Gourmet News • October 2020

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Best New Products from 2020 sofi Award Judging GOOD PLANeT

BY LORRIE BAUMANN

This year, the Specialty Food Association has recognized products in 49 categories ranging from alcoholic beverages to yogurts with sofi Awards. This year’s categories reflected the evolution of the food industry to emphasize functional and nutritional benefits and plant-based proteins as well as foods more traditionally considered “gourmet.” For instance, this year’s categories made space for beans, grains and rice as a single category, for plant-based milks as their own category distinct from dairy products and for plantbased protein products like tofu and textured vegetable protein products made from pea protein,

grain, mushrooms and legumes.

Even wellness bars and energy gels had a category in which to compete this year.

Outstanding new products included Long Root Wit Beer from Patagonia Provisions, which won a Good Food Award in 2019 for its Long Root Ale, brewed by Hopworks Urban Brewery. Like the Long Root Ale, the Long Root Wit Beer is made from Kernza, a perennial cousin of annual wheat that was developed at The Land Institute. Today, there are 107 farmers producing the grain on over 2,000 acres globally, and the grain is being used to produce a variety of products for consumers. This beer is a spin on Belgian-style Witbier and was

brewed with coriander and orange peel for a citrus finish.

Bacon Wrapped Wagyu Beef & Gorgonzola Skewers from The Fillo Factory won the award for the best new product in the appetizers and snacks category, and Gem City’s Blueberry Lemon Loaf was named the best new product in the bakery desserts category.

The Blueberry Lemon Loaf is a frozen specialty tea cake that’s gluten free and nut free. The loaves are individually packaged and can be served-is or warmed with butter.

Date Lady Barbecue Sauce was judged the best new product in a category that, this year, included

Americans might be more likely to identify Java and Sumatra as coffee producers than they are to identify them as two of the islands in the Indonesian archipelago, but the long-time popularity of coffees from Sumatra, Java and Bali has propelled Indonesia into the ranks of the world’s top coffee-producing nations. “That’s how people in Europe know about Java coffee, Sumatra coffee, Bali coffee – those are all Indonesian islands,” said Michael Riady, the Founder of Tentera Coffee,

which specializes in importing and roasting Indonesian coffees in small batches for the American market. “We only specialize in what we know best,” he said. “My family has been in Indonesia for five generations. We know Indonesian coffee very, very well, much better than a lot of people, and we go direct from the farm in Indonesia to the cup in America.”

Riady founded the coffee company in Los Angeles, California, after pursuing a career in real estate development in Indonesia.

After 15 years in real estate, the in-

BY LORRIE BAUMANN

dustry lost its allure for him, and he decided to turn back to what his family, which grows coffee on Indonesian farms, knows best.

“I’ve been traveling back and forth between Indonesia and America for the last 25 years. I love both places,” he said. “I love coffee myself. I decided to go back to my passion and import it straight to Americans. People know Sumatra; people know Java – they just don’t know that’s from Indonesia. Bali – that’s Indonesia.”

GOOD PLANeT, which makes plant-based cheese for the foodservice and retail markets, has been on a strong growth trajectory since its 2018 founding by David Israel and is now poised to continue that upward trajectory with the hiring of Bart Adlam as a co-Chief Executive Officer, along with Adlam, and its recent completion of a $12 million funding round.

With the addition of Adlam to his executive team, Israel is aiming at a bullseye currently marked with the names of Daiya, Field Roast and Follow Your Heart, category leaders in plant-based cheese, based on their retail sales.

Adlam will be focusing on operations while Israel continues to lead the company’s innovation, partnerships, branding and sales efforts.

GOOD PLANeT launched into a rocket-fueled market for plantbased cheese, starting with foodservice sales in late 2018 and entering the retail channel early in 2019. While total U.S. retail food sales grew by 2 percent in 2019, retail sales of plant based foods grew by 11 percent to more than $4.98 billion, according to

Continued on PAGE 18

Continued on PAGE 10

A Convenient Cup of Premium Java

BY LORRIE BAUMANN

Gears for Growth in Plant-Based

Continued on PAGE 8

Murray’s Cheese Re-Imagines Cheese Retail

BY LORRIE BAUMANN

Murray’s Cheese has re-imagined the way that consumers in Long Island City, New York, can experience cheese by opening Murray’s Cheese Bar on the ground floor of a residential high-rise building near the Murray’s Cheese caves and its headquarters. Murray’s Cheese Bar is a combination of a restaurant and cheese shop that offers an allday menu plus dinner along with an adjacent shop that offers more than 400 specialty items

that include cheeses from the caves that are unique to Murray’s.

For the duration of the pandemic-related restrictions, the restaurant will offer take-out, de-

livery and outdoor seating only, and social distancing is observed in the new shop as well.

The planning for the new Murray’s Cheese Bar started three years ago, said Elizabeth Chubbuck, Murray’s Cheese Chief Strategy Officer. “The reality is that we put all the vision that the planning together long before the pandemic was brewing,” she said.

“We were slated to open in March or April. That paused everything.”

Rockwell Group, the architect that designed

the innovative space, came into the project early, according to Chubbuck. “We knew that we wanted to redefine cheese retail, taking inspiration from some of the more modern cheese shops in France, but making it our own,” she said.

Murray’s also wanted a shop and a restaurant that would complement the original Murray’s Cheese Shop on Bleecker Street in Manhattan and the store in Grand Central Market but in a location that was close to Murray’s headquarters and cheese caves in Long Continued on PAGE 14

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FROM NEWS THE & NOTES EDITOR

GOURMET NEWS OCTOBER 2020 www.gourmetnews.com

GOURMET NEWS

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FROM THE EDITOR

WWW.GOURMETNEWS.COM PUBLISHER

Hello!

I remember the first time I visited Rogue Creamery.

Forgive me if you’ve heard this story before.

David Gremmels greeted me and took me into a room where he’d set out a wedge of blue cheese and little bowls of things to taste with it. I remember there were Grape Nuts.

“We can do this if you like, but I don’t really write about cheese,” I said. I have an unkind gift for coming to the point.

Confusion clouded his face. “Then what do you write about?

“I write about cheesemakers.”

Dawn broke over his features, and he smiled. “We have those here,” he said.

I’ve been thinking about that moment, not just because I’ve been working on the fall Cheese Guide, which is here with this issue, but because Rogue Creamery was part of the summer plans that got scrapped

by COVID-19.

I had planned to go this year for the first time to the Fishtrap Writers Gathering, which I hadn’t been able to wedge into my

schedule before because it’s held in June.

This year, though, the dates worked around the Summer Fancy Food Show, and it felt like fate. I was going to drive up to Oregon for the event and then stop off to say hello at Rogue Creamery and be home in time to shower and pack to fly to Portland for the American Cheese Society’s Annual Meeting. It was truly a best-laid plan.

It was a consolation when Fishtrap announced that they’d figured out how to do the gathering as a virtual experience. Then my plan crashed again when I got an email telling me that the workshop on writing stories about people that I’d signed up for had been canceled. I could have my choice of any of the other workshops or ask for a refund.

This is how I ended up in Craig Childs’ workshop on writing animal stories. For two days, I wondered what I was going to do there among a group of people who would certainly be writing about their encounters with wildlife. And then I remembered that dairy cows are, in fact, animals.

They’re not wild – at least not all the time – but they’re certainly life.

In this issue of the Cheese Guide, you

may see the influence of some of the conversations I had with other members of that workshop, since it turns out that people who were in the workshop to learn about how to write about animals were also interested in the question of how their decisions about what cheese to buy could make life better for cows. The story about Red Barn Family Farms that you’ll read in this issue is for them as well as for you. There’s lots of good cheese in this issue, but there are also lots of good people and the animals they care for here too.

I hope that I’ll get to make that visit to Rogue Creamery in 2021. And I have plans for Wisconsin and California and Vermont, even without the elusive certainty of dates to attach to them.

In the meantime, y’all could do me a favor and put pictures of your cows as well as your cheese up on Instagram. Or you could just send them to me at lorrie.baumann@gmail.com. Goats too, naturally. Or sheep, if you’ve got them.

Oh, I can’t wait to see you all again! GN

Kimberly Oser SENIOR ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER

Jules Denton-Card jules_d@oser.com EDITORIAL DIRECTOR

Lorrie Baumann editor@oser.com ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER

Anthony Socci anthony_s@oser.com ASSOCIATE EDITOR

Jeanie Catron ART DIRECTOR

Yasmine Brown CUSTOMER SERVICE MANAGER

Susan Stein CIRCULATION DIRECTOR

Tara Neal tara_n@oser.com CIRCULATION MANAGER

Jamie Green

— Lorrie Baumann Editorial Director

jamie_g@oser.com EXECUTIVE ASSISTANT

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NEWS & NOTES

GOURMET NEWS OCTOBER 2020 www.gourmetnews.com

News & Notes Granola for the 21st Century

BY LORRIE BAUMANN

By day, Margaret Barrow is a mild-mannered college professor who teaches composition and literature at Borough of Manhattan Community College. When she unleashes her vegan super powers, though, she’s on a mission to use the granola-based snacks she used to make just for herself as a tool to help her students make better lives for themselves. The product she’s making for that purpose is It’s NOLA, poppable snack balls made from oats, seeds and nuts.

The idea to turn the snack balls she’d been making at home for her own consumption into a business came from her students, she said. They’d been bringing snacks to her classes that her vegan sensibilities wouldn’t allow her to share, so she decided to bring the snack balls she’d been eating at home – they’re chia seed, pumpkin seed, flax seed and sunflower seed along with nuts, oats and spices mixed with a vegan binder to hold them together in crunchy balls. “I started making them for me and my family because I’m the only vegan, and I wanted to make something that we could all eat,” Barrow said. “My students had never had vegan before, and I was delighted to share it with them.”

The students liked the snacks so much that they started asking Barrow if she’d bring more so they could share with their family and friends. Then they started showing up at her home at night. Then some of them told her that she should really start a company and sell them. She said no.

Undaunted, students Mariem Sanoe and Candice Ricks took some of the snack balls

to other New York colleges and New Jersey’s Rutgers University and passed them out to students there, along with a survey.

Then they brought the results of their consumer research back to Barrow. “We think you should read these,” they told her.

“You always told us to get evidence to support our arguments.”

Surprised, Barrow held out a hand for the surveys and started reading. “I was shocked. It was totally unexpected,” she said. “The surveys gave me a sense of the commitment and the belief that the students had. I was the person who was always their champion, and for the first time I felt I was on the opposite end of it.”

Then she started thinking. “I’ve spent most of my life doing two things at once,” she said. “I’ve spent so much of my life juggling two goals at a time. I have a lot of energy.”

She consulted the business professors at her college, and she asked a lawyer if there was a way that she could use profits from an entrepreneurial project to support community college mentoring programs.

They didn’t tell her no, and maybe it wouldn’t matter if they had. Vegans are used to answering doubts about the positions they’ve staked out. Barrow started accepting a new identity as Founder and Chief Executive Officer of a small artisanal food business. “I asked the students to accept sweat equity to come into the company and help me,” she said. “I’ve been mentoring them while I’ve been learning about being an entrepreneur. I want to continue work-

ing on legacies of wealth with them.”

It’s NOLA is a snack that’s intended as a fun and filling amuse bouche to soothe a between-meals hunger pang rather than as a substitute for a regular meal or any part of one. A serving is low in calories, low in sugar, low in sodium and low in fats and carbohydrates. “It’s filling without making you feel lethargic. It provides energy. It’s a true traditional snack, which means that you’re having something between meals to get you to the next meal. You don’t need to eat a whole bag,” Barrow said. “Most people say that they can eat three or four of these balls and they feel good. They’re addictive – that, I can say. They’re very uniquely flavored.”

It’s NOLA is offered in Luscious Cranberry Coconut and Sassy Mango Masala as well as Decadent Chewy Chocolate, which is the newest flavor. They’re packaged in stand-up pouches with either a single serving, a two-serving 12-count or a 24-count.

“We’re working on getting them into cafes, so it’s a stand-up pouch that will work next to a cash register,” Barrow said.

Ten percent of the profits from It’s NOLA are dedicated to community college mentoring programs, with the funds to go directly to the programs rather than being funneled through a foundation or non-profit organization, Barrow said. “Ultimately I’d like to raise enough money so we can create housing for community college students,” she added. “Some of them live in the projects – they just don’t live in the greatest of circumstances while they’re being educated.”

For more information, visit www .brooklyngranola.nyc. GN

Specialty Food Association Announces 2020 sofi Award Winners This year’s pandemic resulted in particularly difficult challenges for the Specialty Food Association’s annual judging of specialty food products in competition for the association’s sofi Awards. Originally scheduled for March at the Food Innovation Center at Rutgers University, the pandemic forced the postponement of judging. Faced with perishable entries, the SFA and FIC collaborated with Gateway Community Action Partnership, a local nonprofit, which received donated specialty foods that included breads and tortillas, coffees and teas, a wide variety of cheeses, dips, yogurt, honey, soups,

snacks, chocolates and specialty candies, so they could be consumed before they expired.

Nearly half of the entries had to be resubmitted when judging was able to resume in late July with meticulous safety protocols and samples prepared and overseen by FIC staff. The judging panel sampled their way through 49 categories in a blind tasting that ended in early August to select 157 winners. Products competing for gold, silver and bronze Awards were judged 70 percent on taste and 30 percent on ingredient quality. Products competing for tnew product awards were

judged 60 percent on taste, 20 percent on ingredient quality and 20 percent on innovation.

