Kitchenware News • May 2021

PHOTO FEATURE:

FOODIES FOCUS:

FEATURED PRODUCTS:

The Sun Rises in the East

Staying Healthy

Franmara

SEE PAGES 18 & 19

SEE PAGE 20

SEE PAGE 16

www.kitchenwarenews.com

Vol. 27 • Issue 3 May 2021 • $7.00

The Food Container for the On-the-Go Life

Advertiser Index . . . . . . . . . . .22

BY LORRIE BAUMANN

RIGWA is an insulated food container designed for active parents who may be feeding one kid a snack between school and soccer practice before racing home to prep the dinner vegetables before it’s time to pick up the kid from practice and race home to whip up a quick stir-fry before the family all has Cont. on page 14

Charcoal Grills for the Grilling Enthusiast

Culinary Expertise for the Home Kitchen

New Life for Old Plastics from Tritan Renew

SEE PAGE 7

SEE PAGE 10

SEE PAGE 11

4

KITCHENWARE NEWS & HOUSEWARES REVIEW • MAY 2021 • www.kitchenwarenews.com

from the

PUBLISHER Kimberly Oser

editor in chief Hello again!

As the May issues of Kitchenware News and Gourmet News go to print, spring has well and truly come to our home in southern Arizona, which means day-time high temperatures have reached the 90degree mark, and we’re starting to think about wildfire danger. We’ve also just passed the one-year mark since our governor bowed to the advice of public health authorities and sent us all home, which is where I am now, seating in my home’s backyard, where I am eating salads out of my garden and celebrating the arrival of a family of great-tailed grackles that are calling, whistling and singing from the top branches of the mesquite tree next to my patio door.

As a state, our case counts are still high, but our death rate is down, and while it’s sad that I don’t have to explain those terms to any of you, it’s a relief that, with some help from the Federal Emergency Management Administration, we’re advancing steadily on a goal of getting enough of our population vaccinated and have a prayer of achieving the herd immunity that will protect the most vulnerable among us.

It’s been a long road to travel, and all of us have asked at various points along it whether we’re almost there yet. The answer has always come back that we’re getting there, but we’re not there yet. The parents among us know that the next question is always going to be, “How much longer?” or some variation of that.

As parents, we also know that the usual answer of, “Just another little while, and we’ll be there,“ is only as true now as it often was on those long drives to visit faraway family. We were all just hoping that approaching darkness and exhaustion would overtake our kids before they realized that our cheery, “Not much longer now,” might have been just a teensy bit optimistic. Well, maybe that was just the case in my family – I’m sure that you never lied to your kids and then promised a stop for ice cream if they’d just stop squabbling over square inches of seat space.

So, how are y’all feeling? Tired yet?

Well, don’t worry, we’re almost there. Just a little bit longer now.

Seriously, though – y’all continue to take care and stay safe for as long as it takes, please. I want you to be there to greet me when we get there. Just leave the lights on for us – we’ll get there as soon as we can! KN — Lorrie Baumann Editor In Chief Sadly, that was Lorrie’s last Letter from the Editor.

Sorrow fills our hearts, a sorrow that is deep and personal. Lorrie Baumann, our Editor-in-Chief, has silently closed the door of life and departed from us. Our lives will be dimmer in the areas that she had brightened and enriched.

Lorrie Baumann was a woman who gave. She gave much to her work, to her writing and to those lucky enough to call her friend.

Lorrie joined Oser Communications Group as an Editor in 2004.

Lorrie was a strategic thinker, a visionary who was brilliant, innovative and creative. As such, she contributed much to the development of the company. She generously gave us her knowledge, expertise, and skills.

Lorrie was bright, logical and systematic in her thinking. She was always willing to share her thoughts, ideas and information. Truly a splendid person of great intellect and a big heart.

In her career as Editor-in-Chief she worked with passion, integrity and energy. Lorrie was a genuinely warm and wonderful individual—one we will miss greatly. Our sorrow is lessened only slightly with the comforting thought that we had the privilege to know her.

— Oser Communications Group Staff

EDITOR IN CHIEF Lorrie Baumann editor@oser.com SR. ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER Jules Denton-Card jules_d@oser.com ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER Anthony Socci anthony_s@oser.com ART DIRECTOR Yasmine Brown ASSOCIATE EDITOR Jeanie Catron jeanie_c@oser.com CUSTOMER SERVICE MANAGER Susan Stein customerservice@oser.com CIRCULATION DIRECTOR Tara Neal CIRCULATION MANAGER Jamie Green jamie_g@oser.com ADVERTISING SALES Alisha Dicochea EXECUTIVE ASSISTANT Heather Albrecht heather_a@oser.com

Kitchenware News & Housewares Review is a publication of Oser Communications Group Inc. 1877 N. Kolb Road • Tucson, AZ 85715 520.721.1300 www.kitchenwarenews.com

FOUNDER Lee M. Oser Periodicals postage paid at Tucson, AZ and additional mailing office. Kitchenware News & Housewares Review (USPS012-625) is published 7 times per year (Jan., March, May, July, Sept., Nov. and Dec.) by Oser Communications Group, 1877 N. Kolb Road, Tucson, AZ, 85715 520.721.1300.

Publisher assumes no responsibility for unsolicited material or prices quoted in newspaper. Contributors are responsible for proper release of proprietary classified information. ©2021 by Oser Communications Group. All rights reserved Reproduction, in whole or in part, without written permission of the publisher, is expressly prohibited. Back issues, when available, cost $8 each within the past 12 months. Back issue orders must be paid in advance by check. Kitchenware News & Housewares Review is distributed without charge in North America to qualified professionals in the retail and distribution channels of the upscale kitchenware and tabletop trade. For subscriber services, including subscription information, call 520.721.1300. Printed in the USA. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Kitchenware News & Housewares Review, 1877 N. Kolb Road, Tucson, AZ 85715.

