The Flavor Formula: How Seasonings Come to Life

In December of 2002, Jeff and Shelly Higgins founded Savor Seasonings with the promise of creating bold and innovative flavors, serving their customers, and leading with integrity. In 2016, the company moved into its new facilities with a warehouse and offices, and in 2025, we are casting visions of the future every day as we continue to realize Jeff and Shelly’s dream.

But how is it possible to deliver on our promise to be innovative and create bold flavors? Hasn’t every flavor already been done and tasted?

We compiled our most asked questions about flavor development and how we can deliver full, exciting flavors here at Savor, and have brought the answers to you!

Question 1: When a developer at Savor first gets a project, where do they start in development?

Before all of this gets initiated, we need to understand critical parameters from the customer, such as any limitations on ingredients or religious requirements. Our Product Developers then continue the process with a basic formula that is determined by the parameters as well as whether the base should be sweet or savory. From there, they can then start layering in flavors to achieve the desired flavor profile.

Question 2: How does the size of ingredient granulation effect flavor delivery?

The size makes all the difference in the world! Most of your flavors are carried by particulates. You can taste some things on your tongue – for example, salt. Salts potentiate the flavor, make it bigger/brighter, and could also offer a delayed release of the overall flavor. There are several types of salt sizes, so if you want more upfront flavor you use a smaller particulate because a smaller particle delivers quicker, and if you want to make the flavor sensation last longer, our team uses a large particulate. So, when our team is creating a seasoning, they use this knowledge to make a flavor profile that has a beginning, middle, and end.  That helps to make a fuller flavor profile by spreading out when the flavors impact as you eat the snack.  If this isn’t taken into consideration, then the flavors can get muddied up where they either clash with one another or aren’t able to contribute to the overall profile if it’s covered up by another flavor. 

Question 3: What other ingredients can you use to deliver fullness of flavor?

Different acids can accentuate flavors either up front, in the middle, or at the end of the flavor profile. Depending on what you’re trying to do, a little bit of onion is commonly used in cheese flavors because it potentiates cheese flavors. Yeast extracts are also very versatile depending on how they are grown.  You can get anything from a dairy enhancer all the way to beef broth just from yeast. Our product developers have a lot of tools in the toolbelt and can be very creative in using them. 

Question 4: How important is your olfactory sense when it comes to flavor taste?

Making sure there is a pleasant aroma is so important. If you hold your nose while you eat, your food will be tasteless. Adding the right combination into a seasoning makes a huge difference since smell is so important in how our brains perceive flavor. Smells such as fruitiness, smokiness, tomato, basil, or oregano are created by volatile organic chemicals that dissolve and get in your nose. To get that aroma when you first open the bag of your favorite snack, liquid flavors are added to provide a good deal of those volatile chemicals. Using fresh tomato flavor versus cooked tomato flavor in a pizza seasoning will change the flavor because the smell changes. Even with the same combination of ingredients besides the tomato flavor, it could make the difference between a Neapolitan pizza seasoning or a nostalgic school lunch pizza. 

Question 5: How many flavors can you effectively harmonize in a seasoning?

We have a bias in our minds that typically drives the formulation, so it depends on how many flavors can be blended together to effectively create that perception of flavor when a snack is eaten. If you do something complex like a cheeseburger seasoning with hamburger, ketchup, and cheese, you want those flavors to connect with that bias we have in our minds of what we think that cheeseburger tastes like. Should the flavor be meaty, grilled, with notes of cheese, bread and ketchup added?  Or should it be meaty, cheesy, with notes of dill pickle and mustard?  It's a balancing act. 

Question 6: How do you balance different seasonings to create flavor harmony?

Balancing out a seasoning to create harmony takes a lot of skill, especially as a flavor increases in complexity. When our product developers are layering in flavors, they have to create space for each flavor (or a combination of two or three flavors) to come through without clashing with one another. That plays back into creating a beginning, middle, and end of the profile using granulations, aroma, and high-quality ingredients to make something that’s unique and snackable.

Question 7: How do you use customer feedback to make modifications to seasonings?  What questions do you ask to get the best feedback?

What’s crucial is developing common vocabulary and understanding, because what we at Savor say is salty may not be salty to someone else. Every palate is different and there are some people out there that are super tasters or have very dense tastebuds. With that in mind, we work with our customers to find that sweet spot where the flavor profile is both recognizable and snackable. Or in other words, does our product taste like what we are calling it and is it enjoyable? Our team works to get the feedback from our customers so that we can answer ‘yes’ to these questions to make sure that we are sending out great tasting seasonings that meet our customers’ needs.

Question 8: What are some surprising seasoning combinations that work well together?

One of our more interesting combinations is the Honey Chipotle Churro seasoning that we showed on tortilla chips to our customers. We made this after seeing that fusing two familiar flavors was on trend in the marketplace. It was surprisingly tasty, with the smoky heat from the chipotle harmonizing really well with the floral honey and sweet brown cinnamon coming from the churro. Lavender Masala and Floral flavors are currently on trend, as well.

Creating bold and innovative flavors is both an art and a science where experimentation in the Product Development lab melds with the adventure of trying something new. Working with us at Savor, with the knowledge and experience that our product and development team brings, can only mean the best flavors and the newest combinations, as well as the best creative experience!