You’ve probably told yourself you’ll get to it, making contingency plans for your core suppliers. But then a product launch comes up, or a new compliance regulation rolls out, and planning that switch gets set aside again.
Evaluating another emulsion provider feels like a huge operational lift. The assumption I hear all the time is that trialing a new emulsion supplier will take months of recalibration and substantial operational investment. Many brands fear that it would cause major production disruption and dramatic changes to the customer experience.
But the truth is, you can evaluate SōRSE as an alternative in as little as 45 days, with the qualification process running entirely in parallel with your current operations and without touching a single production run. I’m here to outline exactly what it’s like to make the switch to SōRSE.
The assumption that’s holding you back
This is the basic assumption held by many consumer packaged goods companies: Switching suppliers is hard.
Yes, redundancy planning is critical for long-term business success, but it requires substantial investment in time and resources. All of which means it’s often put off to manage the never-ending stream of daily micro-emergencies that happen in normal daily operations.
If this sounds like your current situation, trust that you aren’t the only business to tell me they’ve put off evaluating alternative emulsion suppliers because of the immediate needs of daily operations.
As elsewhere, in cannabis beverage manufacturing, product launches, regulatory changes, and labeling mishaps all get in the way of the fundamental work of planning for the future.
But what if switching to SōRSE didn’t impact day-to-day operations? What if the qualification process could happen without any risk or disruption to your current production plans?
What actually changes (and what doesn’t)
I’d like to underscore the idea that investigating a new emulsion supplier is not throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Swapping out one emulsion with another doesn’t have to force a total revamp of the formulation. It may require a bit of subtle tweaking, but the basic recipe and ingredients can remain essentially untouched.
Brands, understandably, worry that switching emulsion suppliers will alter their product’s sensory profile—the taste, mouthfeel, clarity, and aroma that customers have come to expect. When the emulsion is the foundation of the entire beverage experience, there is a fear that even small changes can create noticeable differences.
So even when there are legitimate issues with a current supplier (inconsistent quality, poor stability data, or inadequate technical support), it feels safer to stick with the devil you know rather than risk changing what’s already on the shelf.
And while it’s true that there are variations in emulsion characteristics, this is also why SōRSE excels. Working with SōRSE means working alongside our experienced team of food scientists, consumer packaged goods specialists, researchers, and subject matter experts. Any sensory subtleties that bubble up during the trialing process can be planned for and corrected.
Switching is easy. This is what it looks like:
As I’ve alluded to already, switching to SōRSE doesn’t require tearing down your current system or stalling production.
In fact, the smartest way to evaluate a new supplier happens almost entirely in the background, running in conjunction with your business-as-usual operations.
At SōRSE, this is how the qualification process pays out:
1. Development and evaluation
The R&D and qualification process runs concurrently with your existing supplier and production schedule. Which means you don’t need to pause your current operations, including any scheduled production runs or new product launches.
You continue to use your current supplier while we run SōRSE trials in parallel, collecting objective, side-by-side performance data to inform the final decision.
2. Formulate and calibrate
Remember, from a formulation standpoint, very little has to change. If you are exploring using SōRSE as an alternative emulsion provider, your water, carbonation, sweetener, and flavor system can remain intact.
It therefore becomes the responsibility of the SōRSE food scientists to address any calibrations that may be required to maintain the SKU’s exact sensory profile. Through a series of refinements, our team dials in the sensory elements to account for slight differences in emulsion characteristics and capture any improvements along the way.
3. Accelerate stability testing
One of the biggest perceived barriers to switching is time investment, especially when it comes to stability testing. I can confirm that if your product (or market) demands especially prolonged shelf stability, it won’t take a year of waiting to understand emulsion activity.
At SōRSE, we deploy accelerated-stability protocols to reduce testing time. We can achieve six-month shelf-life validation by simulating real-world conditions in as little as 45 days. Even for products with a 12-month shelf life, we’ll gather potency, stability, and sensory data from a robust evaluation process within a fraction of that timeline.
4. Compare using side-by-side data
The most powerful part of the process is the comparative data. Because we are working alongside your current production, we can also perform a detailed analysis of potency retention, shelf-life stability, homogeneity, and sensory profile compared to your current emulsion.
Because you assess how the SōRSE formulation performs alongside your current formula, you can make the decision based on hard data, not just a sales pitch.
5. Avoid supply chain risk and operational disruptions
As I’ve said, the evaluation runs in parallel, and it never puts your production schedule or supply chain at risk. The entire qualification process happens without terminating relationships with existing suppliers or disrupting the current production runs.
Only if the data supports the move do you build out the transition timeline, strategized around inventory, production runs, and contractual agreements.
The right time to create a Plan B is before you need it
The theory behind contingency planning is straightforward: establish Plan B before the crisis hits. For cannabis beverage brands, there’s no more critical backup plan than a qualified secondary emulsion supplier.
The assumed operational burden of qualifying or switching suppliers (reformulation, stability testing, sensory panels, production trials) keeps contingency planning in the “someday” pile while daily fires demand attention.
That’s exactly why we built SōRSE’s evaluation process to run in parallel with your current operations. You don’t need to pause production. We handle the technical work: formulation matching, accelerated stability studies, and side-by-side sensory validation.
At a minimum, you walk away with a qualified secondary supplier and validated performance data. At best, you discover SōRSE outperforms your current emulsion on the metrics that matter most to your brand, giving you a clear business case to make the switch.
