Barb Stuckey is President and Chief Innovation Officer at Mattson, the nation’s leading independent developer of foods and beverages for retail and chain restaurants. Since joining the company in 1997, she has become one of the industry’s most respected voices in taste science, food trends, innovation strategy and consumer insights. Her work centers on improving flavor and guiding companies through the full product development process, from ideation to commercialization.
With more than two decades of daily tasting embedded into her role, Barb has refined a rare ability to diagnose flavor challenges and teach others how to make food taste better. She distilled this expertise into her acclaimed book Taste What You’re Missing, later re-released as Taste, which introduced scientific yet accessible insights on how humans experience flavor.
Barb’s passion for taste education extends into the classroom as a long-standing instructor at The San Francisco Cooking School, where she teaches the Fundamentals of Taste to each entering class. She is also a regular contributor to Forbes.com, writing on food industry trends and innovation, and serves on the advisory board of the Plant Based Foods Association.
Barb Stuckey has been at Mattson since 1997, and is currently President and Chief Innovation Officer at the country’s most successful independent developer of foods and beverages for the retail foods and chain restaurant industries.
Barb is known as a taste, food trend, innovation, consumer insights, and product development expert.
As part of Barb’s role in the innovation projects that make up her daily job, she is required to taste food and figure out how to make it better. After more than 2 decades doing this, she’s honed her tasting skills and ability to help others make food taste better. She shared this insight with the world in 2012 when her book Taste What You’re Missing was published. In 2013, the paperback edition was released (under the simplified title Taste).
Barb Stuckey was instrumental in helping The San Francisco Cooking School integrate the science of taste into their curriculum. She now teaches the Fundamentals of Taste to each entering class.
She is also a regular contributor to Forbes.com where she writes about the food industry. And she sits on the advisory board of the Plant Based Foods Association.
Previously, Barb has sat on the board of the Robert Mondavi Institute for Wine and Food Science at the University of California, Davis and La Cocina, the San Francisco food incubator.
Barb Stuckey lives with her hypertaster husband, two artisan cats, and splits her time between San Francisco and Healdsburg, in the heart of Sonoma wine country. She can be bribed with good tomatoes.
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