Abhishek Varadharajan
An enthusiastic food business associate with a strong interest towards building high quality and sustainable food products
- Role
- Assistant Food Designer at Kellanova
- Location
- Kalamazoo, MI, US
- LinkedIn followers
- 500 followers
About Abhishek Varadharajan
Food designer and food scientist with experience in value engineering, product development and manufacturing support for salty snacks andcrackers. Delivers measurable cost savings through reformulation, flex-oil strategies and process optimisation while maintaining consumerexperience. Comfortable working with plants, cross-functional teams and global stakeholders across R&D, manufacturing, quality,procurement and commercial
Experience
Assistant Food Designer
Jan 2024 — Present · Battle Creek, MI, US
Delivered and enabled approximately $2.5MM margin improvement between 2024–2026 by reformulating salty snacks, qualifying newingredients and suppliers and simplifying plant processes across crackers and chips.• Led 8+ cost-saving initiatives from ideation through benchtop prototyping, pilot-scale work, multi-plant trials and commercialisation,ensuring delivery against consumer, quality and financial targets.• Managed 100+ snack recipes in SAP Recipe Management as primary daily user, updating formulations with flex-oil labels, coordinatinggovernance reviews and driving NLI and packaging readiness.• Spearheaded a procurement-driven continuity of supply initiative from concept to plant start-up, supervising phased transition to newwhey and cheese powders in sandwich cracker fillings and delivering an estimated $704K–$1.6MM in savings along with mitigatingfuture supply risks.• Developed 20–30+ cheese filling prototypes for a harmonisation project, identifying a final formula approximately $0.24 per lb cheaperwith an estimated $600K–$700K margin improvement while maintaining consumer-preferred flavour.• Designed and qualified 2 alternative oil options at 4 different manufacturing facilities, creating standard test set-ups and equipmentrequirements expected to deliver $1MM–$3MM in savings and also protect against oil price volatility future oil supply risk.• Optimised topical spray-oil usage on a key cracker brand by revising specification ranges after on-site study at Cincinnati, unlockingaround $280K–$420K savings and aligning specifications with actual line capability.flexibility, cost reduction and validation of natural colour systems with 100% artificial colour removal.• Collaborated with plant quality, engineering, and operations to plan and run non-saleable and saleable trials, validate results throughsensory, chemistry and distribution testing and secure cross-functional approval for implementation.
Education
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Masters of science (MS), Food Science and human nutrition
National Public School
School
Vellore Institute of Technology
Bachelor of Technology - BTech, Biotechnology
2018 — 2022
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