He’d invite her to go with him on work trips to small communities to do presentations on cheese, his area of expertise. “I’d be sitting at the back next to the slide projector. I’m sure I was like, ‘Ughhh,’ you know,” she says, letting out a mock groan. “But I was sitting there listening to my dad talk about dairy products and entrepreneurship, essentially. I think I have a unique background in that because of my childhood experiences.” Masoni kept her childhood promise to herself and moved to Oregon for college. Her father got his bachelor’s degree in food science from Oregon State, and she started out with the same declared major. But then she took a drawing class and changed her mind — but not all the way. “I switched my degree to a bachelor of science in art with a minor in food science, which gives me the creativity of an artist along with the knowledge of a scientist,” Masoni says. “So I’m able to talk with just about anyone about anything. If I need to go on my creative road, I do that. If I need to go on my science road, I do that.” After college, Masoni worked as a technical sales manager for Columbia Laboratories, a food-testing laboratory, and in product development for Gardenburger during the 1990s. Gardenburger was founded in Gresham in the early 1980s and was, when Masoni started, still completely based in Oregon — but by the end of the ’90s had started to move operations to Utah. Masoni divided her time between the two states, but eventually her job was cut and she found herself on the job market. That was in 2000. OSU’s Food Innovation Center had just opened a few months before. Masoni had “the fastest job interview of my life,” and was hired shortly after. “It was an interesting time here in Oregon,” Masoni says. “We were at a place where we realized that we were creating great products in our fields and processing them as ingredients. But the Department of Agriculture and Oregon State University leaders decided it would be great if we had a facility in the city that focused on creating value-added food products.” As Masoni describes it, her role wasn’t well defined at first. So she cut a path for herself. “After a while of sitting here and waiting for someone to tell me what to do, I realized, ‘Oh, maybe I need to figure out what to do,’” she says dryly. “So I started working with startup food companies.” TheFICisunderOSU’sumbrella but also receives funding from organizations like Bob’s Red Mill and the Wheat Marketing Center for its product development labs. And clients pay an hourly fee to meet with her, but she tries to make sure they get as much for that money as possible. “Sometimes I just meet with somebody one time. If their product is pretty straightforward, I’ll just tell them exactly what they need to do,” Masoni says. Sometimes that’s plenty: She says she’s had entrepreneurs approach her at meetings who tell her just one meeting helped them solve the problems they needed to solve to build a successful business. Sometimes more work is needed. When we spoke in November, Masoni estimated that the FIC had about 20 entrepreneurial clients actively working on product development in its labs in Northwest Portland. “You need to have a food that tastes good, it needs to look good, it needs to be safe to go on to the shelf. And it needs to be reproducible. People need to be able to make it over and over and over again so it tastes great every single time,” Masoni says. She’s been on the job long enough now to be working with a second generation of farmers, sometimes the children of people she worked with when she started. The vast majority of Masoni’s clients are people who bring family recipes to them — for cranberry sauces, for hot sauces, for cookies — hoping to find a way to bring them to market. Others just come with an idea for making a product differently. One of the Portland food scene’s most celebrated success stories is that of Salt & Straw, which started as a Southeast Portland food cart and has scaled up to 40 retail locations across the country. As this issue of OB went into production, the company announced a partnership with Taco Bell to revive the Choco Taco, the much-mourned frozen treat once made by Klondike but discontinued in 2023. Originally conceived as a “farm to cone” ice cream company — though co-founder Tyler Malek says they’ve largely retired the phrase — Salt & Straw is known for its surprising flavor combinations, which incorporate savory ingredients for surprising results. Malek dropped out of culinary school to develop the company with his cousin Kim. And he confirms that some of the shop’s signature flavors — like strawberry balsamic, and pear and blue cheese — were developed by or with Masoni. “My husband of many years had brought home a bag of blue cheese crumbles from Sunshine Dairy. They were huge, so I’d stick it in the freezer. And I’d be cooking dinner and 26
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