SR&ED for food & beverage
A new flavour is product development.
Investigating why an emulsion fails after scale-up, or why an ingredient substitution changes stability, is a different technical question.
An SR&ED review starts with that question and the experiments used to answer it. The new product or recipe does not establish eligibility on its own.
Look past the new SKU
- Ingredient substitutions where texture, stability or another technical response could not be predicted.
- Shelf-life or food-safety work that tested a method not known to achieve the defined result.
- Process trials where new equipment, conditions or scale changed behaviour in an unexplained way.
- Competing formulation or process hypotheses tested under recorded conditions, including unsuccessful batches.
Routine product work remains routine
Recipe development, flavour and appearance changes, standard quality control, and meeting a customer specification through established methods generally fall outside SR&ED. Commercial novelty and technical advancement answer different questions.
Keep the failed batch beside the final one
Formulation sheets, sensory and stability results, process-run records and lab data can show what changed and why. Keep temperatures, timing, equipment and batch scale with the result; the recipe alone rarely explains the investigation.
SREDlog organizes approved records against the project and keeps reviewed costs connected to the relevant trial.
Frequently asked questions
No, not on that basis alone. Review the portion, if any, that pursued a scientific or technological advancement through a systematic investigation. Creating a recipe by established methods is routine product development.
The target alone does not decide eligibility. Review the work when known preservation methods could not achieve it and the team tested hypotheses to understand or overcome the limit.
Record the baseline, changed ingredients or conditions, equipment and scale, result and conclusion. Formulation sheets and stability data are most useful when they can be read as one sequence. See documentation requirements.
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These industry examples are prompts for a fact-specific review, not categories guaranteed to qualify. Work must be conducted in Canada and meet both current CRA requirements; support work must directly support and be commensurate with eligible work. This is general information, not tax advice, and has not been reviewed by an independent qualified tax professional. See our editorial policy.