7

www.kitchenwarenews.com • MAY 2021 • KITCHENWARE NEWS & HOUSEWARES REVIEW

charcoal grilling for the

GRILLING

BY LORRIE BAUMANN

enthusiast

The IG Stainless Steel Charcoal BBQ and IG Matte Black Edition Barbeque are a pair of charcoal grills designed to solve some of the frustrations that backyard chefs experience in their culinary endeavors, according to Designer/Inventor David Illulian. “One of the things I did was come up with the idea of a very sleek, functional barbecue,” he said. “In almost all cultures, people barbecue a lot. I never

saw a barbecue that I loved and would say that, ‘This is amazing.’”

One day in his backyard, he decided to do something about the flaws he was experiencing with the grill he was using at the moment and put the masters degree in mechanical engineering and economics that he’d earned at the University of California to work on the problem. “I was just using regular barbecues and decided that I don’t like this,” he said. “I made a

couple of prototypes, then went into manufacturing it – and now we’re selling it all over.”

The grills that Illulian invented share several features: stainless steel construction, a mechanism that raises and lowers the charcoal bed to control heat, folding side trays and a bottom rack for extra storage.

The cooking surface measures 34 inches by 16 inches. They also feature four wheels to make the grill easy to move from one location to another, a large cooking surface for grilling skewers – a favorite of Illulian’s – and a removable, retractable ash tray.

“With normal barbecues, when the ash collects, it’s so hard to get it out,” Illulian said. “With these, you just pull out the ash collector, pour some water in there to make sure the fire is completely out and then just throw it away.”

With the side trays, there’s no need to bring out more furniture to hold the food when it’s ready, and the bottom shelf is handy for the meat or vegetables that are waiting their turn on the grill. “It’s very easy to cook on it. Put the food on the grill grates – there are two across the entire surface of the grill – or pull off the grates, which slide off very easily, to use skewers for steak or chicken,” Illulian said.

“Assembly is easy – no tools required,” he added. The main body is assembled with legs retracted, and it’s packed in cardboard with foam and bubble wrap. The screws provided with the grill are butterfly screws, so that they can be finger-

tightened, and there’s no need even for a screwdriver or any other tools. One person can assemble the grill in about half an hour to 40 minutes, according to Illulian.

“With two people, you can assemble it even faster.... Mom can assemble the barbecue or get a little help from the kids,” he said. “It’s not heavy. It can be moved around anywhere in the yard, so you can put it where you have the light.” That’s important for backyard chefs who have their outdoor picnic area in one place and their porch light in another. “I always had a problem at night,” Illulian said. “I couldn’t do it where I had the right seating and the right light.”

Customers for Illulian’s IG Charcoal BBQ and IG Matte Black Edition Barbeque are generally homeowners and the grills sell well in home improvement stores. They’re also sold directly to consumers from the company’s website.

Retail price is $499 for both the black and stainless steel models.

“I love the kebabs: steak, ground beef, chicken marinated in saffron and onion.

You can duplicate a restaurant kebab at home, easily,” Illulian said. “I love to do a beautiful steak on the grill. And vegetables – I recommend eggplant, bell peppers, onions, tomatoes. They’re wonderful to barbecue, just wonderful. A steak cooked in its own juices right on the fire needs nothing other than a little salt and pepper.”

For more information, visit www.igbbq.com. KN

8

KITCHENWARE NEWS & HOUSEWARES REVIEW • MAY 2021 • www.kitchenwarenews.com

now you’re

COOKING your way through the pandemic

BY LORRIE BAUMANN

Now You’re Cooking in Bath, Maine, is benefiting from two important trends that have swept the U.S. during the COVID-19 pandemic – Americans are, of course, cooking and baking more at home than they did in 2019, and they’re also imbibing more of their alcohol at home.

“I get the impression that everybody is getting, to some level, getting into more cooking. The bread baking is crazy,” said Mike Fear, who founded Now You’re Cooking with his wife, Betsy, in 2000 with a goal of being mid-coast Maine’s premier cookware store.

In addition to cookware, Now You’re Cooking also offers a selection of specialty foods, including a small cheese case, and wines selected by Joel Hatch, the store’s Fine Wines Specialist. The food and wine items occupy about 20 percent of the store’s 3,000 square-foot sales floor. Wine sales account for around 20 percent of the store’s

revenue, with the other food items accounting for only a minuscule share. “We have wine orders come in all week,” Fear said. “We used to do regular wine tastings.

We obviously can’t do that now.”

“We are a premier kitchenware store.

We try to make sure that we have everything that you’d ever want for your kitchen,” he added. “We definitely do good-better-best. With wine, with kitchenware, we think we’re responsible to keep the customer on budget. If the budget is not so important, we do want to show them a Demeyere pan, but we want to have a Cuisinart to back that up. We don’t want to sell someone a $200 bottle of wine if they’re expecting to spend 15 or 16 bucks. We really do try to have that range.”

The sales boost that Fear is seeing in his store echoes the trends that market researchers are seeing across the country.

Sales for the housewares industry grew by 22 percent during the pandemic year, led

by cookware, according to Joe Derochowski, Home Industry Advisor for market research firm The NPD Group, who presented his findings on March 16 at the International Housewares Association’s Connect SPRING virtual event. “Cookware has had a monstrous year,” he said, noting that after cookware, the categories that saw the most growth during 2020 were cutlery, metal bakeware, food storage and dinnerware. Wine tools and food prep gadgets were categories that saw the biggest percentage increase in growth over the year, he added. Small kitchen appliances grew even more over the course of the year, with 28 percent growth. The top five growing categories among the small electrics, in terms of dollar sales, were air fryers, toaster ovens, single-serve coffeemakers, traditional blenders and electric grills.

Much of that growth in the cookware category is likely due to home cooks

expanding their repertoire as well as to the fact that consumers chose to respond to the pandemic by cooking their meals at home rather than by ordering take-out from restaurants, Derochowski said.

Fear saw the phenomenon first-hand in his own store. “We saw such a rush on proofing baskets that it was almost impossible to get enough in,” he said.

“Everything bread was just hot, hot, hot.

Dough whisks – the Swedish dough whisks – we just flew through them.... we brought in a lot of pots you could bake bread in.

People were using cast iron Dutch ovens.

Some were using cloches.”