“The sofi Awards highlight the best of the best within the specialty food industry,” said Ron Tanner, Vice President, Education, Government and Industry Relations at the Specialty Food Association. “This achievement of conducting the sofi Awards under these challenging circumstances truly honors and celebrates our membership and our industry, and our 2020 winners exhibit a level of excellence that excites specialty food buyers and consumers across all channels.” GN

BRIEFS Alter Eco Launches Alter Eco Foundation Alter Eco®, a chocolate-centric food company that helps mitigate climate change through regenerative agriculture and carbon sequestration, is launching the Alter Eco Foundation this month. As the new charitable arm of the company, the Alter Eco Foundation will work directly with cacao farmers to provide resources to help them transition to dynamic agroforestry, a method of regenerative agriculture with many positive environmental, economic and social benefits. This nextgeneration approach to farming is already showing significant potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in Alter Eco’s pilot program with its cacao co-op farmers in Ecuador. The ultimate goal of the foundation is to make the company’s proven climate-positive model available to the entire cacao industry, expediting adoption within the cacao supply chain globally through advocacy and education.

Wildway Partners With Texas Parks and Wildlife Foundation Wildway, a San Antonio, Texas-based natural food company, and Texas Parks and Wildlife Foundation have joined forces to further their missions to conserve the wild things and wild places in the state, both now and for generations to come. Ten percent of all sales from products within Wildway’s We Rise collection of granola, starting with Dark Chocolate Strawberry and newly-released Wild Blueberry, will be donated to the foundation to aid conservation efforts to conserve wildlife, habitat, and natural resources.

Jim Heaney Named CFO at The Fresh Market Inc. The Fresh Market, Inc. has appointed Jim Heaney as Chief Financial Officer, effective September 2, 2020, replacing Oded Shein, who has resigned as CFO. Heaney has more than 30 years of experience in finance leadership at cruise lines and tourist entertainment companies. He earned his bachelor of science degree in business administration at Texas Tech University as well as a master’s in business administration from the University of Florida.

Silver Fern Farms, Marx Foods Launch Online Delivery for New Zealand Beef Silver Fern Farms, New Zealand’s largest red meat producer and exporter, is collaborating with its longstanding distribution partner, Marx Companies, and Beef + Lamb New Zealand, the farmer-owned industry organization representing New Zealand’s sheep and beef farmers, to launch a line of Angus beef sampler boxes that will be available for purchase online.

The collaboration meets the growing consumer demand for online food shopping and highquality, responsibly raised red meat.

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NEWS & NOTES

GOURMET NEWS OCTOBER 2020 www.gourmetnews.com

EZ Grow Farms Limited Adopts Free iTrade Traceability Campaign EZ Grow Farms Limited is the latest customer to pick up the food safety mantle and join iTrade’s iTracefresh program. As a global provider of supply chain software for the food and beverage industry, iTrade is pioneering efforts to build the world’s safest and most comprehensive global food supply chain. To underline its commitment to guaranteeing the safety of our food, it has removed all barriers to adoption, offering the iTracefresh traceability suite to any supplier’s, or indeed any buyer’s, entire supplier portfolio for the first year – free of charge.

“Traceability is more important than ever, and it will give us a leg up in expanding our business with new and current customers.

As a family company, ensuring that our cus-

tomers have confidence in the safety of our food is incredibly important to us. We are excited to join the world’s safest food supply chain and use traceability as a strategic differentiator,” said Darryl Zamecnik, President at EZ Grow Farms Limited.

In addition to protecting a supplier’s brands during recalls and enabling critical downstream supply chain visibility, iTrade’s traceability solutions help grow its customers’ businesses. Data from a yearlong pilot with a major industry buyer showed that suppliers adopting iTrade traceability increased their trading volumes by an average of 55 percent in just 12 months. Additionally, a sample of just four new growers added a combined $10 million in revenue over the same period.

“The world would be a better place if everyone knew where their food came from,” said Rhonda Bassett-Spiers, Chief Executive Officer of iTradeNetwork.

“Whether you’re a small family farm or a large enterprise operation, we want to make food safety and traceability accessible to everyone. We are happy to have EZ Grow Farms Limited join us in creating the world’s safest food supply chain and grow their business in the process.”

Founded in 1970, EZ Grow Farms specialized in blueberry growing, taking advantage of the ripe landscape in Langton, Ontario, for berry farming. In 2020, EZ Grow Farms Limited is one of the largest highbush blueberry producers, growing more than 10 dif-

ferent varieties. Since the 1970s, EZ Grow Farms Limited has expanded its production to include strawberries, and Darryl Zamecnik, President, guarantees both freshness and quality with every order. Sustainability is at the forefront of all of EZ Grow Farms Limited’s operations.

Visit www.itradenetwork.com/itracefresh /item/ for more information about a promotional package that includes iTrade’s Produce Traceability Initiative (PTI) case labeling solution and its Palletized Advanced Ship Notice (ASN) solution. Qualifying suppliers may also receive the free field kit hardware package that includes a printer, two mobile devices and 10,000 labels to help them get started on iTracefresh. GN

sofi Awards

from caramelized white chocolate and 100 percent cacao nibs to give it some crunch and balance the sweetness. In the category for confections not made from chocolate, Libity Bits Sesame Snacking Toffee from Vermont Amber Candy Company was named the best new product. My Organic Coco - A Bit Fresh – mint is MOCO’s interpretation of a chocolate mint candy in a hot cocoa mix.

It won the award for best new product in the category for coffees and hot cocoas.

Vegan Fermented Tea Leaf Dressing from Burma Love won the best new product award in a category that, this year, included condiments, dressings and marinades – any condiment other than a barbecue sauce or hot sauce, including ketchups and mayonnaises. This dressing is made from organic tea leaves hand picked in the Shan State mountains of Burma.

In the cookies and snack bars category, Loacker USA, Inc. took home the award for best new product with its Tortina Triple Dark Wafer, which belongs to its Loacker Gran Pasticceria collection. It’s made from dark chocolate with 60 percent cocoa around light and crispy cocoa wafers with a smooth cocoa-cream filling. On a more savory note, raincoast crispcotti™ pineapple & thai basil crackers by Dare Foods’ Lesley Stowe Fine Foods brand took home the award for the best new product in the crackers and crispbreads category. And since it’s hard to make a meal out of crackers, Beecher’s Handmade Cheese offers Beecher’s Gluten Free Cheese Curd Lasagna, which was recognized as the best new product in the category for lunch and dinner entrees.

And for dessert, The Latest Scoop Vanilla Coconut Cream Premium Gelato from Cable Car Delights, Inc. was recognized as the best new product in the frozen desserts category. This dairy-free frozen dessert features Madagascar vanilla extract in coconut cream. For an unfrozen dessert, St. Benoit Creamery Pot de Creme Dessert - TCHO Chocolate received the best new product nod in a category called “other dairy.” Made in California from pasture-raised Jersey milk custard, this comes from Laura Chenel’s Chevre and is packaged in a glass jar.

In the fruit spreads, jams and jellies category, Les Comtes de Provence ORGANIC RASPBERRY, MORELLO CHERRY AND ARONIA FRUIT SPREAD was named the best

new product. This fruit spread comes from Agro’Novae Industrie in France. All of the fruit is grown in the Mediterranean region, and it’s sweetened exclusively with cane sugar.

The spread is all natural, non-GMO and gluten free, and it’s handcrafted in kettles in France from a traditional recipe. Bumbleberry Farms Pumpkin Spice Honey Cream Spread was named as best new product in the category for nut, seed and confectionery butters.

A mushroom jerky won the best new product award in the jerky and meat snacks category this year. Haw River Sassy Sesame Teriyaki Mushroom Jerky is 100 percent vegan, made from sustainably-grown mushrooms from the Haw River Mushrooms family farm.

ZOE Yellowfin Tuna Nape – tuna fillets packed in glass jars with extra-virgin olive oil – was named best new product in this year’s meat, poultry and seafood category.

The product, offered by JCS Tradecom, Inc., is made from line-caught yellowfin tuna harvested in the Bay of Biscay, Spain.

Olivelle Black Garlic Tamari Barrel Aged Balsamic won the best new product award in a single category for oils and vinegars.

This is a soy sauce-inspired balsamic vinegar that starts with black garlic that’s fermented and then cooked for days with Japanese tamari and Italian barrel-aged balsamic vinegar. Olivelle won another new product award in the seasonings and spices category for its Coconut Chai Sugar Shaker.

Paleo-friendly coconut sugar is mixed with aromatic, Middle Eastern chai spices that include cinnamon, ginger, cardamom and turmeric to make a seasoning for squash, soups, fruit or beverages.

Atlantic Sea Farms offers familiar flavor in its Fermented Seaweed Salad, which was named the best new product in the pickles and olives category. This version is made from domestic kelp harvested from the clean, cold waters of Maine. The seaweed salad is high in probiotics and the method by which it is farmed removed carbon and nitrogen from the ocean with each harvest.

Hope & Sesame Chocolate Hazelnut Organic Sesame Milk received the best new product award in the new plant milks category. It was the only sofi Award presented in the category this year. The product is made from 100 percent plant-based sources including sesame and pea proteins, and it’s non-

GMO, OU kosher and certified gluten free.

TEVONY Tachbisha Mediterranean Garlic Gourmet Spread from The Sauce Girls, LLC is made from minced garlic blended with olive oil, turmeric, spices and zest of lemon and lime juice. It was named best new product in the category for salsas and dips. It’s vegan and free of gluten, GMO ingredients, sugar, dairy, soy, artificial colors and flavors. The Tachbisha products are made in the USA. Sutter Buttes Natural & Artisan Foods received the best new product in the sauces category for its Indian Butter Chicken Simmer Sauce. The product features warm Indian spices and was created from a collection of family recipes.

Brooklyn Food & Beverage LLC won the best new product award in the soda and carbonated beverages category this year, a category that was intended to include sodas of all kinds as well as sparkling non-alcoholic juices, for its Moshi Yuzu Sparkling Drink. From a new craft soda brand, the soda highlights yuzu, the uniquely aromatic Japanese citrus, in a ready-to-drink sparkling beverage. This was the only sofi Award for the category this year.

Olivarez Honey Bees Inc. won the best new product in the sweeteners category for its Chico Honey Company Clover Honey, a dairy-free, gluten-free honey with a pale amber color and a light floral flavor accented with notes of shortbread. It’s pure, raw honey harvested from the company’s own hives.

In the tea category, Vahdam Teas Global Inc. won the best new product award with Turmeric Saffron Herbal Tea Tisane, which offers notes of the flavor of coconut blended with aromatic spices like cardamom, turmeric, and the bold flavors of ginger and complemented by Kashmiri saffron. It’s packaged loose in stand-up pouches. Finally, in the category for ready-to-drink teas and coffees, 3 Mountains, a social enterprise based in Asheville, North Carolina, that has been working with Rwandan farmers since 2007, won the best new product award for its Silverback Carbonated Tea in the Classic Silver flavor. This tea is made from Fair Trade-certified and organically grown Rwandan tea, without any refined sugars or artificial preservatives. Made with a whole-leaf brewing technology, it’s one of the first carbonated teas on the market. GN

Continued from PAGE 1 hot sauces as well as barbecue sauces. This is a mild, smokey barbecue sauce sweetened with dates, so it includes no corn syrup or cane sugar. It’s organic, vegan, kosher and gluten free.

The best new bread this year was Wake~N~Bagel Everything from Little Shop of Bagels. Wake~N~Bagel is a frozen thaw-and-bake line of bagels made from organic ingredients. It’s sold from the freezer case for consumers to thaw overnight in their refrigerators and then bake in the morning in either a range oven or toaster oven. In addition to its new product award, Wake~N~Bagel won the gold award in the category. Veggies Made Great offered the best new breakfast product this year with Mushroom & 3 Cheese Frittata, allergyfriendly and gluten-free egg white frittatas made with mushrooms, cauliflower, kale, potatoes and cage-free eggs. Each serving offers 80 calories and 4 grams of protein.

ROUGETTE Bonfire Marinated Grilling Cheese was named the best new product in the category for cow’s milk cheeses. All natural and lactose free, this is a savory semisoft cheese that softens as it’s warmed. It’s pre-marinated in herbs and oil and is packed with its own grilling pan to be warmed either on the grill or in the oven.

Studd Enterprizes’ Aphrodite Artisan Goat Milk Halloumi won the best new product award for a cheese made from milk that didn’t come from a cow. This Halloumi is made in Cyprus using the traditional method of hand-forming it into pockets.

Sea Stick, a hand-rolled and baked crunchy seaweed snack from Good Life, won the award for the best new salty snack.

It’s offered in three flavors: Mild, Spicy and Wasabi and is packed with five pouches in a box. Inside each pouch are three rolls in a plastic safety tray.

Strawberry Balsamic Ganache from CocoTutti won the award for the best new chocolate candy, Goodnow Farms Colombia Boyaca 73% won the best new products award in the dark chocolate category, and Golden Goodness from Chuao Chocolatier won the award in the milk and white chocolates category. Golden Goodness is made

10

NEWS & NOTES

GOURMET NEWS OCTOBER 2020 www.gourmetnews.com

Kendall-Jackson, in Partnership with United Way, Launches the Grocery Worker’s Relief Fund Kendall-Jackson, producer of America’s favorite Chardonnay, and United Way Worldwide have launched the Grocery Worker’s Relief Fund to provide emergency relief for the immediate needs of frontline grocery store workers. The iconic American winery whose reputation is built on producing wines of quality and integrity, pledges an initial $200,000 in the first year, and commits to $2 million by 2030.

“Grocery workers are an essential part of Kendall-Jackson’s success. They form the backbone of our business and are a direct extension of the Kendall-Jackson family,” said Barbara Banke, Chairman and Proprietor of Jackson Family Wines, the familyowned wine company that founded Kendall-Jackson in 1982. “They have been frontline heroes during the pandemic, risking their health and safety for all Americans. By launching the Grocery Worker’s

Relief Fund, we can provide immediate relief to the workers who have supported us for nearly 40 years and need it now, more than ever.”

In the United States, the grocery industry employs more than 2.7 million people. According to a recent Washington Post article about the current state of employees in the grocery industry, workers are feeling “overworked and overwhelmed” and are facing unique challenges. In an effort to show appreciation to grocery workers for their contributions during this crisis, Kendall-Jackson searched for a national relief fund that directly benefited the workers, but one did not exist. As a leading producer in the wine industry, KendallJackson embarked on an opportunity to partner with United Way Worldwide to establish an emergency fund. “This is one small gesture in a time of monumental

need, but we hope it inspires others to join the cause,” adds Banke.

