4-12 FB Custom Kitchen

 Visit the University of Idaho’s Caldwell food technology kitchen any weekday and you may find a dozen people canning spicy Dilly Beans while nearby another group packages Cowboy Tom’s pancake mix made with the freshest wheat, both for regional distribution. At any time, some 60 start-up Idaho food processing clients count on the fully equipped Caldwell facility for guidance in everything from processing and packaging, product development, safety, and testing to employee training and marketing. Here’s kitchen spokesperson Jim Toomey: “The food technology center has two components: the major component is the pilot plant or R and D side. We have a commercial kitchen which is a limited access kitchen and that is available for people who go through our food product development course. That is called developing your food product idea. When people go through that class if they choose to commercialize their products, we can work with them to do that.” So if you are a wheat farmer and you wanted to make a new cereal,  you could go to the kitchen, develop your product package, it and then market it. Great idea.