At this stage Allan Johnson, of the marketing team, is brought in to look at the costing. He will decide if the meal will be worth producing in terms of the expected profit margin, and whether it will enable Meal Innovations to offer a competitive price. He considers if the recipe is feasible at that time of year, depending upon seasonal food costs or ease of obtaining ingredients. Sometimes recipes are returned to the chef so that alternative, cheaper ingredients which will give the same taste can be incorporated.

After this in-house quality testing, meal samples are sent to AgriQuality whose testing will determine whether the meal will be sold. Four food safety tests are carried out; these check for the presence of listeriosis, salmonella and e-coli and do an aerobic plate count (which counts the live bacteria in a sample). Storage tests are also done according to Ana’s requirements. She will ask them to do tests on a certain day; if the food was cooked on Day 1 she might order a test for Day 5, 7 or 10. The results of these tests determine the shelf life of the product. Ana and her supervisors will then consider whether the shelf life is feasible or realistic, (supermarkets will not sell a product if the shelf life is less than five days), and whether or not to go ahead with production. The salads have a shelf life of seven days and the ready meals ten days.

At the end of testing the product is sent to the customer for approval. They might pick two from the five samples supplied and might ask for changes to be made, for example more or less salt. Two lasagne meals, pumpkin and feta plus al forno (beef), were selected by the client as meals giving a ‘home made’ flavour.