“United Way is honored to partner with Kendall-Jackson to recognize and support our grocery workers everywhere. While many people were at home during quarantine, grocery workers continued to put themselves in harm’s way every day to stock the shelves, and make and keep stores safe for their customers,” said Suzanne McCormick, U.S. President of United Way Worldwide. “Grocery workers are the unsung heroes of the pandemic and United Way is thrilled to join Kendall-Jackson to give our brave grocery workers an opportunity for relief as they risk their health and continue to go the extra mile during the COVID-19 crisis.”

The Grocery Worker’s Relief Fund will raise funds to alleviate the challenges these essential workers are facing. The fund will

offer emergency support, mainly in the form of cash cards, to provide urgently needed relief, and will connect workers with holistic local help through the 211 network, a national social services helpline.

The Grocery Worker’s Relief Fund is available to any individual currently employed by a grocery store, including retailers with grocery departments, to apply for eligibility for financial assistance. Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis and funds will be awarded as resources allow. Help and support doesn’t end there — grocery workers and their families may explore additional resources and options available through the United Way 211 network as well. Workers can apply for the funds beginning October 1, 2020, by visiting www.unitedway.org/groceryrelief. To donate to the Grocery Worker’s Relief Fund, visit www.unitedway.org/groceryrelief. GN

Perdue Farms Delivers to Pop Up Pantry to Aid Hungry Families Amid COVID-19 Perdue Farms has delivered 40,000 pounds of protein to help the West Annapolis [Maryland] Pop Up Pantry in its mission to provide underserved families with nutritious meals amid the COVID-19 pandemic. The donation is part of Perdue’s “Delivering Hope To Our Neighbors®” hunger-relief initiative that is helping provide meals for struggling individuals and families.

“The support of Perdue, and their eagerness to contribute to our effort, means that we will be able to provide more than 500 families each week healthy and filling meals,” said Diana Love, co-Founder of the

West Annapolis Pop Up Pantry. “Hungry bellies can’t fight illness, foster children’s growth, or contribute to productive lives.

This donation helps our families do all of these things.”

The grass-roots West Annapolis Pop Up Pantry was started in March by friends Diana Love and Amy Marshall after learning that the father of their children’s classmate died from the coronavirus on Easter Sunday. They discovered that the household’s other members were in self-isolation and couldn’t work to support the household. Partnering with the Center of Help in Annapolis and

others, they were able to help support the family with groceries, meals and other essential items. The West Annapolis Pop Up Pantry has grown from that single effort.

Today, with the support of a legion of volunteers, churches and community groups, the Pop Up Pantry is helping hundreds of families in Annapolis.

“Every day, our neighbors within our communities, including in our home state and throughout the U.S., are relying more on their local food banks and pantries to put a meal on the table for their families amid the pandemic,” said Randy Day, Chief

Executive Officer of Perdue Farms. “As a food company, we have the resources and a responsibility to help those struggling with food insecurity, especially during an unprecedented time like this. The work of those at the West Annapolis Pop Up Pantry is truly inspiring, and we’re proud to lend our support.”

Since March, Perdue has donated more than 1.9 million pounds of protein to support local food banks and relief efforts as well as first responders and frontline healthcare workers amid the pandemic through its “Delivering Hope To Our Neighbors” initiative. GN

GOOD PLANeT

stream supermarkets will soon follow. In the natural channel, plant-based cheeses accounted for 17 percent of the dollar share of the cheese category in 2019.

This is the landscape in which Cleveland Avenue, an investment firm specializing in restaurants and in food and beverage brands, led GOOD PLANeT’s $12 million funding round, which closed in July of this year. Its portfolio includes investments in Beyond Meat and Farmer’s Fridge as well as GOOD PLANeT. With that new funding in hand to be used for product development, sales and marketing, Israel aims to double GOOD PLANeT’s year over year sales. “We’ve seen some exponential growth since launch in 2018. We see that continuing – that trend – if not increasing,” he said. “We’ve been a scrappy start-up team. It was really time to grow up.... We continue to figure things out and be scrappy, but we wanted to bring in someone who’s been there, done that, and can take us to the next level quickly.”

Adlam joins the company as his latest move in a 30-year career in consumer packaged goods, starting with marketing posi-

tions after receiving his Masters in Business Administration degree from Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. He was previously CEO of Chef’s Cut Jerky for almost two years, ending his tenure there when the company was sold in July to Sonoma Brands for an undisclosed price, and before that, he ran the siggi’s yogurt brand for the six years immediately prior to the company’s sale to Lactalis in 2018. He currently sits on the board of directors of Lavva and Aloha Foods, both plant-based brands, and this is his third stint as CEO of a specialty food company positioned to grow its brand.

Existing foodservice customers are pushing the company to create a plant-based Mexican blend as well as a mozzarella-type cheese, according to Adlam. And, in addition to gains realized through sales of new products, the company is planning to extend its reach into the retail market. “There are a lot of retailers to go after,” he said.

“That’s what makes this so exciting.”

Setting a course on that trajectory would be an ambitious undertaking at any time, but Israel and Adlam are doing it in the

midst of a pandemic. While they acknowledge some uncertainties, they don’t think that’s just nuts.

Although COVID-19 has certainly landed a punch on GOOD PLANeT’s foodservice business, the company has seen its retail sales go through the roof, Israel said.

Plant-based foods were among the fastestgrowing food categories in retail food stores as the COVID-19 pandemic shutdowns set in. Plant-based cheese’s retail sales grew at a 95 percent clip in March of this year during the peak panic-buying weeks. In the four weeks following the panic-driven grocery shopping, the category still grew by 54 percent, according to a May 26 report by the Plant Based Foods Association, which used data collected by SPINS. “I’m all in on plant-based,” Adlam said.

“I fundamentally believe that plant-based is the future of food. We don’t have all the answers yet about COVID. Regardless of how things go with COVID, we do feel like plant-based is going to march upwards....

Growth is going to come from Americans who want to move away from dairy.” GN

Continued from PAGE 1 the Good Food Institute’s “2019 State of the Industry Report” for plant-based meat, eggs and dairy. Retail sales of plant-based cheese grew by just over 50 percent from 2017 through 2019 to reach $189 million in 2019, according to the report, which relied on data collected by SPINS. Retail dollar sales of the U.S. natural and specialty cheese market as a whole reached $16 billion in 2018, according to market research firm Packaged Facts. Sales increased at a compound annual growth rate of 2.4 percent between 2013 and 2018.

Plant-based cheeses accounted for 1 percent of retail cheese sales in 2019, according to the Good Food Institute, although its report notes that the share of plantbased food in each of the categories considered in the study is significantly higher in the natural channel than in mainstream grocers. This matters because the trends that show up in the natural channel are often bellwethers that consumers in main-

12

RETAILER NEWS

GOURMET NEWS OCTOBER 2020 www.gourmetnews.com

Retailer News Now Available: Eddie, The Professional Edible Ink Printer Primera Technology, Inc., a leading manufacturer of specialty color printers, is now ready to ship Eddie, the world’s first-andonly NSF and GMP-certified edible ink printer for printing onto cookies and other food items.

Fast and Easy Operation Eddie™ makes the process of printing onto cookies, candy, white chocolate, biscuits, macarons, and much more, fast and easy.

The machine prints a dozen 3.5-inch (89mm) cookies or other similar-sized items in just two minutes. The included carousel feeder rotates the cookies to the print position, the printer pulls in cookies one at a time, prints and sends them back to the carousel – all automatically and hands-free.

glazes and frostings, for best results, Primera sells a bulk frosting mix that delivers optimal whiteness and print quality.

For applications such as amusement or meetings and events, pre-frosted sugar cookies are also available in bulk quantities from Primera.

Out of the box, Eddie is equipped to print items from 3.0 inches to 3.5 inches with a maximum thickness of .75 inch.

With the purchase of custom trays, that can be extended to accommodate items from 1.5 inches (38mm) to 4.5 inches (114.5mm).

Printed cookies or other food items will be dry and ready for sale immediately after printing. Printed images are bright, vibrant, smudge-resistant and even color-matched to ICC Color Standards. For these reasons and more, Eddie is truly a professional, edible ink printer and highly unique in its category.

Many Applications Personalization is all the rage in today’s consumer and B2B markets. Eddie can produce new profits by allowing you to print onto cookies and candy for birthday parties, baby showers, bar or bat mitzvahs, for Christmas and holiday gifts and more. For your corporate gift customers, cookies printed with company logos make a huge impact as trade show giveaways or at meetings and other special occasions. Wedding planners, hotels and restaurants are excited to offer custom-printed items for wedding receptions, anniversaries, and other celebrations.

Cookies for Eddie typically cost from $0.35 each to $1.50 each. Add $0.08 for ink, at 50 percent coverage, and charge $3.00 to $5.00 per cookie. The profit margins can quickly pay for the machine.

Food Item Specifications Eddie prints on a variety of foods, including onto certain frostings or directly onto cookies, biscuits, and more. Although bakeries may want to develop their own

Food Industry Certifications Eddie is unique in the commercial food preparation business for many reasons, but none as important as for safety. Although edible ink printers have been sold and uti-

lized in commercial applications such as photo cakes for more than a decade, none of them have been approved for this use by recognized, third-party certification organizations, making producer liability a serious concern.

Eddie was instead designed from the beginning to meet or exceed all regulatory requirements for the specific purpose as an edible ink digital printer. Approvals are already secured for the USA, Canada and Europe. More certifications for other global regions are in process.

Additional certification for Eddie by the National Science Foundation is an industry first: This respected organization has previously approved no other digital printer with edible ink. NSF certification assures Eddie’s owners and customers that the product has been tested and approved by one of the most highly regarded, independent certification organizations in existence today. The NSF mark is valued by consumers, manufacturers, retailers, and regulatory agencies worldwide.

Eddie’s inks meet all Food and Drug Administration standards for use as a food additive. The ink cartridge itself also meets cGMP standards and is third-party, independently certified. Finally, the entire ink manufacturing and cartridge filling processes are FDA-compliant and cGMP certified.

Price and Availability Eddie sells for $2,995.00 USD and is available now from Primera’s authorized resellers and distributors throughout the world. In the USA, place an order factorydirect at www.primera.com/eddie. Customers that prefer installation, training and on-site services can purchase through a small group of dedicated food industry equipment resellers that offer these services at an additional charge.

In the USA and Latin America, contact Primera Technology, Inc. at +1.763.475.6676, email at sales@primera.com or visit online at www.primera.com. GN

Canned Flavored Milk Aims for Teen Market Kemps, a Minnesota-based dairy, is introducing a shelf-stable, on-the-go canned milk product available at Roundy’s Supermarkets, at Pick ‘n Save and Metro Market throughout the Milwaukee and Madison, Wisconsin, area. The new beverage, siips, offers delicious, indulgent and on-trend flavor combinations packed with protein that can be taken anywhere and enjoyed anytime. siips is available in three flavors and was

developed alongside consumers through deep insight work with tweens and teens.

Milk has been around since the beginning of time, and this portable solution brings it out of the refrigerator, into the 21st century and into the hands of anyone, anywhere. siips retails for $1.49 per can.

Each siips flavor is low fat and made with 100 percent real milk. Every 8-ounce can contains 8 grams of protein, is packed with vitamins A and D and provides 25 percent

of the recommended daily value of calcium.

The line includes three indulgent flavors: Caramel, Mocha and Chocolate. The Mocha flavor includes a jolt of caffeine, which the chocolate offers an on-the-go twist to traditional chocolate milk.

Since 1914, Kemps has been serving fresh, quality, delicious products across the Midwest.

For more information, visit www.kemps.com and www.siipsmilk .com. GN

BRIEFS More Than 60 Percent of Americans Still Grocery Shop in Person Sixty-two percent of grocery shoppers are continuing to shop in-store for their groceries, while 22 percent are finding safer options through grocery delivery (12 percent) and curbside pickup (10 percent), according to “The Manifest,” a business news and how-to website. More than half of the study’s 501 respondents said their grocery spending changed, with 38 percent spending more.

Meijer Extends Hunger Relief Campaign Through End of Year Meijer’s seasonal hunger relief program, Simply Give, will conduct back-to-back fall and holiday campaigns to ensure the maximum amount of support for food pantries trying to keep up with increased demand caused by the coronavirus pandemic.

Each Meijer Simply Give campaign replenishes the shelves of more than 250 food pantries in Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky and Wisconsin. The program encourages customers to purchase $10 Simply Give donation cards, which are then converted into Meijer food-only gift cards and given to a local food pantry in the store’s community.

Each new campaign gives Meijer stores the opportunity to partner with a different local pantry in order to best serve their community.

Giant Food Opens Store in Fairfax, Virginia Giant Food, the greater Washington D.C. regional grocery chain, opened a new store in Fairfax, Virginia on Friday, August 21. Shoppers were welcomed at 6 a.m. into the 53,000square foot store that was designed to address the way consumers are shopping by expanding popular departments, providing more amenities and offering an overall convenient experience that helps shoppers find the products they love and also discover new and exciting offerings.

This new location creates 180 new jobs for the local community.

Kroger Sees Improvement in Food Waste Reduction Among other achievements, Kroger reported that the company reduced retail food waste generated by 4 percent and improved food waste diversion from landfills by 5 percent in 2019. Since introducing Zero Hunger | Zero Waste in 2017, the company has reduced total retail food waste generated by 13 percent through strategic ordering best practices, item markdown programs and innovative supply chain initiatives.

Since 2017, Kroger’s store associates have also improved food waste diversion from landfills by 18 percent through increased food waste recycling, including (in order of priority) animal feed, anaerobic digestion and composting programs for food that is no longer edible. The company’s goal is to achieve zero food waste by 2025.

14

RETAILER NEWS

GOURMET NEWS OCTOBER 2020 www.gourmetnews.com

White Launches Grocery Carousel for Pickup White, a U.S.-based manufacturer in Hyannis, Massachusetts, has announced the immediate availability of the Grocery Carousel™, which is designed to revolutionize grocery pickup operations utilizing intelligent storage and integrated software.

