Intelligent Foods

Created in 1999 to produce nutritional options for children, Intelligent Foods has since grown and diversified to become a major supplier of bread, pastries, coffee, jams, ice cream, and pastas to the hospitality and airline sector. Curious and loyal clients, however, can easily sample their product offerings from the firm’s sister company More Café.

Marijke Lap Heijer, a managing partner, shares the company’s roots, development and directions with Food Manufacturing Journal – Middle East and Africa.
 
What were the origins of the company and how did it grow to include the wide range of products you have now?

The reason it’s called Intelligent Foods is because originally, we started catering for school children to give them healthier options in the canteens, in some of the international schools here. after that we started supplying a lot of the big coffee shop chains throughout the UAE. We started making breads, pastries, salads, sandwiches, and all of that.

then a couple of years later, we started with ice cream production. We went into partnership with Mr John Salek and we started producing ice cream, which I think is one of our successful ventures at the moment. So we are supplying ice cream to a lot of airlines, a lot of the five-star hotels in  in Dubai, and of course, to our own restaurants and other smaller restaurants.

So then you have the bread, then the ice cream and then about three years ago, we started producing our own pasta. We are talking about fresh pasta, snap frozen. It’s made to be fresh. We are not talking about spaghetti and all of that. We are talking about the raviolis, gnocchis – the filled pastas. We can make this to order for any client with any specific fillings they want. Someone can request lobster meat inside or simple mushroom and cream. We are very much a factory, we are very much flexible and we can produce for any specific client for any specific requirements.

Where do you get your ingredients and do you manufacture all your products?

Everything is manufactured here. Ingredients for pasta come mainly from Europe. We use the best flour that is required for pasta which is different from the flour required for producing bread. We make ourown pesto, which is a main ingredient for a lot of the pastas and the other items. Its [ingredients] are all imported because our factory is HACCP compliant. So it means it has the highest standard in hygiene, it means the raw materials you use need to be the highest standard which is not what you can always find, really, so most of our ingredients are imported from all over the world.

Your ice cream has been tagged as one of the best in town. Do you use a special technology or process to make it stand out?

I think it’s the base. We use fresh ingredients, there are no artificial flavourings or colourings and we make every flavour to order for the customer. We don’t keep our stocks like some big ice cream suppliers who stock what may have been produced six months ago. We make it to order for the client using the best ingredients possible.

Which ice cream flavours do you notice are popular now and is there a trend in flavour preference  depending on the industry you supply?

The most popular flavours are still vanilla, strawberry and chocolate. Those are the general flavours that anybody will always go for. Those are always the big sellers but like in vanilla ice cream, we make a lot of different vanilla ice creams according to what our customer wants. We just don’t make one vanilla ice cream; we make a lot of different varieties within the vanilla ice creaMens Nike Cortez