Copies of Ken Forkish’s “Flour Water Salt Yeast: The Fundamentals of Artisan Bread and Pizza” flew off the shelves as well, Fear said. “We sold a ton of those. A lot of those were, obviously, people come in and ask your opinion – ‘What do you think is a good book?’ That book just absolutely took off. Joel and I both use it,

www.kitchenwarenews.com • MAY 2021 • KITCHENWARE NEWS & HOUSEWARES REVIEW

so we’re advocates for it.”

Now You’re Cooking customers bought a lot of cookbooks over the past year as they looked for ways to vary their menus, and Fear’s sales of the Zavor LUX Multicookers were brisk as well. “We think it’s an outstanding all-around cooking pot,” Fear said. “That’s been a scarce commodity.”

While overall sales for the store were up by more than 22 percent during 2020, wine sales were even brisker, increasing by more than 40 percent, Fear said. “We have to blame that on the fact that people weren’t able to go to restaurants, so they were maybe looking for fine wines,” he said. “We’re very careful about what wines we put in the store. If you have staff knowledge, people rely on you to give them good information, and that’s been true for us for the last 20 years. I think we get better and better on that.”

Market research firm NielsenIQ agrees that what happened during the pandemic was that consumers simply swapped the places where they were doing their drinking. “Consumers are shifting the dollars they would have spent on alcohol in a restaurant, bar, or tasting room to alcoholic beverages they can buy at a lower markup from retailers, online merchants, and even directly from the supplier in the instances where it is legalized to do so,” said Danny Brager, Senior Vice President of NielsenIQ’s Beverage Alcohol practice.

The net result of that is that consumers have figured out that it’s just less expensive to drink at home, as it is to eat at home, than it is in a bar or restaurant, which has people like Joe Derochowski predicting that the trend is likely to outlast the pandemic.

Mike Fear agrees with that, too. “I think it’s been a learning experience. People are taking a lot of pride in that they made it themselves,” he said. “My son’s wife in New York, she is making bread like crazy.

They were with us for a time working at home, and she saw me making bread, so, not only is she making it – and loving making it with all kinds of equipment – she’s passed that on to her mother in

Germany and her sister in London, and they’re all making bread, and I don’t think they’re going to stop doing that. I think people who have experienced that are going to say, ‘I can do that.’ They’re going to be continuing to do it.”

Fear also notices that his local farmers market has been very busy since the pandemic shoved consumers into their kitchens. “I’ve noticed that our local farmers market is doing really well with chicken sales and pork sales and beef sales.

Oysters have been huge for us,” he said.

“Our sales of oyster knives have rocketed.

We have 10 different oyster knives and we sell them all extremely well – it’s because the restaurants have closed. We’re always selling lobster tools. That’s a pretty regular thing. I’m sure that people are cooking those at home instead of going out.”

Fear and other staff members encourage their shoppers with video demonstrations put together in the store’s 20-year-old classroom that was formerly used for four or five in-store cooking classes a month. “I think we’ll continue the teaching with the live demos we do.

It’s pretty much a ‘So and so does a good one of those,’ ” he said. “I just have always done them since I came to this country....

We’ve been really doing a little bit with kids, too. Vanessa’s [Vanessa Mayer, the store’s finance chief ] kids have done demos. It ’s a nine-year-old and a 10year-old doing the demo. Some are really easy. I did a pancake demo that was more hilarious than anything.”

Topics for the demonstrations are selected according to what the staff members are interested in volunteering to do and by what the staff hears from customers. “We try to time it for what is happening. Does it make sense to do something this time of year?” Fear said.

“We listen. It’s all very well to educate by talking to people. You have to listen to people. ‘How do you do this or that?’ Then let’s do it. If I’ve learned anything, the most important thing I’ve learned over 20 years is to listen to the customer. If you’re doing all the talking, you’re not doing a good job.” KN

9

Expertise

10

KITCHENWARE NEWS & HOUSEWARES REVIEW • MAY 2021 • www.kitchenwarenews.com

culinary

Hestan Smart Cooking brings

to the home kitchen

BY LORRIE BAUMANN

The National Restaurant Association’s annual trade show has historically been a place where professional chefs gather to gawk at the latest technology for their professional kitchens. Up until the pandemic struck, the show was held annually in May at Chicago’s McCormick Place, and it drew tens of thousands of restaurant chefs to crowd around a counter, behind which a white-jacketed chef fitted out with a microphone would be demonstrating an oven with a touchscreen control panel. He’d drop a chunk of sirloin onto a sizzle plate, slide it into the oven, push a button with an icon that says “medium rare” to him and just let the oven do his cooking while he sold the cooking system to his audience.

His spiel explained something the chefs in his audience already understood – that their kitchens include people who aren’t trained chefs and may quit the job the next week after they’ve discovered that a restaurant kitchen isn’t the place for them.

Some of them don’t speak much English and may read none at all, he’d point out.

And yet, their restaurants’ reputation and Yelp reviews depend on the consistent quality of the food that comes out of their kitchens.

After a few minutes of this patter, he’d pull the beef back out of the oven, slide it onto a cutting board, make a slash with a carving knife to show his audience the cross-section that showed that it had been cooked to a correct medium-rare and then start shaving it into samples to hand out to the crowd. He’d conclude by asking if anyone had any questions.

This kind of technology is very different from the kind of assistance that home cooks expect in their own kitchens. Hestan Smart Cooking Company is changing that with its Hestan Cue Smart Cooking System.

Cue consists of a Bluetooth-enabled countertop induction cooktop that pairs with cookware with sensors embedded into it and a smartphone app that monitors those sensors and controls the cooktop as well as delivering a library of video-guided recipes that let the home cook do the functional equivalent of that chef sliding that perfect steak off the pan and slicing it up for the crowd to admire. “We’ve

pioneered this temperature control on the stovetop to the level of precision that we have,” said Owen Wyatt, the Culinary Director for Hestan Smart Cooking.

“We’re able to get things very dialed in because we’re actually sensing the temperature of our cookware.”