Supermarket chains are realizing over a 200 percent increase in their buy-online, pickup-at-store order volume. The Grocery Carousel allows stores to prepare and buffer online orders more efficiently to assemble and manage many orders in a small footprint.

The storage and quick retrieval of the large quantities of online grocery orders for dynamic customer pick-up has become very challenging. The impact of COVID-19 has caused multi-day delays

and capacity surges that can be problematic without an automated solution.

Maintaining large orders with many items, bags or totes can be challenging without mechanization and the maximization of space. Customers expect fast and efficient order handling within limited reservation windows.

The Grocery Carousel is already improving the efficiency of store pickup and improving customer curbside delivery rates for online orders in multiple states across the country. Accuracy and speed are easily achieved by efficiently managing orders within an intelligent storage solution. Long customer wait times are dramatically reduced as the Grocery Carousel quickly spins to retrieve requests for multiple cus-

tomers with varying size orders. While the COVID-19 pandemic has created unprecedented demand, many new customers say they will continue this new form of shop online and pick up at store well into the future. The ability of retailers to keep up with these increasing demands and efficiency requirements will be essential to keep existing customers and acquiring new online users.

“The Grocery Carousel brings immediate improvements to order retrieval speed and reduced customer wait times associated with the traditional grocery pick-up model.

The solution allows retailers to utilize wasted and unused vertical wall space to in turn maximize the number of online orders produced in shorter periods of time. Stores

additionally benefit by reducing already cluttered aisles giving expensive floor space back or subsequently increasing the hourly capacity of the pickup operation,” said Adam Kraft, White Systems National Retail Sales Director.

“This is the first of a series of innovative solutions for grocery and retail customers in response to the changing environment,” added Corey Calla, President of White Systems. “The Grocery Carousel is the solution for rapid order processing, efficient storage and customer retention. Even amidst high volumes of online orders, the White Grocery Carousel will eliminate chaos and decrease order cycle times allowing the retailer to process up to 400 percent more hourly orders.” GN

Murray’s Cheese

ucation options – they’re there among the shoppers talking about how to cook with a cheese, how to pair a cheese with other foods, drawing the customer’s attention to

we create the retail cheese experience,” Chubbuck said. “We’ve always thought of our cheesemongers as guides for the customers. The monger is out on the floor helping point things out.”

Murray’s keeps the sampling program in the mix with a daily preparation of samples packaged in to-go containers. The cheese that’s being sampled changes daily, and the samples are handed to the shoppers as they leave the store.

“They walk out of the store, and they’ve still got that sample,” Siegel said. “We hope that will bring them back.”

The restaurant area was designed to seat 50 diners, but its indoor seating area is closed until pandemic restrictions are lifted. Until then, the restaurant is offering take-out service, and diners are welcome to be seated at five outdoor tables alongside the restaurant and the shop. Under the guidance of Chef Clare Malfitano, formerly of Gramercy Tavern, the menu has been adapted to accommodate the COVID-19 experience.

The days when casual friends would share a companionable cheese plate are over for now, so guests are more likely to opt for individual smaller plates. If they do want a larger cheese plate, so that they can have more to try, Murray’s will break it up for them and serve it on individual plates for no additional cost so they can share it across the table. One popular option is a bento box lunch containing a selection of

items that changes every day or two.

Guests can order that either to consume at the outdoor tables or to take with them.

“It’s really beautifully packaged, and you can walk out the door with that,” Siegel said.

The monger’s choice cheese board packed in the bento box contains either three cheeses or five cheeses along with accouterments. One of the cheeses is always from the Murray’s caves, and they’ll be accompanied by a fruit, usually a piece of bread or crackers, a savory garnish and often Marcona almonds. A recent box contained Epoisses, Stockinghall, Stilton, Fromager D’affinois, Ewephoria, strawberries, Marcona almonds, cornichons, Castelvetrano olives and honey.

The Stockinghall is a Murray’s Cavemaster Original that won the best of show award at the 2019 American Cheese Society Judging and Competition. It’s a cheddar made from an original Murray’s recipe developed in collaboration with a dairy scientist from Cornell University and milk provided by Old Chatham Creamery to make a cheese with a fudgy texture and big bacony flavor. Murray’s Cavemasters have

Continued from PAGE 1 Island City. The space they found in a building that was still in development was bigger than they needed for either a shop or a restaurant, which provided the space to do both. Rockwell architects came and spent time in the Murray’s stores and in the cheese cave, and took cheese classes to get the feel for Murray’s world and spent time in the new location’s neighborhood to absorb the character of its booming residential and commercial environment before coming in with a design that gave each of the two spaces – the retail shop and the restaurant – its own atmosphere. The shop is designed to evoke the feeling of a creamery, with its clean white walls, stainless steel fixtures and linen around the lighting fixtures to create the look of cheesecloth and hoops. “In the restaurant, it’s a texturally rich evocation of the transformation a cheese would go through in the cave,” Chubbuck said. Because the shop is a long, narrow space, there wasn’t a lot of room for traffic flow around a large cheese case and counter, so the shop simply doesn’t have those – cheese is displayed on cantilevered shelves with a wheel at the center of the display surrounded by cut pieces of wrapped cheese. Instead of being behind a counter, cheesemongers circulate among shoppers, acting essentially as docents as well as sales staff. Since they’re not trapped behind a counter, having the mongers moving around the store creates a lot more ed-

a particular cheese to illustrate a point.

“That was limited before, when they were stationary,” said Cara Siegel, Murray’s Cheese Director of Business Development.

Before the pandemic, sampling was going to be a huge part of that customer service – the intention had been that once a cheese had come up in discussion, the monger could invite the shopper to sample the cheese. The monger would leave the shopper’s side long enough to slice the sample and then bring it back to the customer. “In the pandemic, we’re not functioning in that way,” Chubbuck said. “Obviously, right now, we don’t want them taking their masks off,” Siegel added.

While that kind of sampling can’t happen right now, the plan designed to work around a lack of space for a counter has proved to serve very well in an era of social distancing.

Customers are simply served with friendly conversations about cheese and how to incorporate it into the shopper’s life rather than served with a taste or two. “We’re thinking more creatively about how

taken that even further this year with Blockinghall, a cheese that’s made from the Stockinghall recipe, but instead of being wrapped and aged in Murray’s Natural Rind Cave, it’s formed into a block and sealed into a vacuum packaging to age without a rind. It develops a creamy texture with huge crystals and umami flavors with slight citrus notes.

Visit www.murrayscheese.com. GN

16

SUPPLIER NEWS

GOURMET NEWS OCTOBER 2020 www.gourmetnews.com

Supplier News Meals to Order in from the Freezer Case

BY LORRIE BAUMANN

Mona Ahmad knows what it’s like to come home from a demanding job to find a family looking at her and asking about dinner.

She wanted to provide for her family the same kind of traditional meals that her mother had provided for her family through the years that the family had traveled from country to country as her father’s job as a United Nations diplomat required. “Everywhere we went my mother would make our delicious food,” Ahmad recalls. “It was such a blessing to have a variety of textures, flavors and aromas fill our home.” Those meals were rich with the complex flavors of Ahmad’s Pakistani heritage, and her mother had spent hours cooking them through the day.

Ahmad had the skills her mother had taught her, but as a manager at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, she just didn’t have that kind of time. “Our food is one of the most difficult cuisines – it’s very labor intensive and requires a multitude of ingredients,” she said. “It wasn’t very easy for me to make a home-cooked meal all the time.”

The solution she came up with was her own version of a meal kit – she put together packages of food with all the ingredients prepared for cooking and froze them. “I just wished it could be more prepped – something that maybe even my husband could start,” she said. “Have it frozen and ready, so that you just defrost and cook on the stovetop and then eat.... It was a need I had, and I found out that I was not alone.”

Those frozen meals came in particularly handy as Ahmad made meals to take to her father. “He also had a friend who used to have someone make food for him, but one week the lady was sick,” she said. “I gave him a few of my meals, and, voilà, he was cooking on his own, and his pain point for food diminished.”

She started talking to people about her idea, and some of them told her that they’d love to have some of those meals, too, and so would their children who’d left home to go to college but were often homesick for an honest-to-gosh home-cooked meal.

Somewhere in all those conversations, Ahmad discerned a real need in the marketplace – a lot of people wanted to eat the

kind of food that she had grown up eating, but they didn’t have the time or the skills or even the ingredients to prepare it for themselves. “I started looking at statistics and found that most people would like a home-cooked meal but wanted meal prep to be easier, and, now more than ever, people are facing meal prep fatigue,” she said.

“Also, there is no skillet meal right now that represents cuisine from this region. This was an opportunity that I saw, and it just evolved.”

“It took a while to launch because I was juggling kids and being a sole proprietor,” she said. “Also, I wanted to sell to grocery stores, so I needed a USDA factory [a facility certified by the U.S. Department of Agriculture to handle meat processing] – I couldn’t just make it out of my kitchen. I couldn’t even make it out of a commercial kitchen.”

Once she had those wrinkles ironed out, she started field-testing Mona’s Curryations, the brand she adopted for her products, to gauge how the market responded.

“What we learned is that people enjoy making this cuisine at home. They like that it’s all natural, and that it tastes so fresh,” she said. “They were pleasantly surprised because they were getting it from the

freezer aisle.”

Gradually, her nascent line was picked up by small, ethnic grocery stores. Ahmad marketed it tirelessly with advertisements

BRIEFS

on Facebook, publicity in the Boston Globe, putting the word out among friends and family and at her local mosque. “Wherever I could advertise that we had this product, I did,” she said.

As the market for Mona’s Curryations grew from early adopters who got the frozen skillet meals from Boston’s ethnic markets to new customers who didn’t share Ahmad’s heritage and shopped for their food in supermarkets, Ahmad adapted her offerings to fit the tastes of a wider spectrum of consumers – those who wanted fresh-tasting meals that they could prepare easily at home but who weren’t familiar with the nuances of Ahmad’s Pakistani cuisine.

The Mona’s Curryations line now consists of Chicken Tikka Masala, Palak Paneer, Chickpea Tikka Masala and Tandoori Chicken. They’re made with fresh, natural ingredients, and the meats are halal. The Chickpea Tikka Masala is vegan, and the Tandoori Chicken is dairy free. The 22ounce packages are intended to serve two with full meal servings, and they include the naan. They retail for about $9.99.

“These restaurant-inspired meals are complete with the protein; vegetables; oil; and spices such as turmeric, fenugreek, garam masala and cumin. Everything is mixed in the bag so that you can enjoy the experience of making and eating this cuisine right in the comfort of your home,” Ahmad said. “You just need a skillet or a saucepan.

Pour everything in and let it cook for about 10 minutes and warm up the naan. Multicooker instructions are also included.”

Ahmad is expecting to have her line ready to roll out into supermarkets this fall, and she expects it to appeal to consumers who are still doing most of their eating at home, whether or not the pandemic continues to rage. She expects the line to launch regionally in New England first, with plans to scale up as distribution and retail arrangements progress.

For more information, visit www.monascurryations.com. GN

Harvester Farms Launches Savory Vegetable Line Harvester Farms has introduced its FreezeDried Sugar Snap Peas. To make them, fresh peas are freeze-dried, gently removing any water and then seasoned with salt and pepper to transform them into a snack. They’re vegan and largely allergy-sensitive, as they are peanut free, tree nut free, soy free, dairy free and gluten free. They contain five grams of plant protein, representing 18 percent of recommended daily dietary fiber intake, and an entire bag contains only 120 calories.

Harvester Farms plans to introduce a variety of Freeze-Dried Snap Pea flavors in the coming months.

Introducing Monkey Madness Sauces Monkey Madness sauces are created by Michelin-rated Chef Sheel Joshi, who comes from an Indo-European culinary training of 25 years with influences from his travels across Europe and Asia. Sheel’s food has been recognized by Los Angeles Times, Houston Chronicle, The Food Network show “The Best of Ethnic Eats,” LA Weekly, Hollywood Reporter, travel guide “The Lonely Planet,” Paper City Magazine, Houstonia Magazine and many more.

Monkey Madness sauces are intended to bring fun, ease and joy of cooking to the home cook while elevating the Indian sauce market through high quality flavor, authenticity and conscious choice of ingredients.

Vow Demonstrates Dishes Prepared from Cell-Grown Meats Vow, an Australia-based food company developing meat products directly from animal cells, recently conducted a culinary demonstration of its multi-species meat platform with six unique dishes demonstarting the company’s technical ability and an important milestone on its journey to create meat products more delicious than any conventional animal meat. Six different animal species were selected from Vow’s diverse cell library and cultivated (grown from cells in a cultivator) for this product demonstration and included kangaroo, pig, lamb, alpaca, rabbit and goat.

siggi’s Donates $60,000 and Mentorship Hours Towards Community Nutrition Programs Yogurt-maker siggi’s announced the inaugural grant recipients of siggi’s startersSM, a new grant program that looks to empower dietitians to improve community nutrition at the local level. Mary Lynn Kardell, RD, LMNT; Stephanie Hodges, MS, MPH, RDN; and Jacquelyn Oddo, MS, RD, LD will each receive one $20,000 grant, the largest grant awarded by siggi’s to date. In addition to the funding, grant recipients will receive ongoing mentorship and support from the team at siggi’s as they bring their proposals to life.

18

SUPPLIER NEWS

GOURMET NEWS OCTOBER 2020 www.gourmetnews.com

Gourmet Flavor for the Freezer Case from Cali’flour Foods

BY LORRIE BAUMANN

Cali’flour Foods has a new option for consumers who are growing bored with their own cooking during COVID-19 quarantine as well as those who follow gluten-free, keto or vegetarian diets. The company has launched four new frozen entrees on its own website and is currently rolling them out nationally into retail stores.

