Distribution complexities
- Regulatory requirements
The business development team focuses on translating scientific and technical data points into marketable and commercial realities. AURI can assist businesses in:
- Market feasibility
- Techno-economic assessments
- Market readiness
- Identifying potential value-chain partners
- Channel considerations
- Financial viability
- Cost reductions
- Referrals
With decades of experience across food, biobased products, and biomass-based renewable energy, AURI’s commercialization support can both accelerate outcomes and help avoid common mistakes.
The team works closely with AURI’s scientists to provide a holistic viewpoint and translation that integrates various AURI and industry resources to help make informed decisions about the market opportunity.
Scientific Technical Assistance
AURI’s technical support services are aimed at early- to mid-stage agricultural innovators who lack large, dedicated internal R&D infrastructure or specialized technical expertise and are exploring new value-added uses for agricultural products. Technical staff support value-added agricultural businesses with activities such as:
- Food product and process development, including formulation, bench-scale testing, nutritional label development, shelf-life assessment, advisory services on regulatory compliance and food safety, and packaging considerations
- Materials and product characterization and testing
- A full suite of analytical services
- Guidance on scale-up, equipment selection, feasibility assessment, techno-economic analysis, gap analysis, and connections to relevant technical, industry, and academic resource networks
AURI’s technical work is supported by specialized laboratories located at its Marshall and Waseca facilities.
- The Waseca facility, known as the Bioindustrial Innovation Center, also features a client innovation bay, where client-specific piloting and processing activities can be conducted, complementing AURI’s equipment with client-owned or rented equipment.
- The Marshall facility features an analytical chemistry laboratory and a preparatory and synthetic chemistry laboratory.
Technical activities carried out by AURI include:
- A full suite of anaerobic digestion testing and services, from feedstock characterization and biomethane potential assessment to pilot processing at the thousands-of-gallons scale
- Fermentation assessment and testing
- Biomass drying, milling, blending, separation, and densification
- Decortication for fiber separation and preparation
- Chemical characterization of feedstocks and products by a variety of analytical methods
- Assessment of feed properties and characteristics of coproducts and other residues
- Analytical and preparatory chemistry labs
- Applied biology lab
- Biomass processing lab
- FDA-inspected grains and oilseeds processing lab
In addition, AURI’s staff works closely with clients and partners to design tailored technical support and development pathways that integrate AURI’s resources with external capabilities, ensuring that evolving client needs are effectively addressed.
More to Explore
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