The recipe library accessed by the Cue app includes more than 500 recipes for everything from a grilled cheese sandwich or a fried egg to elaborate preparations worthy of being served at an important dinner party. “All of our recipes are videoguided recipes, so we walk you through everything from prepping the ingredients to plating, but we also control time and temperature throughout the whole recipe. Every step of the way, there’s video, so it tells you exactly what to do, gives you a really good reference point, so it doesn’t matter if you’re brand-new to the kitchen and you’re just learning how to fry eggs for the first time or if you’re a pretty seasoned cook – we’re going to push you to level up your cooking,” Wyatt said.

The system can be demonstrated in the kitchen store with the same kind of panache that the chef used to show off his perfect medium-rare steak on the showroom floor, according to Wyatt, who said that he has, in fact, often demonstrated the Hestan Cue Smart Cooking System to retailers and to culinary schools. He likes to demonstrate pancakes and crepes to show that the Cue makes it possible to cook up a stack of pancakes without having to throw away that first one out of the pan. “You’re going to do pancakes at 375, and you’re never going to have to throw away that first pancake,” he said. “With

our technology, there’s just no more guesswork. You’re still full-on cooking; you have this level of accuracy and precision that you didn’t have before. There’s just this whole level of cooking that you’re no longer trying to figure out.”

The customer for the Cue is generally the aspiring home cook who’s either brandnew to the kitchen or who’s been cooking

for a while and wants to level up quickly, according to Wyatt. “The problem we set out to solve was how to reduce the fear and the frustration that people have in the kitchen when they try to do something that they had in a restaurant but never can get those results.... The system builds a level of trust,” he said. “We see people going from eggs to crispy-skin salmon within a month.”

“For most people, if you talk to them about it, when you actually see them put their hand on the pan and make a perfect crepe the first time, you can see that lightbulb moment,” he added. “ We’ve seen that time and time again. It ’s pretty

consistent that, every time, you can really see the gears start to turn, and the value and benefits that this technology provides.”

Hestan Smart Cooking originally launched the system in Williams Sonoma with the 11-inch Smart Pan and Induction Cooktop and recipe app. In January of this year, the company brought out the Hestan Cue Smart Chef ’s Pot, a 5.5-quart multicooker that uses the same temperaturesensing technology as the best-selling 11-inch pan. The multicooker allows home cooks to master everything from deep frying to slow cooking and candymaking without the need for additional equipment. In tune with the current pandemic popularity of the one-pot meal, the Smart Chef ’s Pot will do that too, working in unison with the app. The company’s latest addition to the line is a Smart Probe that can be used with or without the cookware. It communicates directly to the cooktop and the app, allowing for the precision control that will allow a home cook to make candy on the stovetop without ever spooning drops of molten candy into a bowl of cold water or even just digging through the drawer next to the flatware to find the candy thermometer. The Smart Probe retails for $99 and represents a lowrisk entry point for home cooks who want to try the Smart Cooking concept without the investment required for other items in the system. “This is the tool that’s really going to allow people to open up their creativity,” Wyatt said. “The variety of applications that the probe unlocks will appeal to not only home cooks but to professionals as well. Similar products that are currently on the market are large and clunky and extremely expensive.”

For more information, visit www.hestancue.com. KN

11

www.kitchenwarenews.com • MAY 2021 • KITCHENWARE NEWS & HOUSEWARES REVIEW

new life old plastics for

from Tritan Renew

BY LORRIE BAUMANN

The manufacturers of everything from reusable water bottles to blender jars now have a new option to offer consumers who are ditching their single-use water bottles and flimsy food storage containers in the name of sustainability. Tritan™ Renew is a plastic that’s chemically identical to the traditional Eastman Tritan that’s been on the market for more than a decade, embraced by kitchenware and housewares manufacturers because it’s BPA free and it can be made into products that are crystal clear and sparkling, safe in the dishwasher and virtually indestructible.

Tritan Renew shares those properties, but it’s made from 50 percent recycled plastics. “We are taking plastic waste, and that could be all kinds of waste that are out there,” said Eastman Market Development Manager Arnold van den Berg. “What we’re technically doing is that we break that material down to its building blocks and reuse those building blocks again to make new plastic materials – like Tritan Renew. You need to think of this like LEGO – you can take a LEGO set of LEGO bricks and build something new out of it – it doesn’t necessarily have to be exactly the same thing that you rebuild; it could be something different. From a car, you can make a house, for example. That’s what we’re doing with Tritan Renew.”

Because Eastman’s Advanced Circular Recycling replaces traditional fossil feedstocks with recycled content, the company is helping to divert plastic waste from landfills, incinerators and the oceans.

The process also produces fewer greenhouse gas emissions than manufacturing with fossil feedstocks.

Eastman has committed itself to making the recycled product with a carbon footprint that’s less than that for the manufacturing process for the original material, van den Berg said: “With Tritan Renew, the CO2 footprint of that material is lower than what it is for regular Tritan.”

The company has committed to recycling more than 250 million pounds of plastic waste annually by 2025.

Those of us who’ve bought notebooks made from recycled paper in the cause of environmental consciousness and then thrown them away because the ink from our fountain pens feathered and bled as the pen’s nib dragged its way across the paper might easily jump to the conclusion that the quality of this recycled material might not be up to that expected from the virgin product, but van den Berg says this is not the case for the Tritan Renew.

“That’s really where we bring the innovation,” he said. “Once we have made those building blocks into a new Tritan Renew, there is no way to see the difference between the traditional Tritan and the Renew Tritan – it is actually identical. If we show two, say, food storage containers to our scientists, and we ask them, ‘Can you do an analysis?’ they will not be able to distinguish the difference between the two of them.” For the consumer, that means that a water bottle made from Tritan Renew will behave exactly the same as the traditional Tritan bottle. “He still sees a virtually transparent bottle, a glass-like bottle. He can still put it into the dishwasher,” van den Berg said. “It’s still food-contact approved, and it can be used in exactly the same way as he used to do it with regular Tritan.”

Manufacturers, likewise, will not be able to distinguish between the performance of traditional Tritan and Tritan Renew in their manufacturing processes. “The processing is 100 percent the same,” van den Berg said. “For them, it’s a very simple change.”