The four products are Vegetable Lasagna, Lasagna with Meat Sauce, Chicken Enchilada Bake and Vegetable Enchilada Bake. Each contains 12 grams or less of net carbohydrates per serving, achieved by using cauliflower instead of the traditional tortillas and enchiladas, just as Cali’flour Foods’ pizza crusts function as alternatives to traditional breads in the company’s line of frozen pizzas and flatbreads. “These recipes came from the cookbook that I made – more importantly, they just came from the recipes that I developed,” said Cali’flour Foods Founder Amy Lacey.

“Even people who don’t like cauliflower like them.”

The 9-ounce single-serving meals are

Premium Java Continued from PAGE 1 “Our mission is to exceed expectations.

We have to exceed expectations each cup at a time, and the way we do that is by being very focused on what we do best,” he continued. “That’s the reason we try not to go and source coffee all over the world. We don’t know Brazilian coffee that well. We don’t know Ethiopian coffee that well.

They’re great, but we know the Indonesian very well, and we believe that by focusing, we can exceed expectations.”

Tentera Coffee offers whole bean Indonesian coffees, ground coffees and the SingleServe Pour-over Coffee Bag. The coffee bag was introduced to the coffee market by the Japanese, but its market has expanded very well across Asia, and it’s just being introduced to the American market by Tentera Coffee. “We are introducing a new way of drinking coffee to America,” Riady said.

“This coffee solves a lot of problems.”

One of those problems is plastic waste from the cups that package most singleserve coffee. Coffee pods and capsules have been a bane of the environment ever since Nespresso patented its plastic capsule in 1991, according to environmental groups that have pointed accusatory fingers at the proliferation of the polypropylene pods as their popularity exploded in the 21st century. Their argument is that, despite the recyclable labels that generally appear on the plastic capsules, they generally end up in garbage incinerators or in landfills, where they take hundreds of years to degrade.

Greenpeace points out in “Circular Claims

think of a person who wouldn’t enjoy these, especially right now.”

The new entrees are also kid-friendly, so they appeal to parents who are trying to persuade their children to eat more vegetables, Lacey said. “My oldest is pretty picky about what he eats – he’s a no-vegetable kind of kid,” she said. “For any kids who

won’t eat vegetables, these are amazing.”

Recipes for the dishes started in Lacey’s own home kitchen as she started developing recipes for meals that she could eat after being diagnosed with lupus, an auto-immune disease that requires that she follow an anti-inflammatory diet herself. “I grew up eating comfort food.

I love comfort food – biscuits and gravy kind of comfort food. I was looking to recreate comfort food to be healthy,” she said. “I was looking for a taco shell or a tortilla that I could eat. I was looking for something that I could make without having to make a separate meal – that the whole family would eat.”

In her home-cooking experiments, Lacey found that she could often substitute cauliflower grown around her in California’s Central Valley into her recipes, where its mild flavor would go unnoticed by the picky eaters in her family. “The lasagna, I made it one time, and I said, ‘This is a big winner,’” she said. “I have yet to meet any-

one who doesn’t love the lasagna.”

Another benefit of the dishes is that they do offer quite a bit of protein. “Even the Vegetable Enchilada Bake has 15 grams of protein in it – it’s very filling,” Lacey said.

“The Vegetable Lasagna has 24 grams of protein.” Much of that protein comes from the egg whites and cheese that bind the cauliflower together to make the crust that’s substituting for tortillas and noodles, so these dishes are not vegan. “We use high-quality ingredients. There’s zero added sugar. It’s natural, and they average 5 grams of fiber per serving,” she added.

“They’re simple, fresh ingredients – comfort food made healthy from our farm to your kitchen. It’s literally picked from the farm and made in our plant and taken to the freezer section.” The single-serve entrees retail in the range of $4.99 to $6.99 each.

In addition to the four entrees, Cali’flour Foods is extending its flatbread line that already includes its Plain and Italian Flatbreads with a Sun-Dried Tomato Flatbread that’s made with sun-dried tomato, cauliflower, eggs and mozzarella cheese and spices. “They’re a huge fan favorite,” Lacey said. “They’re a huge hit.”

For more information, visit www .califlourfoods.com. GN

Fall Flat,” a report published in February, 2020, that although a lot of plastic packaging products are labeled as recyclable, few of them actually are, either because of a lack of municipal recycling facilities that can handle anything other than polyethylene plastics, the kind of plastic that’s used to manufacture soda bottles, or because many other plastics cost more to recycle them than to make new plastic.

The Greenpeace report notes that the price of plastic waste has plummeted ever since China passed policies curbing Chinese imports of plastic waste, beginning in January of 2018. With China no longer accepting plastic waste, it’s become clearer in the U.S. that apparently plastic doesn’t recycle itself – someone has to think that there’s a value proposition there, and with China out of the market for recyclable plastics, Greenpeace argues that the recyclability claims that many manufacturers are making for their packaging are simply deceptive.

Tentera Coffee’s Single-Serve Pour-Over Coffee Bags are packed in aluminum packaging that’s recyclable. “The filter is made of paper. There’s no plastic within the product – it’s primarily paper,” Riady said. “We have to strive for eco-friendlier products.

It’s much more eco-friendly than the plastic pods in which some other single-serve coffees are sold.”

The single-serve packaging also offers the advantage of less waste of the coffee itself, since the coffee is made one cup at a time rather than one pot at a time, which may mean that leftover coffee is simply discarded, Riady said. “The pour over-coffee is good for 6 to 8 ounces of coffee and does

not require condiments.”

In addition, Tentera gives back 1 percent of its gross sales to 1% for the Planet, a nonprofit organization that advises on giving strategies for companies and individuals that want to use money and in-kind donations as a tool to benefit the environment and that certifies the donations. To date, the organization’s members have invested over $250 million in environmental nonprofit solutions through the 1% for the Planet network, according to the organization.

But since no one buys coffee primarily out of their urge to conserve the environment, Riady is quick to reassure that the Tentera coffee itself delivers on flavor. “The coffee itself tastes a lot better – it’s excellent coffee,” he said, pointing out that the coffee bags are really just an easy way to make a single cup of coffee using the pour-over method that consumers are used to seeing performed by their favorite baristas. “The best way to drink coffee is to do a manual pour – you want to pour hot water through your coffee.... That’s why people go to specialty coffee shops to have a barista do a manual brew for them, and it will cost you $8 to $10 a cup, which is a very expensive way to drink it,” Riady said. “With the Single-Serve Pour-Over Coffee Bag, the average cost is about $1.50 per cup, and without the equipment, you don’t have to clean it, either.”

With the Pour-Over Coffee Bag, the consumer simply opens the packet and puts it over the cup and then pours the hot water through it. “It’s the best method for getting the cleanest, smoothest cup of coffee you’re ever going to get,” Riady said. “And it’s portable, by the way – you can take as

many packs of coffee as you want to travel with you. If you’re going camping, you take along a couple of packs with you – or 20 packs. You don’t need to bring your machine; you don’t need to do any cleaning.

Bringing your grinder is such a mess.”

Tentera’s offerings of whole bean coffees include, among others, Sumatra Gayo, which offers dark chocolate flavors; Bali Kintamani, with citrus flavors; Sumatra Rasuna, which has sweet tropical flavors; and Celebes Toraja, which offers nutty, chocolate herbal flavors. Sumatra Gayo, Bali Kintamani and Sumatra Rasuna are also offered in the Single-Serve Coffee Bags, which come in three package sizes, of which the most popular is the seven-pack box, which retails for $16.45, Riady said. The Coffee Bags are also offered in a three-bag pack that serves as a sample for beginners and retails for $7.05, and a 30-pack box that retails for $59.99.

“A lot of people try the seven-pack, they love it, and then they want to buy the 30pack,” Riady said. “Almost everything is single-origin. We don’t blend any coffee.

Coffee’s so good anyway, and it’s exactly how it came from the farm. We’re not doing anything to the coffee to try to hide the flavor.”

Tentera offers seven-bag and 30-bag variety packs that showcase all the different flavors of Indonesian coffee: Bali, Sumatra and Java. “A lot of people love that because they want to try a different coffee every day,” Riady said. “People love it – it’s a way to have an experience and enjoy something without having a lot of hassle.”

For more information, visit www .tenteracoffee.com. GN

both gluten free and grain free, so they appeal to those consumers who are following a variety of diet regimes, including keto, gluten-free, grain-free or anti-inflammatory diets. “There are a lot of products that are gluten free that are not healthy, but these are grain free as well,” Lacey said. “I can’t

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NATURALLY HEALTHY

GOURMET NEWS OCTOBER 2020 www.gourmetnews.com

Naturally Healthy A Coffee Creamer for Active, Health-Conscious Consumers

BY LORRIE BAUMANN

Urby Modern Creamer is a new ketofriendly coffee creamer with functional benefits from plant protein and no added sugar. The brand’s name is a reference to the idea that it stands for products designed for consumers who are trying to live their best lives.

Urby Founder Nick Boggs was looking for a healthier alternative to the flavored coffee creamer that he’d been using, so he started looking at ingredient labels. After those labels convinced him that he wasn’t going to find the clean-ingredient option and functional benefits that he was seeking on grocery store shelves, he set to work to develop his own.

Boggs started by looking at the data to discover how many other people shared his problem. “I really relied on the market research to define what the product profile would be,” he said. “That provided a lot of guidance to take that product profile to the food scientists.”

Boggs told the scientists that he had a list of features that he wasn’t willing to compromise on and asked them to develop a formula. The product had to contain no artificial ingredients and no added sugar, he

insisted. He also wanted a functional benefit in the form of a plant protein.

Product development took more than a year and entailed more than 100 iterations of the creamer to come up with a product that met Boggs’ specifications and dissolved satisfactorily in both hot and cold beverages. Experiments tested different ingredients and different suppliers, with the results checked through a lot of blind taste testing, Boggs said. “We ultimately were able to meet our high standards for nutritional value while delivering a great taste.”

Urby Modern Creamer launched online in November 2019, and after strong interest from the online marketplace, Urby is now making its way into brick and mortar retailers. “There are a lot of people who are looking for a product that’s not made of sugar and water and a lot of artificial ingredients,” Boggs said. “It’s that health-conscious consumer that the product is really resonating with.”

Urby Modern Creamer is made with organic pea protein and organic sunflower seed protein, so that each serving provides 5 grams of plant protein. The product is sweetened with monkfruit extract, so it contributes 40 calories and 0 grams of

sugar. Like protein powders, Urby Modern Creamer tends to clump when it’s added to a hot beverage, so Boggs recommends the use of a handheld electric frother to mix it into coffee. “Most of our customers are familiar with protein powders, so it’s very intuitive to them,” Boggs said. “Some people even like to use a blender.”

The creamer’s organic coconut milk provides flavor and creaminess. “Since we don’t use any color additives to create a bright, white product, it’s got a little bit of a beige tint to the product, due to the natural color of the plant proteins,” Boggs said.

Urby Modern Creamer is packaged in a polyethylene jar that contains 26 servings and retails for $25.99. It includes a scoop that measures out an individual serving. For each jar that’s sold, Urby donates a meal through a partnership with Rise Against Hunger, an international hunger relief organization that distributes food and life-changing aid

to the world’s most vulnerable. “It’s a partnership that we established prior to launch, so it’s built in as core to the business,” Boggs said. “Now that the pandemic has hit, the need is even greater, so it makes the partnership really special.”

Distribution arrangements to brick and mortar retailers are under discussion, according to Boggs. “Before the pandemic occurred, we’d started placing the product in fitness studios. At the same time, throughout the pandemic, we’ve started conversations with larger national retailers. We’re getting a lot of interest in the product, and we’re moving forward with the conversations,” he said.

“There’s never a good time for pandemiclevel disruption, but the positive thing is that there is great interest, and the conversations are moving forward despite the challenges.”

For more information, visit www.liveurby.com. GN

A Convenient Option for Keto Consumers

BY LORRIE BAUMANN

Lenny & Larry’s Keto Cookie™ was designed to appeal to consumers who may have been finding it more difficult to stick to their keto diet regimen while they’re staying at home this year.

The diet continues to be very popular among American consumers, partly because it’s associated with rapid weight loss, but it’s considered to be one of the harder diets to follow over the long term. “People are still eating keto even though we’re in the middle of a pandemic,” said Megan Crossland, Vice President of Marketing for Lenny & Larry’s. “People are very committed to that lifestyle.”

The Keto Cookie was designed as an option for those consumers, as well as for those following a plant-based diet, a rapidly growing market. The global ketogenic diet market amounted to almost $10 million in 2018 and has grown since then. It’s projected to reach $15 billion by 2027. “Plant-

based foods is still growing by double digits on a large base, so it’s definitely a relevant trend,” Crossland said.

The Keto Cookie offers those consumers

an extremely convenient way to meet their dietary goals. The cookie is a 1.6-ounce soft-baked cookie that’s made with no eggs, no butter and no grain. Coconut oil keeps them soft and provides healthy fats. They’re fiber-rich to help keep hunger at bay, and they deliver 8 grams of protein and only 3 grams of net carbohydrates. They’re offered in three varieties: Chocolate Chip, Peanut

Butter and Coconut.

The Keto Cookie joins a Lenny & Larry’s line that already includes The Complete Cookie, a vegan cookie that offers up to 16 grams of plant-based protein and 10 grams of fiber. It’s offered in 13 flavors that include Double Chocolate, Snickerdoodle, Birthday Cake and White Chocolate Macadamia in addition to classics like Chocolate Chip, Peanut Butter and Oatmeal Raisin. Seasonal flavors include Pumpkin Spice, Gingerbread and Peppermint Chocolate, which are shipping to retailers now. The Complete Cookie is offered in two sizes, a 4ounce cookie that’s intended as a meal replacement and a 2-ounce snack size. They’re all individually wrapped.

The Crunchy Cookie from Lenny & Larry’s offers a texture that’s a bit crisper than softbaked Complete Cookie. It’s singlebite size, so The Crunchy Cookie is packaged in either a 1.25-ounce bag that’s the right size for a lunch box as well as a resealable 4.25-ounce bag that contains about 3.5 servings. “You can store the large bag in the pantry and

snack on it throughout the work day,” Crossland said. “The small size works great to pack in lunchboxes.” The Crunchy Cookie is offered in Chocolate Chip and Double Chocolate varieties.

