$2,500 Loan Helps Meat Marinade Producer Secure $250K Contract

March 28, 2024

NORTHERN ILLINOIS COMMUNITY VENTURES (NICV)

In Hector Delgado’s opinion, most people don’t know what a hamburger really tastes like. He says that is because the protein and beef flavor leak out of the meat during the cooking process.

“When you cook at home, the meat fibers contract and they get hard. The residue you see around it as it’s cooking is protein. If you taste that, it will be rich in beef flavor. All the beef and flavor components are already out of the muscle. So, you only taste the essence of beef flavor,” says the Joliet resident, a native of El Paso, Texas, and the first generation of his family from Mexico born in the United States.

To mitigate this protein drain, the industry adds flavor to beef, pork and chicken to win back some of the taste, he says. But that process does not prevent the meat from shrinking, affecting the weight of the final product. He should know; he’s been in the meat industry for 39 years and was doing a half-million dollars in sales annually, primarily with restaurant chains, before COVID-19 struck.

“The pandemic killed my business.”

Now, his company, Sensory Partners Inc., is making a comeback by introducing a meat marinade that he says protects the integrity of the cells in the muscle so that the meat fibers can relax during the cooking process. If that sounds scientific, it’s because it is. This concept for what the industry refers to as a “modified food system” was developed by his business partner, who is a scientist. 

“He didn’t have a way to apply this incredible discovery, because he wasn’t in the meat industry. With my years of experience, I was able to modify his original concept into one that can be applied to the real world.” 

The product is called SPM and is classified by the industry as G2, or generation two, due to its innovative properties. It is manufactured and warehoused at an FDA-certified plant in Elmhurst, Illinois, under USDA inspection. 

As an example of how it works, Delgado shared a success story with a restaurant customer in Addison, Illinois. He applied the SPM process to reduce the cook time of short ribs in a commercial-sized oven from 14 hours to five. Because the meat doesn’t shrink like before, the restaurant was able to reduce materials and achieve the same final weight. 

“Under the perfect scenario, when applying this product to meat, I start with 100 pounds and end with 100 pounds,” he said. “The best scenario in the meat industry, they start with 100 percent and end up with 70 to 75 percent of the original weight. In our worst scenario, we’ll end up with 85 percent and that’s if we can’t control the cooking environment. The industry will buy 15 percent less and produce the same amount of materials.” 

This year, thanks to a $2,500 loan from Northern Illinois Community Ventures (NICV) partner Allies for Community Business (A4CB), a community development financial institution based in Chicago, Delgado was able to purchase the raw materials he needed to secure a quarter-million-dollar contract with a major restaurant chain. It’s a lengthy process, he said. New product approvals can take up to a year. 

“That’s why I needed a loan to take care of the raw materials I was going to need.”

Sensory Partners is also looking to do business with the military, big box retailers and school districts to optimize lunches.

“This modified food ingredient doesn’t exist anywhere in the world. It’s only manufactured for us. We want to make sure whoever believes in the product can take advantage of it.” 

Delgado keeps his commercial clientele secret and says he currently has no plans to sell SMP direct to consumers. But within a year, you could be biting into a tastier burger.