If you’ve read an article about Oregon’s food industry in recent years, chances are you’ve seen Masoni’s name in print. Sometimes she’s there as a quoted subject, offering insight about a particular product or sector. Sometimes the primary subject of the story mentions Masoni, or someone at the Food Innovation Center—where she has worked for 23 years — is quoted as crediting her for playing a pivotal role in developing a recipe. But those appearances, however frequent, are usually cameos rather than starring roles. Masoni herself is rarely the center of attention, save a 2018 New York Times profile and a CBS News segment, both of which described her as having a “million-dollar palate.” (On a recent episode of her podcast, “Meaningful Marketplace”—which she says has 6 million listeners — Masoni deadpans that she should get her palate insured, a nod to the story of Hollywood legend Betty Grable getting her legs insured for $1 million.) Masoni is the process and product development director and a senior faculty researcher at Oregon State University’s Food Innovation Center, which opened in 1999. The center receives funding from the university and from grants; entrepreneurs can also pay $140 an hour to meet with Masoni and get her advice. She’s helped usher a staggering number of Oregon food startups to either become beloved local favorites or to national distribution and prominence: Ruby Jewel’s ice cream sandwiches, Choi’s kimchi and several Bob’s Red Mill products. “The thing that I love about Sarah is she gives unrequested feedback to every food business,” says Sarah Marshall, co-owner of Marshall’s Haute Sauce, a line of hot sauces that can be found at New Seasons, Zupan’s and Northwest gift shops like MadeHere and Tender Loving Empire. “And she’s never wrong. She’s telling you something that is very true. She says it like it is.” Marshall is a former social worker who started making hot sauce on the side and decided to look into starting a business when she realized she was burning out at her day job. When she met with Masoni in 2010, Masoni tasted her sauces and said that while they tasted great, they didn’t look good enough to sell. “Within the first, like, minute of me meeting her and her tasting my sauces, she’s like, ‘It’s kind of brown. Nobody wants to buy brown sauce.’” So Marshall took Masoni’s feedback and altered the sauce’s formula: She’d been using a combination of green and red peppers to make the sauce, but on Masoni’s advice, she separated them into two recipes. Masoni’s ability to quickly size up what is and isn’t working with a product — and to deliver feedback that,however blunt, never seems to come across as hostile or snotty — is one reason she’s so sought after. There’s also that “million-dollar palate”: She has great taste. And she has a marketer’s sense of how to present and package a product so it will sell. And then there’s this. Masoni knows a lot about food—how different crops are grown in different parts of the country and how different food products are made. Since their initial meeting, Masoni and Marshall have become friends, getting together at the Emerald Line near the FIC, or traveling to trade shows together. Marshall is also the co-host of “Meaningful Marketplace”; together she and Masoni interview a different food entrepreneur each week. Recent guests have included Jana Jenkins, the founder of Oregon Ag and Oregon Wild Rice; Andrea Ludlow of Showstopper Cookies; and James Barry, whose business, Pluck, makes food seasoning out of a combination of spices and freeze-dried organ meats. Conversations can get a bit into the weeds, sometimes literally. During her conversation with Jenkins, Masoni describes the way wild rice is harvested in Minnesota, using canoes and rice sticks — which are like enormous chopsticks rice harvesters use to bend rice stalks and sweep the stems into the boat. “My dad was a food scientist, so I tell people I got my food-science training at the kitchen table,” Masoni says. Her father, Edmund Zottola, was an extension agent with the University of Minnesota and later a professor of food microbiology at Minnesota’s department of food science and nutrition. Sarah Masoni in the test kitchen at OSU’s Food Innovation Center 25
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