“Our portfolio is perfectly positioned at the intersection of comfort food, protein for

feeling full and eating healthy,” Crossland said. “This pandemic is really bringing to people’s attention in stark relief the link between diet and exercise and your health.”

For more information, visit www .lennylarry.com. GN

SUPPLEMENT TO

OCTOBER 2020

GOURMET NEWS

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gourmet entertaining

G O U R M E T

I N D U S T R Y

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GOURMET ENTERTAINING

GOURMET NEWS OCTOBER 2020 www.gourmetnews.com

Bone Suckin’ Sauce Talks Serious

Icons of European Taste

This is the serious barbecue, grilling and marinating sauce for land and sea. Firstplace winner in the Battle of Sauces and best in sales in Winner’s Circle, Bone Suckin’ Sauce® is a western North Carolina tomato-based sauce sweetened with honey and molasses for an irresistible flavor.

Bone Suckin’ Sauce is non-GMO, gluten free, kosher, dairy free and contains no high fructose corn syrup. It’s the per-

The producers of Prosciutto di San Daniele PDO, Grana Padano PDO and Prosciutto di Parma PDO are the focus of an exciting joint promotional campaign that seeks not only to raise awareness about these unique foods among American and Canadian retailers and consumers, but also to emphasize the importance of quality, authenticity and tradition.

Although these products are from Italy,

fect addition to wings, ribs, chicken, fish, beef, pork and much more. Bone Suckin’ Sauce is available in Original, Hot, Thicker Style and Hot Thick.

Ford’s Gourmet Foods www.bonesuckin.com

DeBrand Fine Chocolate’s Classic Collection DeBrand’s Dark Raspberry Cream from the Classic Collection has been the company’s most popular piece for three decades. It contains a pure, smooth raspberry cream and tart raspberry juice surrounded by dark (or milk) chocolate.

Raspberry Creams are available in conveniently and tastefully packaged boxes of five, in bulk to be beautifully displayed in a case, or as part of the coveted Classic Collection gift box assortment.

DeBrand’s Classic Collection is offered in several varieties so that it can be the perfect size and price-point for any occasion. This is DeBrand Fine Chocolate’s best-selling gourmet chocolate collection and is the ideal gift for people who appreciate quality and tradition. Timeless fa-

vorites make up DeBrand’s most popular collection including luscious caramel variations, pure fruit creams bursting with wonderfully intense flavors, as well as re-inspired traditional selections such as Gourmet PB&J, Toffee Crush and Orange Cream. DeBrand offers a variety of options from impressive chocolate gifts to impulse items.

DeBrand Fine Chocolates 260.969.8331 www.debrand.com

Ariston CBD-Infused Olive Oil Ariston CBD-Infused Olive Oil combines all natural and high-quality hemp-derived CBD produced in Connecticut with the Ariston family’s own production of extra-virgin olive oil from southwest Greece for a delicious and healthy elixir.

This oil combines the health benefits and flavors of both the nutty, earthy CBD oil and the grassy flavor profile of Ariston Koroneiki Extra Virgin Olive Oil. This combination is ideal for salads, savory

dressings and even homemade pestos. In combination with Ariston’s Traditional Balsamic Vinegar, lemon juice, garlic and mustard, it makes an incredible salad dressing.

Ariston Specialties 860.263.8498 www.aristonspecialties.com

New Lemon Pepper OMG! Pretzels OMG! Pretzels takes snacking to a whole new level with its savory product line of gourmet flavored sourdough pretzel nuggets.

As a family-owned and operated small business, OMG! Pretzels has hand-crafted each of its many flavors to perfection.

From kitchen to shelf, these flavorful pretzel nuggets are made with the finest ingredients around.

With its new Lemon Pepper OMG! Pret-

zels, the company has combined both of these flavor cravings, creating a zesty kick mixed with decadent spices and herbs. Recognized as an award-winning product, high-quality and strong consumer satisfaction always go hand-in-hand at OMG! Pretzels.

OMG! Pretzels www.omgpretzels.com

Busha Browne Original Hot Pepper Jelly Busha Browne’s Original Hot Pepper Jelly is the traditional spicy-sweet condiment based on the world-famous hot and flavorful Jamaican Scotch Bonnet Pepper. This Pepper Jelly is the perfect accompaniment for cheeses and meats (hot or cold), and excels when mixed with cream cheese for canapes or used as a spread or a dip. It also makes a superb glaze for

meats and vegetables.

It’s available in the U.S. through importer Source Atlantique.

Source Atlantique 201.947.1000 info@sourceatlantique.com www.sourceatlantique.com

they are indicative of the many traditional foods from Europe that are unique to their respective areas, as well as the production methods which have been handed down from generation to generation by proud artisans who are in tune with the land and the seasons, all of which is signified by designations of origin that guarantee authenticity.

Icons of European Taste www.iconsofeuropeantaste.eu

Big Country Organic Cane Sugar Big Country’s organic cane sugar is certified organic, non-GMO, fair trade and kosher. The 100 percent certified organic sugarcane cane is harvested in South America, cut by farmers and taken to the mill where the juice is extracted and crystallized. Since it is far less processed than traditional sugars, it retains its natural flavor and blonde color. This organic cane sugar is processed without the use of bone char, making the product 100 percent vegan.

Big Country’s line of organic ingredients is perfect for today’s conscious consumer. Customers love using Big Country™ organic cane sugar for a variety of applications including baked goods, beverages and culinary. They also value that these certified fair trade products support safe, healthy working condi-

tions and extra income for the farmers and mill workers behind the products.

Along with Organic Cane Sugar, Big Country offers four additional product offerings including Big Country Organic Light Brown Sugar, Big Country Organic Dark Brown Sugar, Big Country Organic Powdered Sugar and Big Country Organic Cocoa Powder. Suggested retail prices for sugar products:are from $5.99 to $6.49. Suggested retail price for organic cocoa powder is $8.49-$8.99.

Big Country Foods 760.916.5510 npersichetti@bigcountryfoods.com www.bigcountryfoods.com

Level up your Pickle Obsession with Pearl and Johnny Pearl and Johnny is on the cutting edge of the pickling trend. The brand offers customers all the briny salty goodness of homemade pickles with exceptional flavors but without all the time, trouble and expensive equipment. Pearl and Johnny’s 10-Minute Pickle Kits take it to the next level, allowing consumers to make their own flavor-packed pickles in just minutes.

The kits include a glass canning jar, organic seasoning packet and simple directions. The only other requirements are vinegar, water and vegetables. For consumers who have ever thought about making their own pickles, this product offers a way to test the waters.

The company encourages consumers to compare its ingredients to pickles on the shelf. While many pickles have ingredients like sodium benzoate and yellow #5, Pearl and Johnny’s ingredients are nothing but organic non-GMO real food ingredients such as organic dill weed, organic dill seed, organic garlic, and organic pepper flakes. The folks at Pearl and Johnny didn’t stop at organic and non-GMO. All of the products are made with real, whole food ingredients, not by adding just the flavors.

Dill-icious, the company’s garlic dills, are the line’s best seller. The line also includes three other flavors: Fire & Spice, Sweet Dreams and Jalapeño & Horseradish,

which is made with jalapeño rather than jalapeño flavor. Refill boxes that contain four seasoning packets are also available for consumers who already have a jar.

To make the pickles, the consumer fills the jar with fresh vegetables. The seasoning packet is combined with ½ cup of vinegar and ¾ cup of water and brought to a boil before being poured over the vegetables. The jar is then sealed and refrigerated. Pickles are ready right away, but flavor will develop over the next hour, and the pickles will be still more flavorful after a day in the refrigerator.

The kits are suitable as gifts, and the project is easy for an adult to do along with children. The kits turn home-grown vegetables into colorful jars of pickles that are pretty enough to give away as gifts that showcase the natural flavor of fresh produce.

Pearl and Johnny is a small familyowned company tucked away in the Missouri Ozarks with a mission to share the family’s time-honored traditions in a way that fits in with today’s busy lifestyles.

Products retail from $5.95 to $9.95.

Pearl and Johnny Inc. www.pearlandjohnny.com

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GOURMET ENTERTAINING

GOURMET NEWS OCTOBER 2020 www.gourmetnews.com

Creative Mixology Mixes from The Spice Lab

Cordero from The French Farm

The Spice Lab’s Creative Mixology AllNatural Frozen Cocktail Mixes provide an easy and delicious way to beat the heat and make every gathering feel like a party.

They come in six fruitforward flavors that create irresistible icy cocktails worth the brain freeze. Use your liquor – favorite tequila, vodka, gin or white rum – or mix with wine to create the ultimate adult slushy drink. Try mixing Raspberry + Lemon with a dry rosé to make a refreshing frosé. Add tequila to Mango Chili + Lime for a frozen margarita with a spicy kick. Pineapple + Passion Fruit pairs deliciously with white rum, and Blood Orange Sangria goes great with a dry pinot noir or

The French Farm is now offering a wide variety of vacuum-sealed products from Cordero, an Italian family business that has been a pioneer in the processing of Italian grains and cereals since its founding in 1958. Passion and expertise are the core values of the brand. Wheat, corn, and rice are the basis of Italian cuisine and culture, and the Cordero family established itself as the go-to producer for bakers, restaurateurs and pizza makers from all over Italy.

These vacuum-sealed grains are the newest addition to the brand’s product range. Easy-to-use packaging plus product freshness and an innovative and modern look make Cordero an ever-evolving company with one goal in mind: customer

merlot. Both Blueberry + Pomegranate and Bing Cherry + Lime create delicious icy drinks with either vodka or gin.

To make cocktails using liquor, simply mix contents of package with six cups water and two cups of liquor. To make cocktails using wine, mix contents of package with one bottle of wine (750mL) and then one bottle of water (750mL).

They should freeze for at least six hours before serving. Simply stir, freeze, serve and enjoy. No blender is required.

The Spice Lab sales@thespicelab.com www.spices.com

Festive Fragrance from Stonewall Kitchen The Deck the Halls collection of personal care products from Stonewall Kitchen gives consumers a new way to enjoy the fresh scent of pine, a hallmark of the holidays. The collection is a seasonal addition to the company’s popular Fine Home Keeping line and features clove, orange zest, fir and cedar wood essential oils that lend these products pleasing notes of spiced citrus and evergreen garlands.

Handcrafted in New England from only the finest ingredients, the collection includes a plant-based, vitamin-rich hand soap, a moisturizing shea butter lotion and a pure soy wax candle that burns cleanly for up

to 40 hours.

These premium products let customers give themselves some self-care amidst the hustle and bustle of the holidays. They also make merry gifts to show family and friends how much they’ve been appreciated throughout the year.

Stonewall Kitchen www.stonewallkitchen.com

New Monti Trentini Labels Speak to Origin Monti Trentini has redesigned its labels to better communicate the identity of its cheeses, their taste and their origin. Layout for each of the company’s line of specialty PDO cheeses is consistent.

Each label includes a background that reflects the characteristics of the product. The background for the Fresh Asiago PDO cheese’s label evokes the unique, mild flavor of the cheese, while the image behind the Fontal Cheese’s name depicts the cows that produced the milk for it grazing in their pas-

tures. The colors in the background image for the Lagorai Cheese represent the savory flavors that reflect the mountain pastures that surround the dairy where the milk was produced. Finally, the image behind the Vezzena Cheese’s name recalls the golden color of the cheese. Each of these cheeses in this line are offered in 7-ounce exactweight wedges.

Monti Trentini info@montitrentini-usa.com www.montitrentini.com

ENZO’S TABLE Introduces Pesto Line The Ricchiutis, a fourth-generation central California farming family, continue a 100-year tradition of excellence with a line of ENZO’S TABLE Pesto. This premium, shelf stable provision is handcrafted in small batches, using the freshest and finest ingredients, including award-winning ENZO Organic Extra Virgin Olive Oil. ENZO’S TABLE Pesto is extremely versatile and ideal for quick and delicious meals, tasty appetizers and the perfect

addition to the ever-popular charcuterie board. With four unique flavor offerings – Basil, Artichoke Lemon, Sun Dried Tomato and Sweet Pepper – ENZO’S TABLE Pesto is sure to be a customer favorite. It’s available with 12 6ounce jars per case.

ENZO’S TABLE 559.765.5918 www.enzostable.com

satisfaction.

The line of vacuumsealed products offered in the U.S. by The French inFarm cludes rice, risotto, grains, cereals and polenta. Ready to cook or ready to eat, find the product that will please your customer!

Cordero products are packed with 10 units in a case and imported directly from Italy by The French Farm.

The French Farm 713.660.0577 www.frenchfarm.com

DeBrand Fine Chocolates Truffles in 12 Flavors With 12 incredible variations, DeBrand Fine Chocolates Truffles seem almost too beautiful to eat. Each over-sized piece is individually and artistically designed, but its true beauty lies within. Each silky, rich, Truffle is like a petite, luxurious chocolate dessert. Your customers will not be able to resist these decadent chocolates, each bursting with its own unique flavor.

The Caramel Truffle is one of DeBrand’s most popular. This Truffle contains milk chocolate with a soft, liquid caramel inside, covered in a creamy milk chocolate shell.

DeBrand offers several varieties of chocolates so that there is always the perfect size and price-point for any occasion.

It’s included in DeBrand’s Classic Collection, the ideal gift for people who appreciate quality and tradition. Timeless favorites make up DeBrand’s most popular collection, including luscious caramel variations, pure fruit creams bursting with wonderfully intense flavors, as well as re-inspired traditional selections such as Gourmet PB&J, Toffee Crush and Orange Cream.

DeBrand Fine Chocolates 260.969.8331 www.debrand.com

Chile and Corn Roasters Made in the USA Arizona Chile Roasters manufactures steel-constructed chile and corn roasters as well as pellet rotisseries for commercial or home use.