Snips, an Italian housewares manufacturer, has adopted Tritan Renew for a new 4 Recycle line of water bottles and food storage containers. “Sustainability is at the core of our business,” said Snips Owner Raffaele Piacenza. “Reusable

housewares are a practical way to eliminate single-use plastic waste.... Now and in the future, Snips will be a steadfast participant in the circular economy.”

Tritan Renew does cost a bit more than traditional Tritan. “The Tritan material is made from waste, and where people do expect that waste comes for free, that’s unfortunately not the case,” van den Berg said. There is, for example, the extra cost of gathering up that waste plastic and bringing it to Eastman’s facility in Kingsport, Tennessee, where the company is investing $250 million over the next two

years to renovate the plant for the molecular recycling technology that breaks the waste down into its building blocks and puts them back together to make the Tritan Renew. “Collecting waste is not something that is easy,” van den Berg said.

“There is a lot of collection that is involved and the logistics, so all of that results in a certain additional cost that we are trying to minimize, of course, to our customers.”

While the current collection effort draws from a waste stream that includes both post-industrial and post-consumer waste, it’s Eastman’s longterm intention to increase the percentage of postconsumer plastic waste as time goes along, and the manufacturers of plastic products find new ways to reduce the amount of waste that they’re producing in their facility and as global capacity for handling postconsumer waste expands, van den Berg said. “We’re here to make old plastic into new, but we also realize that there’s other ways to improve,” he added. “One of our global goals is also to continuously lower our processing CO2 footprint, so it’s not just looking at the plastic itself, but to many other things that are related to our processing environment. That also means that we’re looking to increase the percentage of sustainable energy – renewable energy – that we use.” The Wall Street Journal has named Eastman to its 2020 list of the 100 most sustainable companies in the world, and the company has received multiple awards for its carbon renewal technology. KN

12

KITCHENWARE NEWS & HOUSEWARES REVIEW • MAY 2021 • www.kitchenwarenews.com

Spherificator brings

Culinary Wizardry to home cooks

BY LORRIE BAUMANN

Cedarlane Culinary’s Spherificator is a device that might have been made for home cooks who now see their kitchens as a place for entertainment that revolves around food. The device is about the size of a peppermill, and it transforms drops of liquid into caviar-like pearls, little beads of liquid flavor surrounded by a soft membrane that yields easily to the touch.

Aside from their sheer entertainment value, the pearls have many culinary uses that have been exploited by adventurous chefs for the past several years. Balsamic vinegar pearls can be sprinkled over a salad; coffee or whisky beads can be scattered over a scoop of chocolate ice cream; rum beads can garnish an egg nog. “Richard Blais does horseradish caviar, freezes it in liquid nitrogen and serves it on oysters so it comes out smoking from the nitrogen,” said Dustin Skeoch, co-Founder of Cedarlane Culinary, when he introduced the device at the last live iteration of the International Home + Housewares Show.

“I’ve seen other chefs that will make 10 to 15 different flavors of pearls and serve them all as a pearl salad.”

The Spherificator isn’t actually new –

an industrial version of the device was developed in Montreal by an inventor who used it to make Kelp Caviar, a cheaper substitute for real roe. Cedarlane Culinary acquired the company in 2018. The chemistry behind the pearls is one of the techniques of molecular gastronomy, a term

coined in 1988 and embraced by chefs to describe a modernist style of cooking that makes use of modern equipment and materials developed by the food processing industry to create effects that enhance the sensory appeal of a dish.

The Spherificator retails for $99 and comes with the device plus enough of the sodium alginate and calcium chloride that make the gel membrane that encapsulates the liquid to make enough pearls for about 50 dinner parties. After the supplies that come in the box have been exhausted, more is available from Cedarlane in Canada or Modernist Pantry in the U.S. The Spherificator also comes with a recipe booklet of 18 chefdeveloped recipes.

For the retailer, it’s a device that demonstrates well in the shop, as Skeoch showed again this year at the International Housewares Association’s spring Connect event. “Seeing it in person really helps,” Skeoch said. “You can use just about any food or liquid and turn it into perfectly consistent caviar pearls to take your plating and presentation up a few notches” To make the pearls, the user mixes liquid with sodium alginate, a natural seaweed

extract in the form of a powder that’s blended into the liquid. It thickens the liquid just a little bit. “You put that in the top of the machine,” Skeoch said. “Then you push the button on the machine, and it comes out as perfect little droplets.”

Those droplets fall into a bath made with the calcium chloride, a natural salt that’s a close relative of table salt, and water. “Each little droplet, when it hits the water, the calcium reacts with the alginate to form a thin membrane around each drop,” Skeoch said. “You can do this the old-fashioned way with a syringe or squeeze bottle slowly dripping one drop at a time into the bath, but it takes forever, so people who have done it that way in the past absolutely love how quickly our new version pumps them out!”

With a quick rinse in water to remove the salty taste of the calcium chloride, the pearls are ready for use.

When they’re bitten, the liquid inside gushes out in a burst of flavor, so they’re a functional ingredient in the dish, but their primary appeal is in elegant presentation – and, of course, as a way for a dinner party host to make a splash. “You get a hit of flavor with every bite, but it’s really all about the visuals,” Skeoch said.

“It’s an easy way for a foodie to elevate the plating. You don’t see this kind of advanced plating at most dinner parties.”

For more information, email info@spherificator.com. KN

13

www.kitchenwarenews.com • MAY 2021 • KITCHENWARE NEWS & HOUSEWARES REVIEW

Newell Brands Rewards Small Businesses

CARING

for the

community

Newell Brands, the maker of Ball® home canning products, has named the winners of the inaugural “Made For More Small Business Fund.” This past December, small businesses who use Ball brand home canning products were invited to share how they have gone above and beyond to support their local communities during the pandemic for a chance to win $10,000 to fuel their business.

Twenty finalists were selected, and America voted for the final 10 winners. The fund garnered nearly 2,000 entries from small business owners across the United States and nearly 13,000 votes from community members who rallied behind the businesses.

