Mackie’s Taste Panel are our trained tasting team who can profile any ice cream.

 The taste panel provides us with a rigourous way to check quality – over time or on any change of ingredients and also enables us to compare our ice cream against other products.

Profiles are a technique used to build an objective assessment of any food or drink product. Our ice cream profiles are a way to measure various characteristics of ice cream – with subcategory descriptors created by our panel. Each product has it's own profile with specific scores on five attributes - appearance, visual texture, flavour, texture in the mouth and aftertaste. The profiles do not mean that an ice cream is good or bad - it is merely a descriptive tool.

The main functions of the Taste Panel are:
• To assess objectively all products to ensure that Mackie's ice cream quality remains consistent.
• To compare our ice cream with competitors, to maintain and understand it's uniqueness.
• To describe objectively what customers like best as identified through consumer product testing.
• To test new products - carry out likeability tests and provide a first response to new product ideas.

Likeability Panel
We also have several more informal taste Panels - groups of staff volunteers who may not have passed the taste tests or not completed their training - they give their opinions on new flavours.

Click here to watch our "taste panel" video clip