The commercial Chile Roasters are made in four different commercial barrel sizes to suit your business needs and/or customer base, and are offered with regular or stainless steel barrels of ¾inch or ½-inch expanded metal. For customers who need a smaller barrel, Arizona Chile Roasters builds three sizes of table-top Chile Roasters.

The Wheel-Mounted Corn Roaster has a rotisserie of six stainless steel trays and is offered in hand crank and motorized versions. All of the chile and corn roasters are piped for propane gas and include hose with high-pressure regulator.

Arizona Chile Roasters Pellet Rotisseries are modeled after the Corn Roaster,

with four or six trays and a pellet hopper with controls and temperature probes.

Arizona Chile Roasters combines expertise with the highest standards for customer service and quality products.

Whether you have a question or a concern you’d like to address, you can count on Arizona Chile Roasters to give you the attention you deserve. It’s part of providing the quality customer service that customers have come to know about this company.

These products are hand-made in the USA, and Arizona Chile Roasters was the manufacturer selected for the state of Arizona to display at the 3rd Annual Made in America Product Showcase at the White House in July of 2019.

Arizona Chile Roasters www.arizonachileroasters.com

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GOURMET ENTERTAINING

GOURMET NEWS OCTOBER 2020 www.gourmetnews.com

Keto-Friendly Fudge from Country Fresh Just because your customer is on a diet, doesn’t mean your fudge sales have to slim down too. Country Fresh Food & Confections offers keto-friendly, SugarFree Fudge, which is the perfect guiltless pleasure. With a net carbohydrate count of 1 gram per ounce, this Sugar-Free Fudge also contributes to the daily recommendations of healthy fiber, is diabetic safe, and reduced in calories too. Flavors are made with Belgian chocolate, real fruit such as strawberries, AA-grade butter and rich dairy cream. Keto-friendly Sugar-Free Fudge is available in several varieties of bulk, 2-ounce displays, 6-ounce trays,

The New MarDona Stuffed Olive Collection 12-ounce trays, and fudge mix.

Brands include Country Fresh Fudge™ and Pamela Anne’s Classic Confections™. Low cost private labeling is also available for the 6-ounce and 12-ounce trays.

Country Fresh Food & Confections Inc. 800.545.8782 info@countryfreshfood.com www.countryfreshfood.com

Mel’s Toffee Award-Winning Maple Bourbon The flavor of Mel’s Toffee Maple Bourbon Pecan Toffee is reminiscent of pecan pie.

It’s pecan pie in toffee form. The main ingredients are: Jim Beam Maple, pecans and Dutch cocoa powder drizzled with dark chocolate.

Maple Bourbon is a fan favorite and has won several awards. In 2017 and 2018, Maple Bourbon Pecan won bronze awards for best collaborative flavor and most unique toffee in International Chocolate Salon competitions. For the fall 2018 Detroit Ball Beer Fest, Maple Bourbon Pecan collaborated with a beer that placed in the

top 10 out of 300 competing beers.

Mel’s Toffee can be found in vats of beer to gallons of ice cream and batches of cookies. It is sold from Mom and Pop stores to specialty food stores.

Mel’s Toffee michelle@melstoffee.com www.melstoffee.com

Jake’s Nut Roasters Seasoned Almonds Jake’s Nut Roasters is a creative line of specialty almond snacks with distinctively bold and unique flavors, which include Bleu Cheese Cracked Pepper, Bloody Mary, Mesquite Smoked, Hatch Chile, Maple and Barbecue.

Jake’s almonds provide an unparalleled snacking experience and make eating this healthy snack both fun and satisfying.

Produced in a dedicated peanut-free facility, these premium California almonds

are dry roasted and seasoned in small batches to deliver exceptional quality.

Jake’s Nut Roasters 7ounce cans have a cool, classic appearance that look great on store shelves, kitchen counters or table centerpieces, while also making the perfect holiday gift.

Jasper Specialty Foods 800.255.1641 www.jasperspecialtyfoods.com www.jakesnutroasters.com

Wax-It-All Food-Grade Paste Wax Howard Wax-It-All is a food-grade paste wax that is safe for any surface where food contact may occur.

This thick, smooth blend of beeswax, carnauba wax and foodgrade mineral oil helps to revive, seal and protect surfaces in and around the home. Use Wax-It-All on butcher block, concrete, stainless steel, granite, marble, soapstone, slate and laminate countertop surfaces as well as metal, plastic furniture and painted cabinets.

Wax-It-All enhances beauty and protects surfaces to make them look better and last longer. It’s easy to use: just rub the wax on, let it absorb and buff off any

excess. Wax-It-All is safe for indoor and outdoor countertop surfaces, and it helps delay tarnishing and oxidation of bronze, copper, brass and even wrought iron. Finishes have a soft sheen and a smooth feel.

Using after Howard’s other food-grade products locks in oils and waxes, and Wax-It-All is even great for woodworkers who need a hard, carnauba wax finish. Wax-It-All is made in the USA with food-grade ingredients under strict quality controls. Minimum wholesale order is just six cases.

Howard Products 800.266.9545 www.howardproducts.com

MarDona has produced a gourmet olive snack to meet anyone’s palate. Quality fresh olives are stuffed with the finest gourmet treats. The Savory Blue cheese is a perfect balance of the olive and cheese. The Turkish Red Hot Pepper is just what the label says, very hot! The Garlic Stuffed Olive is offered in two styles: Natural Garlic and Italian-Style, which has spices in the brine to enhance the garlic’s flavor. The line also includes the Jalapeño Stuffed Olive, which

combines heat and olive for balanced flavor.

These five items join the other MarDona products, which include Mild or Hot Muffuletta, Olive Antipasto, the Mild or Hot Giardiniera, Sweet and Spicy Garlic Cloves and Spicy Brussels Sprouts.

MarDona Specialty Foods 855-Oil Spray (645.7772) www.truffleoilsandmore.com

Elevate Your Pairings with Le Gruyère AOP Gruyère has been produced in western Switzerland for more than 900 years. Rich in flavor and packed with nutrients from the milk of cows grazing in pristine pastures, Le Gruyère AOP is the perfect partner for dry white wines, malty beers, and full-bodied ciders. It’s delicious on its own, in fondue, or in any dish that calls for melted cheese.

Today, anyone can label a cheese “Gruyère,” but Le Gruyère AOP is the real deal, tightly upholding the tradition of the cheesemaking process, the regions where it is produced, and the strict guidelines followed by the dairy farmers, cheesemakers and affineurs. Pure, unpasteurized milk is

gathered from 170 farms and brought to expert cheesemakers to produce 80-pound wheels of Le Gruyere AOP, which are then carefully matured in local cellars. Only the wheels that pass the highest standards set by professional cheese graders are allowed to be sold as “Le Gruyère AOP.” Travel back to 1115 AD with Le Gruyère AOP. You’ll experience one of the great mountain cheeses of Switzerland – 100 percent natural, 100 percent additive free, and naturally gluten free – just as it has always been.

Le Gruyère www.gruyere.com

RidgeCrest Herbals’ DreamOn Zen Unlike many natural sleep aids, DreamOn™ Zen does not contain melatonin.

Instead, the product uses herbs that promote relaxation and deep sleep, so natural hormone production remains uninterrupted.

Other herbs are adaptogenic to help the body respond to stress so you wake refreshed, calm, and happy.

RidgeCrest Herbal’s DreamOn Zen is safe, natural, and leaves you feeling refreshed while promoting healthier sleep and feelings of calm.

This formula is one of many RidgeCrest Herbals products that has been recognized with industry awards, winning the 2019 Taste For Life Women’s Essentials Award. Ridgecrest’s industry-unique ap-

proach to restful sleep creates a safe, natural botanical solution, tapping into the body’s ability to self-calm for effective shut-eye without unwanted side effects.

DreamOn Zen is mild and gentle, but pregnant women should consult with a health care practitioner familiar with herbal medicine. Black cohosh, combined with certain other herbs, has been used to help induce labor. It is safe for nursing mothers, and will not leave you groggy in the morning; it is designed to help you wake up refreshed. It is not habit-forming.

RidgeCrest Herbals 800.242.4649 www.rcherbals.com

Cheryl’s Nut Butters Cheryl’s Nut Butters offers more than 25 varieties of handcrafted Peanut, Almond, Pistachio, Cashew and Sunflower Butters.

They’re made in small batches with minimal ingredients. There is no added sugar or oil, and they have no soy, dairy, gluten, preservatives or artificial ingredients.

The company’s newest product is Peanut Butter for Dogs, launched in June of this year. Flavors intended for human consumption include Almond Butter with Dried Cranberries, Honey & Cinnamon; Almond Butter with Rosemary & Garlic; and

Peanut Butter with Dried Apples, Honey & Cinnamon along with perennial favorites like Cheryl’s Nut Butters Creamy Plain Ol’ Peanut Butter, Chunky Peanut Butter and Plain Ol’ Almond Butter, which is made with only dry roasted, salted almonds.

Cheryl’s Nut Butters 952.334.0511 www.cherylsnutbutters.com

28

GOURMET ENTERTAINING

GOURMET NEWS OCTOBER 2020 www.gourmetnews.com

Odyssey Tzatziki Greek Yogurt Dip Klondike Cheese Company introduces a healthier alternative to a traditional sour cream-based dip with its new Odyssey® brand Tzatziki Greek Yogurt Dip. This is a gluten-free and rBST-free cow’s milk dip that has crunchy cucumbers and a zest of garlic and dill.

Odyssey Tzatziki Greek Yogurt Dip has only 30 calories per serving, two times the protein, and five live and active cultures compared to traditional sour cream-based dips.

Hero Nectars Please Consumers T h e Tzatziki Greek Yo g u r t Dip is an addition to the family of other Odyssey Greek Yogurt Dips available in these delicious flavors: Southwest, French Onion and Bell Pepper.

Klondike Cheese www.odysseybrands.com

Gluten Free Pizzelle from Bella Lucia Pumpkin Pie Spice is the newest flavor for Bella Lucia Gluten Free Pizzelle Waffle Cookies. The new flavor joins a line that already includes Anise, Vanilla, Chocolate, Saigon Cinnamon and its seasonal Chocolate Drizzle variety.

The brand has attracted a wide range of followers with a handmade process of baking two at a time to keep the integrity of the original Italian favorite.

Bella Lucia is a women-owned business offering products that are verified non-

GMO as well as gluten free and promoting its products by expanding its reach to online markets to enhance name recognition for Bella Lucia as a brand.

Bella Lucia 814.201.2222 www.glutenfreepizzelles.com

Stinger makes, and PLUS+ Chews are packed with more for when you need more.

Honey Stinger makes great-tasting sports nutrition using honey. Nature’s energy source delivers immediate and sustained energy to help you push harder and go farther. Organic and non-GMO ingredients are used whenever possible. Honey is a key ingredient in all of Honey Stinger’s products because it’s delicious and naturally rich in carbohydrates and antioxidants.

Honey Stinger 866.464.6639 www.honeystinger.com

New Shipper Display from Crispy Green Consider Crispy Green’s latest innovation – the case stack shipper. This gorgeous, eye-popping, functional and affordable turnkey merchandising solution will attract not only moms searching for back to school snacks, but anyone who walks by – and could even draw in some new customers who aren’t familiar with the product. Crispy Green’s research proves how merchandising Crispy Fruit can drive more traffic and higher profitability. This display (with virtually no assembly required) is now available to order. Just send an e-mail to sales@crispygreen.com for information on how to place your order.

Crispy Fruit Snacks from Crispy Green are the perfect find for parents seeking

months.

Upgrade your juice selection with these addisure-to-please tions. The product is made in Spain and imported by Gourmet International, which has seen high double-digit increases in sales every year.

Gourmet International 800.875.5557 info@gourmetint.com www.gourmetint.com

DeBrand Chocolate Art Boxes

Honey Stinger PLUS+ Chews Support Exercise Honey Stinger PLUS+ Chews supports higher intensity and longer duration exercise with convenient chews that contain caffeine and electrolytes. Available in Mango Melon, Lemon Ginger, and Stingerita Lime, there is a deliciously sweet and slightly salty flavor for everyone.

Caffeine supports heart rate during prolonged efforts, increasing blood flow and oxygenation through the body. The electrolyte mixture of sodium, potassium, and calcium replenishes electrolyte reserves to keep you hydrated during epic efforts. Honey-powered energy is the heart of everything Honey

Newly certified as non-GMO, Hero Nectars brings you a superb fruit nectar for your customers. It’s made with simple, pure ingredients: fruit puree, water and a splash of lemon juice to act as citric acid.

Both freshness and flavor are guaranteed in the 33.8-ounce recyclable glass bottle, conveniently packed six to the case.

Hero Nectars are made with fruit puree and never from concentrate. There’s no high fructose corn syrup. Mango, Peach, Apricot, Guava or Pear will delight consumers either on their own, as an ingredient for a smoothie or for creating a fun cocktail.

They are also shelf stable for up to 15

snacks that are nutritious, have no added sugar, offer clean ingredients, contain no genetically modified ingredients and are allergen free.

Crispy Fruit snacks taste great, too. They are 100 percent pure fruit, freeze-dried to the perfect crisp. Apples, mangoes, strawberries and five other delicious fruits are offered in convenient grab and go bags.

These delightful and crispy fruit slices actually retain most of the nutrients of fresh fruit and are shelf-stable.

Crispy Green Inc. www.crispygreen.com

One of the newest additions to DeBrand’s collection of Chocolate Art Boxes is Draped in Gold, a box that’s elegantly adorned in edible 24-karat gold leaf and handcrafted in rich, dark chocolate. DeBrand’s collection of Chocolate Art Boxes also includes Flower Power, Polka Dot, White Rose and Seashell.

For the ultimate gourmet experience, these incredible, edible pieces of art can be filled with an assortment of DeBrand’s popular Classic Collection or its Truffle Collection. Each box can hold approximately 12 Truffles or 23 Classic Collection pieces.

The Classic Collection includes timeless favorites such as luscious caramel variations, pure fruit creams bursting with wonderfully intense flavors as well as re-inspired traditional selections such as Gourmet PBJ, Orange Cream and Strawberry Rhubarb Caramel.