“We are amazed by the amount of deserving and heartwarming entries we received throughout this process,” said Kris Malkoski, Chief Executive Officer, Food Business Unit at Newell Brands.

“We want to thank all the businesses who participated – we are so inspired by all the incredible submissions that the Made For More Small Business Fund will continue next year, and we encourage you to submit again.”

Recipients will each receive a $10,000 grant, public relations support, spotlights on the Ball home canning brand’s social

media channels, and opportunities to receive business mentorship from Newell senior executives. The 10 runners-up will each receive a $1,000 grant.

The 10 winning businesses include Bird & Branch, a New York City specialty coffee shop with a mission to restore the city through its job training programs;

Delicacies Jewelry, an online jewelry shop for food lovers based in St. Paul, Minnesota, which fights hunger with every purchase; Dig This Chick in Missoula, Montana, an online marketplace and blog that is committed to creating exceptional home goods and offers online educational

&

Pasta Beyond

from Tristar Products

Tristar Products Inc. is planning a retail launch this fall for its new Emeril Lagasse Pasta & Beyond, which is an automatic pasta maker, juicer and frozen dessert maker. Pasta & Beyond mixes, kneads and extrudes up to a pound of pasta – enough for eight servings – in just minutes.

Gluten-free pasta can be made with buckwheat, chickpea or lentil flour.

Vitamin-rich veggie pasta can be made by attaching the device’s juicer attachment to make spinach, carrot or beet juice to add to the flour instead of water. The device comes with eight pasta shaping discs – for penne, spaghetti, linguine, tagliatelle, udon, angel hair, fettuccine and even lasagna

noodles. It will juice hard vegetables, fruits or leafy greens, or it’ll also grind nuts to make almond or cashew milk. The device also doubles as a frozen dessert maker, to transform frozen fruit into sorbet or yogurt into froyo with no added sugar or preservatives. A one-touch LED display handles the whole process once the ingredients have been added. Cleanup is easy, since the parts are dishwasher safe.

Two additional attachments are also available: a slicer and shredder and a meat grinder. The suggested retail price for the Emeril Lagasse Pasta & Beyond is $199.99. For more information, visit www.emerilpastabeyond.com. KN

classes, such as canning workshops; and Mama’s Salsa, a Wendell, North Carolina, salsa and chip company, which commonly sells its all-natural products at local farmers markets in the Raleigh area and fundraises for local charities. Other winners were McVicker Pickles, a San Francisco, California, company that connects people to the pleasures of food preservation through hands-on workshops, online classes and handmade pickled products; Prep To Your Door, a zero-waste meal delivery service serving 100 percent plant-based and gluten-free meals to the local Austin, Texas, and Houston areas; Rock N RollZ Nashville, a pop-up cinnamon roll bakery that was launched in Nashville, Tennessee, during the pandemic, raising funds to support the music industry; Rootwork Herbals, a Brooktondale, New York, collective offering herbal products, an herbalism school, free health clinic and BIPOC community garden; SweetLeighs Cakes, a Florence, South Carolina, “sweetery” that specializes in made-to-order hand-crafted

everyday cakes and donates treats to the local community; and The Flower Lady, an urban flower farmer-florist in Cincinnati, Ohio, that sells locally-grown floral arrangements and shares her knowledge of sustainable gardening with the community through free workshops and youth camps.

The 10 runner-up businesses include Bran’s Sweet Treats in Fresno, California; Everything We Eat, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Kinfood in Seattle, Washington; Little Sprouts Micro Farm in Redding, California; Maple and Thyme in Canton, Massachusetts; OWL Venice, in Venice, California; River City Market in Richmond, Virginia; Tactile Craftworks in Milwaukee, Wisconsin; The Folksy Farmer in Colton, California; and The Gingered Peach in Lawrence Township, New Jersey.

The Made For More Small Business Fund program will call for its next round of small business submissions later this year. For more details about the Made For More Small Business Fund and the small business winners, visit www.freshpreserving .com/madeformore. KN

14

KITCHENWARE NEWS & HOUSEWARES REVIEW • MAY 2021 • www.kitchenwarenews.com

Microplane Set Turns a Jam Jar into a Grater/Zester

The new Jar Lid Etched Grater Set from Microplane is perfect for those times when you need to grate just enough Parmesan cheese off a block to pass it around the dinner table or to set up the bar with enough lemon zest to take care of the evening. Just grate into a wide-mouth Mason jam jar, cap to store, uncap to serve. The set, with a ribbon grater disc and a spice grater, retails for $9.99 and is packaged to merchandise on a clip strip. For more information, visit www.microplane.com. KN

Smithey Ironware Carbon Steel Farmhouse Round Roaster

The Smithey Ironware Carbon Steel Farmhouse Round Roaster is a stunning versatile round roaster that moves from stovetop to oven to table, serving up everything from pork chops to roast chicken to casseroles and even paella. Designed in collaboration with Charleston, South Carolina, Blacksmith Robert Thomas and inspired by blacksmith design of the 18th century, each hand-forged roaster is visually unique, with hand-hammered handles and a beautifully polished interior finish. Every piece is forged, polished and perfected in the United States.

Carbon steel offers performance that rivals cast iron at a lighter weight – this 12-inch round roaster with a 2-inch depth weighs in at around 5 pounds. Carbon steel works on any stovetop including induction, or even on the grill. The suggested retail price is $275. KN

RIGWA Continued from page 1 to be at the evening’s dance recital. It’s the kind of schedule that defines life for RIGWA Founder Zac Jordan and Jericha, his wife and the company’s Owner, who have five children from 9 months to 9 years old. They invented the RIGWA bowl as a solution for their real life.

The idea for the product came up in 2017 after Jericha needed something to keep her queso dip hot all the way through dinner, Zac said. “When Jericha came up with the idea, I started searching high and low for the product and there was nothing out there,” he said.

Since they couldn’t find a product on the market, the couple started thinking about what they’d design if they were going to make something for themselves. “We started conceptualizing what we wanted – a really versatile size, angles, a really sleek look – something you could take to cookouts at people’s houses,” Zac said.

