Science of Success: What It Takes to Make a Better Berry

Bold Names

The Wall Street Journal

Technology

4.4 • 1.4K Ratings

🗓️ 26 July 2024

⏱️ 10 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

What makes for a luxury strawberry? Is it the taste? Texture? Color? Around five years ago, berry company Driscoll’s released a new, premium line of berries with a higher price tag. Some consumers are shelling out almost 70% more to get their hands on this fancy fruit. But what are the qualities of a premium berry? On this Science of Success, we delve into the food science behind breeding and selling Driscoll’s Sweetest Batch, from creating more objective benchmarks for the highly subjective experience of taste to how the company works with supertasters and sensory analysts to create the best possible berry. What do you think about the show? Let us know on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, or email us: [email protected] Sign up for the WSJ's free The Future of Everything newsletter. Further reading: Why America’s Berries Have Never Tasted So Good How Designer Fruit Is Taking Over the Grocery Store Trying to Breed Better Fruit Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	It's 4 a.m. and you're sucking baby snot through a tube because she's congested.
0:04.0	If you love her that much, love her enough to make sure she's buckled in the right car seat.
0:08.0	Find out more at NHTSA.
0:10.0	G.gov slash the right seat.
0:12.0	Brought to you by the National Highway Safety Administration
0:14.0	and the Ad Council.
0:17.0	It's rich, it's juicy, it's a resplendent red cone that tastes like candy and fruit punch just firm enough to hold its shape
0:25.2	when you bite into it just soft enough that it will melt in your mouth.
0:30.0	It's a strawberry. That's my daughter Edith and she's eating what Driscoll's hopes will be America's strawberry of the future.
0:41.0	Driscoll's is the world's largest berry company and it develops and studies 125,000
0:47.1	strawberry varieties each year. But until recently the sweetest best tasting berries didn't make it to stores because they
0:55.1	were the least viable commercially. They were too soft or too susceptible to
0:59.6	disease or there weren't nearly enough of them. Simply put, these varieties were not worth the money
1:06.2	it takes to breed, grow, ship, and sell them.
1:09.8	For most of Driscoll's history, the company dumped its most mouthwatering, strawberries, blueberries, blackberries, and raspberries, long before they made it to the grocery shelf.
1:21.5	That's because, according to Driscoll CEO, Sore and Bjorn,
1:25.0	there's a negative correlation between sweetness and yield.
1:29.2	Strawberries with more flavor tend to be less abundant. This genetic conundrum presented a problem that would
1:35.2	take Driscoll's more than a century to solve. But around five years ago, Bionan says Driscoll's
1:41.4	started to wonder about the varieties they were throwing out.
1:45.2	How much would consumers be willing to pay for the best bury they never got to try?
1:50.7	Turns out, kind of a lot.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from The Wall Street Journal, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of The Wall Street Journal and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.