A joint publication by the Saudi British Joint Business Council, developed in partnership with Kitchen Theory
The first of these joint publications, Food as a Bridge, considered how a shared meal builds understanding between the United Kingdom and Saudi Arabia, and how the experience of dining has come to serve as an instrument of cultural exchange and as a means of encouraging tourism and investment. That discussion was concerned with services, among them the hospitality, the events, and the design skills through which a culture is communicated across a table. The present publication turns instead to goods, and considers what the Kingdom grows, formulates, and manufactures, together with the question of how those products find their way to international markets.
The differences between the first publication focused on “services” and the present focus on “goods” has a practical basis, since a product carries a culture in a more portable form than an experience is able to. A dish prepared in Riyadh is enjoyed by those who are present, whereas a product formulated in Riyadh and sold in London reaches a market whose members will never be met by its makers. Saudi Arabia has begun to make that transition, from the presentation of its cuisine towards its export, and the transition depends as much upon the capacity to formulate and to test a product as upon the quality of the ingredient from which it is made. It is at this point that British expertise in food science, flavour development, packaging, and market entry becomes relevant, and it is this thread that runs through the sections which follow.
The argument is arranged to follow the chain along which a product travels; from farm to table as it were. It opens with the raw materials the Kingdom is able to offer at export quality and proceeds to the production systems that determine their cost and their credibility. It then considers the research institutions in which an ingredient is developed into a prototype, before tracing a single product from the inception to the shelf. The sections that follow address the discipline of sensory science upon which a product’s reception in an unfamiliar market can depend, the question of which commercial assets are able to travel, the certification a product must satisfy in either direction, the distribution networks through which it reaches the consumer, and the investment opportunity created by the conclusion of trade negotiations between the United Kingdom and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). A closing reflection from Chef Jozef Youssef of Kitchen Theory considers where the work described here might lead.
Read the full paper here: [Kitchen Theory and SBJBC Paper Two]