From the beginning, they decided that if they were going to make the product, it had to work and it had to be stylish – something that people would be proud to be seen with. “Then it also had to be strong, not just something that’s one tiny step above disposable,” Zac said. “With the kids, we were super on-the-go. We were designing it for our lifestyle.”

When they had a design that they thought would meet the needs of other busy families as well as themselves, they put together a crowdfunding campaign in 2019 to bring it into production.

“Everything just continued to move in

such a positive direction that we said we’ve got to do it,” he said.

“We didn’t quite have the idea of how big a thing we were taking on.”

The couple launched their RIGWA vacuum-insulated food container as a single SKU product line in the fall of 2019 – just in time to see their launch crushed by the COVID-19 pandemic.

“COVID smacked us in the face pretty good,” Zac said.

The roadblock gave the couple a chance to do more thinking about their product even as they continued to sell it directly through their website. They introduced four new colors and inserts to divide the bowl into sections so it’s more convenient to use as a meal container. The new items launched in January of this year. Other accessories are in the pipeline, with more introductions expanding on the food storage uses for the concept planned for later this year. “We’re coming out with a smaller version because people who would use it for a single-serve item would want something smaller,” Zac said.

The basis of the current product line is the RIGWA 1.5 Steel Insulated Bowl, which contains 48 ounces of food. It’s constructed with a patented air-tight lid, and its double-wall steel construction keeps hot food hot for up to four hours and cold food cold for up to eight hours. “The vacuum pressure helps keep food incredibly fresh. We use it for so many things,” Zac said. “What we hear from our customers

is outstanding results for berries.

Guacamole is one that people rave about.

It puts a huge smile on people’s faces.

They’re amazed by it.”

The RIGWA Divide & Conquer inserts are sold separately in a set of two inserts.

One divides the container into three sections, while the other is a 28-ounce bowl with a silicone lid that fits snugly down into the 1.5 bowl. The inserts are safe in the microwave oven, freezer and the top rack of the dishwasher, so they’re just the ticket when the plan for the teenager’s lunch is a meal in the car on the way to an orthodontist appointment.

“Put the Rigwa lid on, and they’re off for

the day and they’ve got their fuel for the day at optimal temperature ready to go,” Zac said. “Since introducing the inserts, we have seen great excitement for meal prep and meal planning for healthy and active lifestyle. Which is a bullseye target for us.”

The RIGWA 1.5 Bowl retails for $39.95, while the Divide & Conquer Inserts retail for $19.95. Colors available for the Bowl include Sea Foam, Coral, Black Sand, Blue Dusk, Snowbird, Slate, Sunrise, Stainless and Sullivans Sand.

For more information, visit www.rigwalife.com or email support@rigwalife.com. KN

SUPPLEMENT TO MAY 2021

featured products

16

7-PIECE STAINLESS STEEL COOKWARE SET

This seven-piece set from Cook Pro delivers all the cooking basics in stainless steel with a dash of color. Every pan and pot is built with an encapsulated base for maximum heat distribution and minimal hot spots during use. All the handles, including the lids, have comfortable heat-resistant red silicone grips. Vented glass lids allow for safe and accurate monitoring of the food as it cooks.

The set includes a 1-Quart Covered Sauce Pan, 2-Quart Covered Sauce Pan, 5-Quart Covered Dutch Oven and 9.5-inch Covered Fry Pan. This looks like it adds up to eight pieces, but the lid for the Dutch Oven does double duty and fits the Fry Pan. The suggested retail price for the set is $149.99.

Cook Pro Inc. 951.686.8282 www.cook-pro.com

FRANMARA CONVEX COCKTAIL SHAKER SET

Mixed drinks are back, and the cocktail shaker is an essential tool in today’s life. The three-piece 18-ounce stainless steel shaker unit fits together snugly for mess-free shaking. It’s made from heavy-weight 1 mm 18/10 stainless steel with a brilliant finish, a built-in strainer and a 1-jigger cap. It’s 7.75 inches tall and 3.5 inches in diameter. Extra caps are also available.

Franmara 800.423.5855 www.franmara.com

PRODYNE BAR-B-BOARD

Conquering the grill is effortless with Prodyne’s ingenious Bar-B-Board™, a multi-use food preparation and carry system designed to give grill masters and everyday cooks an efficient tool to prepare, season, carry and serve favorite barbecue dishes.

Bar-B-Board consolidates multiple cooking tasks into a convenient grilling and everyday cooking workstation. The bottom carry tray design allows for seasoning and marinating a variety of meats and seafoods. The large top-mounted cutting board provides a prep workspace directly above the carry tray, preserving counter space.

The shaped design of the cutting board incorporates side exits that allow users to easily slide prepped foods or unwanted debris into the tray below. When slicing cooked meats, the uniquely designed cutting board catches juices in the bottom tray.

This year Prodyne celebrates its 50-year anniversary year manufacturing “Dynamic Designs for Good Living.” To see Prodyne’s full line of quality kitchenware, serveware and barware, visit www.prodyne.com and download the online catalog.

Prodyne 800.822.4776 www.prodyne.com

NEW BONE SUCKIN’ TERIYAKI & GINGER WING SAUCE

New from Ford’s Gourmet Foods, Bone Suckin’® Teriyaki & Ginger Wing Sauce is the perfect chicken wing sauce for even the pickiest of crowds. You will be the hero of the barbecue and finish first in the compliments! It’s gluten free, non-GMO, kosher and contains no high fructose corn syrup.

Ford’s Gourmet Foods www.bonesuckin.com

KITCHENWARE NEWS & HOUSEWARES REVIEW • MAY 2021 • www.kitchenwarenews.com

LUNCHBOTS STAINLESS STEEL FOOD CONTAINERS

The LunchBots line of earth-friendly food containers is designed to make it easy to pack healthy food to go. LunchBots is the original stainless steel bento box. The product line has expanded into a variety of bento box sizes and configurations, triple-insulated thermals, stainless steel bowls, insulated lunch bags and colorful custom accessories for dips, condiments and sides.

