A chef from the University of West London's Food Innovation Centre posing with a selection of ingredients for filming on The Apprentice
A chef from the University of West London's Food Innovation Centre posing with a selection of ingredients for filming on The Apprentice

TV cereals: A masterclass from UWL’s West London Food Innovation Centre for BBC’s Apprentice candidates

Intro

The West London Food Innovation Centre, part of the University of West London’s St Mary’s Road site, hosted 12 contestants from BBC One’s The Apprentice earlier this year, for an episode screened yesterday, Thursday 7 March.

The Food Innovation Centre has a highly specialised laboratory, and its facilities can be used by UWL students, as well being available for specialist food manufacturers and TV companies to hire.

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New Food Product Development Chef Sebastian Stoklosa, who usually works on developing food products with businesses, was on hand to support a team of three young entrepreneurs in creating a new breakfast cereal aimed at school children.

We offer product development or redevelopment to companies across the globe, working with them to find the right formulation before they move to manufacturing a product at scale,”

Sebastian says.

A selection of cereal ingredients laid out for The Apprentice in the West London Food Innovation Centre at the University of West London

Normally this kind of project takes weeks or months to complete, however for The Apprentice, candidates had just three hours to devise a cereal, create its packaging, manufacture it and produce ten 250g completed boxes.

We started off by giving them a master class in which we pointed out the health and safety rules and the principles of mixing ingredients together,”

Sebastian explains.

We presented them with three main types of cereal, food colouring, flavourings and things to add in like fruit or even some mushroom powder. It was about using their imagination to come up with something really interesting.”

A camera operator filming for The Apprentice at the University of West London's Food Innovation Centre

Prior to the filming, Sebastian worked closely with the Apprentice production team, agreeing potential ingredients and ensuring contestants could easily make cereals.

What you see them doing on screen may look simple, but it is actually quite advanced from a health and safety perspective. It is the challenge of developing something different to what is already on the market, and also making sure it is safe to take into schools for children to taste test, so no nuts or allergens can be present,”

he adds.

It is a highly stressful environment. There can only be one winner and each contestant really wants it to be them, and this means they are all trying to impress and argue constantly about the best way to do things.

The diversity of their backgrounds is amazing. One of our team had experience in food manufacturing, but mostly they had no idea. They maybe have the right mindset for being a business leader or working in finance, but when it comes to culinary arts, that’s when they struggle,”

Sebastian observes.

Sebastian was delighted to be part of filming, which he describes as chaotic and dynamic:

They were under serious pressure, so their arguments are real – there’s a lot going on and what you see on screen really is just a glimpse into it.”

Speaking before the show is broadcast, he says he is looking forward to seeing the finished episode. “My team won!” he adds with a smile.

This is the second season we have welcomed contestants from The Apprentice onto our campus,”

says UWL’s Head of Business Services Research and Enterprise Operations Kyle Allen.

It is such a pleasure to have a well know British TV show using our premises and we look forward to welcoming contestants from future seasons back to use our wide range of facilities and gain support from our great pool of expert staff.”

West London Food Innovation Centre

The University of West London offers new product development and reformulation support to food and drink manufacturing start-ups and small and medium-sized enterprises.

Lab equipment at the University of West London's 'West London Food Innovation Laboratory'

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