Larry Martin, who retired in May 2013 after 24 years teaching chemistry at Morningside College in Sioux City, has spent the "last several" years developing the Shaka (pronounced Shay-ka) concept.
Using gelatin, Martin found he could prevent flavored solutions blending when added to a milk base.
Instead, the flavored solutions remained in their own "globules."
Martin told DairyReporter.com that much of the time spent developing Shaka was "to get the right percent of gelling agent to make it so that the flavors do not blend but still have a pleasant mouth feel, so that one does not feel chunks of the flavored portion but rather it remains fluid."
The extent to which it is shaken determines the size of the individual flavor globules.
"With only a little shaking, the globules will be larger so that one can get a larger amount of that individual flavour in a given sip," he said.
"With more shaking, the globules will be smaller so the individual flavour globules will be more evenly distributed and that sip will taste different."
Patent-pending
Martin's development of the Shaka concept began when he witnessed people at beverage fountains in restaurants fill their glasses with several different drinks.
"This told us that they wanted more than just one flavor in their drink," he said.
"We thought that we could improve on this if we could develop a way to prevent the flavors from blending; that way each sip of the drink could have a different flavor profile because the combination of flavor globules could be different based on the random distribution of the different globules in the portion being consumed at the time."
Martin has applied to patent the Shaka concept for milk and other beverages in the US and the European Union (EU).
In the meantime, he hopes to license it to dairy manufacturers.
"We are beginning to look at the dairy industry to license the rights to manufacture and distribute the Shaka products," Martin said.
He's yet to hear from any "big players" in the dairy sector, but has been in contact with Dairy Management Inc (DMI), Gelita and Givaudan.
"Entertaining as well as flavorful"
Martin plans to "expand to other beverages" at a later stage, but chose to begin with milk.
“We want to start with milk because of the calls from the medical community for children over the age of two to drink more low-fat milk," he said.
“We believe that Shaka Milk drinks make milk a fun drink for kids and this will encourage them to drink more milk.”
Shaka multi-flavored milk has already been road-tested with children, who found it "entertaining as well as flavorful."
"I had made up 24 sets of the packets and we had nine children trying it," he said. "After the taping, the children asked to have the other packets to take home with them and one of the boys wanted to take some to his teacher."
Another told Martin: "If I saw these in the stores, I'd be really happy. I'd be begging my Mom to get them."