DeBrand’s Truffle Collection includes 12 Truffle variations. Each oversized piece is individually and artistically designed, and every silky, rich Truffle is a luxurious chocolate dessert.

DeBrand Fine Chocolates www.debrand.com

Daddy Sam’s Salmon & Seafood Glaze Daddy Sam’s Salmon & Seafood Glaze is a barbecue sauce for fish and seafood. Based on Daddy Sam’s Original Bar-B-Que Sawce with added lime and ginger puree, it’s spices have been adjusted to help bring out the flavors of seafood without overwhelming them.

Tangy with a kick at the end, it’s a very versatile sauce – delicious on grilled vegetables and even better on grilled fruit for dessert. It can even be poured over cream cheese and served on crackers for a fast and delicious snack.

The award-winning all-natural recipe is free from fillers, soy, corn, gluten and MSG. The glaze is sweetened with cane sugar and molasses, so it’s also vegan and the ingredients are non-GMO compliant.

Daddy Sam’s Salmon & Seafood Glaze is certified kosher by the CRC and certified gluten free by the GFCO. The company is a woman-owned and woman-run business.

Daddy Sam’s www.daddysams.com

Cynara Brings First-Ever Artichoke Chyps Artichoke Chyps are Cynara’s own innovation in the market and the newest addition to its family of premium artichoke products.

This award-winning, superfood snack is made from three ingredients: fresh artichokes, high oleic sunflower oil and sea salt. The artichokes are carefully collected and selected by hand, thinly sliced, lightly fried and then packed to enjoy in a resealable, recyclable, gusseted bag. Suitable for all food tribes; they are plant-based, high in fiber (10 g), naturally gluten free, non-GMO verified, have zero sugar, zero

cholesterol and zero trans fat. They are also loaded with minerals, vitamins and protein.

These crispy bites are the perfect fix for a salt craving and have the potential to transform traditional snackers into healthy Artichoke Chyps consumers. Use to add texture and a burst of artichoke flavor to salads or as you would any other produce-based snack product.

Cynara Worldwide Sourcing Inc. www.cynara.net/us

32

HOT PRODUCTS

GOURMET NEWS OCTOBER 2020 www.gourmetnews.com

Hot Products Beanfields Vegan Cracklins

Beanfields has taken a snack food that’s trending among carnivores and delivered it to vegans and others seeking plant-based alternatives with its Vegan Cracklins. Packed with 3 grams of fiber and 4 grams of protein, every guilt-free bite is gluten free, grain free, allergen free and kosher. The Vegan Cracklins are made of beans, cassava flour and chickpea protein and are available in Chile Limon, Spicy Nacho, Korean BBQ, Aged White Cheddar and Ranch.

Beanfields www.beanfields.com

Endangered Species Oat Milk Chocolate Chips

Endangered Species has launched the first plant-based milk chocolate chip with its Oat Milk + Dark Chocolate Premium Baking Chips. Made with gluten-free oats and 55 percent cocoa, the Oat Milk + Dark Chocolate Premium Baking Chips contain half the sugar of standard baking chips.

Endangered Species Chocolate www.chocolatebar.com

Canned Blueberries in 100% Blueberry Juice

Oregon Specialty Fruits added to its range of canned fruit offerings with the release of Blueberries in 100% Blueberry Juice. Packed in 100 percent unsweetened, not-from-concentrate blueberry juice, the new Blueberries in Juice contain no added sugar and are a healthy and delicious way to get the daily requirements of fruit by eating the berries and drinking the juice.

Oregon Fruit Products LLC www.oregonfruit.com

Que Pasa Tortilla Chips

Que Pasa’s Tortilla Chips use natural ingredients to color the chips. Ingredients include wholegrain organic blue corn, white corn and yellow corn. Unlike typical corn tortilla chips that use processed corn flour, Que Pasa grinds whole corn kernels using volcanic stones – the traditional way of making tortilla chips that has been passed down through generations. Que Pasa Chips are GMO free, nut free, gluten free, vegan and kosher, and made using only the highest quality ingredients.

Que Pasa Foods www.quepasafoods.com

Keto-Friendly Soft Baked Breakfast Biscuits

HighKey’s Soft Baked Breakfast Biscuits are the first and only keto-friendly, ready-to-eat breakfast biscuits. These soft, individually wrapped biscuits provide a wholesome pick-me-up full of real ingredients like chia seeds, pumpkin seeds, bananas, cranberries and chocolate chips. Every biscuit has 1-2 grams of net carbohydrates, is gluten free and grain free. Low in carbohydrates and sugar, they’re the perfect solution for busy mornings or grab-and-go fuel. They’re available in two flavors: Mixed Berry and Banana Bread.

The suggested retail price is $14.97.

HighKey Snacks 816.674.3422 www.highkey.com

Snackable Cheese Bites from Wisconsin

Sweet Black Garlic Miso Mayo

Slow, low heat for up to 90 days produces garlic cloves that are exotic black in color with a uniquely sweet, caramelized flavor and that are rich in antioxidants for Sweet Black Garlic Miso Mayo, which won a Good Food Award this year in the pantry category. Subtly sweet and savory, Sweet Black Garlic Miso Mayo is a premium condiment made with artisanal black garlic, and the newest addition to the So Good Food line of plant-based, vegan and Non-GMO Project verified condiments.

All Miso Mayo is Non-GMO Project verified and has been made in small batches since 1990, when So Good Food Owner Janet Smith and her So Good gourmet food truck first served the vegan condiments in Los Angeles.

So Good Food info@misomayo.com www.misomayo.com

Tillamook Creamery Collection Lowfat Yogurts

Just the Cheese® is 100 percent Wisconsin cheese baked into bars and mini bites. They are naturally low in carbs, gluten-free and only 75 calories per bar. While most “cheese crisps” are air-dried, Just the Cheese is oven baked, caramelizing the cheese which results in a cheesier flavor and crunchier texture. Perfect for a portable snack on the go, which all ages will love. Just the Cheese is available as bars and as mini bites. The bars are available in Aged Cheddar, Grilled Cheese, Jalapeño Cheese and Mild Cheddar flavors. Just the Cheese Minis are available in White Cheddar, Grilled Cheese, Jalapeño Cheese and Garlic & Chive flavors as well as Wisconsin Cheddar flavor, which was a first-place winner at the 2020 World Championship Cheese Contest.

Tillamook Creamery Collection lowfat yogurts are ideal for breakfast or an anytime snack, with 13-14 grams of protein and only 9-10 grams of sugar per serving.

The yogurt is crafted by blending high quality milk with a proprietary blend of nine cultures and probiotics, which is slowly cultured for a deliciously mild and creamy yogurt that is less tart. Toppings can be added straight to the premium reusable and recyclable cup for customized snacking. Flavor combinations include Oregon Strawberry paired with Plain, Northwest Raspberry paired with Blackberry, Oregon Blueberry paired with Vanilla, California Peach paired with Plain, Dark Cherry paired with Plain and Vanilla Bean paired with Plain.

Just the Cheese 800.367.1711 www.justthecheese.com

Tillamook County Creamery Association www.tillamook.com

34

SMORGASBORD

GOURMET NEWS OCTOBER 2020 www.gourmetnews.com

SMORGASBORD ADVERTISER INDEX ADVERTISER

PAGE WEBSITE

PHONE

Ariston Specialties

33

www.aristonspecialties.com

860.224.7184

Arizona Chile Roasters

27

www.arizonachileroasters.com

520.825.8717

Bella Lucia

15

www.glutenfreepizzelles.com

814.201.2222

Big Country Food

19

www.bigcountryhardseltzer.com

Country Fresh Food & Confections 23

www.countryfreshfood.com

800.545.8782

DeBrand Fine Chocolates

11

www.debrand.com

260.969.8331

EU3

36

www.iconsofeuropeantaste.eu

Glass North America

5

www.ardaghgroup.com

856.455.2137

Honey Stinger

31

www.honeystinger.com

866.464.6639

HyVida Brand

25

www.hyvida.com

231.780.7450

Le Gruyère

3

www.gruyere.com

Monti Trentini

35

www.montitrentini.com

Pearl and Johnny

9

www.pearlandjohnny.com

888.427.3235

RidgeCrest Herbals

29

www.rcherbals.com

800.242.4649

Stonewall Kitchen

2

www.stonewallkitchen.com

888.326.5678

The French Farm

9

www.thefrenchfarm.com

713.660.0577

The Spice Lab

13

www.spices.com

954.275.4478

Toufayan Bakeries

17

www.toufayan.com

White Coffee

7

www.whitecoffee.com

800.221.0140

Wild Forest Products

33

www.mardonaspecialtyfoods.com

855.645.7772

Divine Chocolate Holiday Specialties Divine Chocolate, the only Fairtrade chocolate company in the world that is coowned, by cocoa farmers, has released a line of specialty holiday items that include its Milk Chocolate Advent Calendars, 70% and Dark Chocolate Vegan Advent Calendars, Milk Coins, 70% Dark Chocolate Vegan Coins, Limited Edition Dark with Cranberries & Hazelnut, Limited Edition Milk Chocolate with Gingerbread Crisp, Mini Flights that are stockingstuffer sizes of the Everyday Bars, Drinking Chocolate and – brand new for 2020, Winter Warming Spiced Hot Chocolate.

Divine Chocolate is driven by a social mission: to bring people together using the amazing power of chocolate to delight and engage, creating dignified trading relations that empower

both producers and consumers. All Divine products carry the Fairtrade mark. This is an independent guarantee certified by Fairtrade America that the ingredients are sourced under internationally agreed fair trade terms and conditions. These include a guaranteed, secure minimum price, an extra social premium payment for the farmers to invest in their own community programs, long term trading contracts, decent health and safety conditions – all aimed at empowering farmers to make their own improvements to living standards and prospects for the future. Divine Chocolate is also a Certified B Corporation®.

For more information, visit www.shop.divinechocolateusa.com. GN

Verus International Acquires Eliot’s Nut Butters Verus International, Inc. has acquired Eliot’s Nut Butters, an award-winning small-batch, flavored nut butter company based in Portland, Oregon. Eliot’s currently offers six products, consisting of four peanut butters; Spicy Thai, Honey Chipotle, Classic Salted, and Espresso Nib, an Oregon Hazelnut Chocolate Spread, and an Everything Bagel Nut Butter.

Founded in 2013, Eliot’s has a national footprint in most U.S. states and is primarily sold in Whole Foods, Kroger, natural and specialty grocery, and online via Amazon and Eliot’s company website.

Eliot’s is currently on track to generate approximately $400,000 in revenue during calendar year 2020 and has a threeyear growth rate of approximately 60 percent fueled by significant growth from online and Whole Foods revenue. Verus is acquiring Eliot’s at an early stage where the company is seeking to expand its distribution footprint and introduce new products to reach additional retail venues.

“This is a small, strategic acquisition where we are gaining an established product line, new customers, and expertise in online sales,” explained Verus Chief Executive Officer Anshu Bhatnagar. “Eliot’s is an outstanding, highly-rated brand that can benefit from our growing distribution network, so we see the potential for some organic sales acceleration simply through wider distribution. We expect to tap into Eliot’s expertise in online sales, but we are also very excited about new products in development that we expect to open a greater number of retail doors. This acquisition provides us an entry point into some specialty and healthier food categories where we would like to expand in the future. Our goal is to have a collection of high growth food lines that will create natural cross-selling opportunities as our retailer footprint expands. We are looking forward to working with our new Portland-based team to make the Eliot’s brand a household name in the U.S. and other countries.” GN

Campaign Raises Awareness of Senior Hunger Before COVID-19 hit, one in four seniors lived alone while one in six seniors experienced hunger. This number has grown steadily since lockdown measures have come into place and increasingly more seniors must shelter in place to remain safe during the pandemic. As a result, Meals on Wheels programs nationwide are delivering 77 percent more meals to 47 percent more seniors than they were just months ago. To remind businesses and individuals alike that we cannot stop caring for our most vulnerable during this time, Meals on Wheels America, the largest national organization supporting the more than 5,000 community-based senior nutrition programs across the country, has partnered with more than 25 national brands to help the homebound seniors served by Meals on Wheels through a new campaign, “Don’t Stop Now.” The “Don’t Stop Now” campaign is running online from September 8, 2020 through November 30, 2020 to raise awareness and encourage individuals to take action in support of vulnerable seniors both nationally and in their local community.

The campaign will kick off with a matching contribution from naviHealth for the Meals on Wheels COVID-19 Response Fund and is boosted by donated airtime from Comcast and Univision to run public service announcements. In addition to those listed above, the effort has garnered participation from several national brands, including Alpha Gamma Delta Fraternity, Anchor Brewing Co., Anova Culinary, Bob’s Red

Mill, bonrisu™, The Coca-Cola Company, Consumer Cellular, Danone North America (and a number of Danone brands including Activia®, DanActive®, Dannon®, evian®, Horizon® Organic®, Light + Fit®, Oikos®, Oikos Triple Zero, So Delicious® Dairy Free, Two Good® and Wallaby® Organic), GSN Games, HITRECORD, The Home Depot Foundation, Macy’s and Synchrony.

Companies participating are sharing campaign messaging across their communications channels, writing notes of encouragement to seniors served by Meals on Wheels, are making first-time and renewed philanthropic contributions and encouraging their various stakeholders to do the same.

“We’re all feeling worn down by the troubling news surrounding COVID-19,” said Ellie Hollander, President and Chief Executive Officer of Meals on Wheels America.

“But the reality is, we can’t let our foot off the gas pedal when millions of seniors are looking to us for a vital lifeline and will continue to rely on our nutritious meals and friendly check-ins for the foreseeable future. Now is not the time to lose momentum. That’s why we’re carrying the message to businesses and individuals alike: Don’t Stop Now.” More information about the campaign, and the issues facing Meals on Wheels and the older adults they serve, can be found at www.mealsonwheelsamerica.org/dont stopnow. The public is encouraged to join the conversation on social using #DontStopNow. GN