LunchBots is committed to using premium materials. The boxes are made from the highestquality 18/8 stainless steel. Quality stainless steel ensures food safety and that chemicals cannot leach from container to food. All of the LunchBots line of accessories use pure food-grade silicone, eliminating the waste of disposable lunch bags and working toward a healthier planet. All products in the line are durable and easy to open, even for small hands. Products are dishwasher safe for convenience and easy care. LunchBots products are backed with a lifetime warranty so customers can purchase with confidence.

O2Cool LLC www.lunchbots.com

HOST FREEZE LINE FROM TRUE BRANDS

The HOST FREEZE line from True Brands contains a “magical” proprietary cooling gel that freezes solid and expands inside the double walled chamber. It chills drinks, food and even ice cream for hours. With spring’s arrival and warmer weather on the way, the FREEZE line is perfect to combat lukewarm beverages and melted frozen desserts.

You can merchandise the entire HOST brand, with its range of kitchenware and serveware items, with True Brand’s highly customizable, small footprint and stylish steel display unit. Showcase best-selling HOST products with ease and optimal merchandising flexibility. The wholesale price is $199.99, and a free display is available with display program.

True Brands 206.209.4720 www.truebrands.com

COUNTRY FRESH FUDGE OFFERS SWEET OPPORTUNITIES

High profits and sales await retailers with Country Fresh Food & Confections’ exciting lineup of “melt in your mouth” Country Fresh Fudge™. It is like having a fudge shop, but without the extensive labor. Country Fresh Fudge is a premium, made-from-scratch fudge, using only the best quality ingredients such as Belgian chocolate, AA grade butter, cane sugar and sweet cream.

More than 80 varieties are offered in 12ounce clear, resealable containers, including such traditional flavors as Chocolate Walnut and Rocky Road, but also in dynamic, non-alcoholic flavors such as Spirit Legends™ Tennessee Whisky, Caribbean Rum and Kentucky Bourbon. A large variety of ketofriendly, sugar-free flavors containing only one net carbohydrate, is also available. Other packages available include 6-ounce and 2ounce displays.

Besides offering the perfect “contactless” fudge, Country Fresh also offers one of the lowest cost private labeling programs for retailers who want to make the fudge their own. All packaged fudge has a 6-month shelf life.

Other fudge products offered by Country Fresh Food & Confections, Inc. include more than 100 flavors of bulk fudge loaves, pre-cut bulk fudge that does not require weighing or cutting, various retail packages, gift boxes and premium fudge mix for those wishing to make fudge on site.

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

17

www.kitchenwarenews.com • MAY 2021 • KITCHENWARE NEWS & HOUSEWARES REVIEW

EMBRACE THE POSSIBILITIES AT LAS VEGAS MARKET

Las Vegas Market is a comprehensive furniture, gift, and home décor buying destination, offering an exclusive West Coast-influenced, cross-category product experience unlike any other. More than 4,300 gift (design, handmade/artisanal, tabletop, gourmet, housewares), furniture (upholstery, case goods, accent), bedding, lighting, rugs and home décor lines are showcased on an easy-to-shop, convenient campus at Las Vegas Market, allowing retailers and designers to build their businesses with exciting new introductions, proven bestsellers and long-time customer favorites.

During Las Vegas Market, buyers also build important relationships with manufacturers and suppliers, creating business-to-business connections that begin as person-toperson interactions. These relationships become valued partnerships that transition into both onsite and online sourcing beyond market dates, creating expedient, year-round access to the latest products and quick strategic solutions to trending consumer demands.

Make plans now to attend Las Vegas Market, August 22-26, 2021.

Las Vegas Market www.lasvegasmarket.com

CUIVRES DE FRANCE BY BAUMALU NOW FROM THE FRENCH FARM

Located in the heart of Alsace, France, Baumalu has been producing high-quality copper cookware since 1971. The company produces not only fine copper cookware but also other cooking utensils for expert and amateur chefs.

Expert chefs have known for a long time that by using copper cookware, any meal can be perfectly and gently prepared. They are the best pots and pans for cooking and roasting. This is mostly because copper has excellent material properties and is a perfect heat conductor. The heat will evenly be spread over the cookware and dispensed accurately. Professionals and ambitious amateur cooks all over the world know what this quality is worth, and Baumalu is one of the few manufacturers still making reliable quality copper cookware.

When used on gas cookers, the advantages of copper cookware are fully noticeable, since it warms up quickly and allows the cook to regulate the heat precisely. Whether your customers would like to steam vegetables, make jam or cook fine fish, Baumalu’s copper cookware will meet all their cooking requirements.

The French Farm 713.660.0577 www.thefrenchfarm.com/baumalu

GRILLING TOOLS AND GADGETS FROM GEFU

Founded in Germany in 1943, GEFU surprises again and again with unusual ideas and innovations for a creative, modern kitchen. GEFU continues this tradition of excellence into a line of grill tools and gadgets. GEFU’s expanding offering in this category has you covered for a great line of barbecue products for your store.

One thing is certain: if you choose a grill tool from GEFU, you can be sure of finding a perfect blend of functionality, design and quality. GEFU products delight again and again with high-caliber manufacturing, easy handling and that indefinable extra quality for more inspiration whether in the kitchen or outside on the grill.

GEFU is exclusively distributed in the USA by long-term partner Gourmet Kitchenworks.

Gourmet Kitchenworks 417.736.9619 www.gourmetkitchenworks.com

SANTA CENTERPIECE 6-PIECE COOKIE CUTTER SET

R&M’s bestselling 6-piece cookie cutter set is made of high-quality tin-plated steel and includes all the cookie cutter shapes you need to create a magnificent holiday centerpiece. Featuring an image of decorated cookies to inspire your shoppers, the set is packaged in recyclable FSC-certified materials with keyhole for hanging.

The cookie cutter sets are also available in a cardboard display unit.

R&M International 800.401.0101 www.morethanbaking.com

THE “MOTHER” OF ALL SIPPING VINEGARS

The specialty food makers at Stonewall Kitchen are known for delicious Vermont Village sipping vinegars. Made from quality ingredients and left unfiltered to preserve nutrients known as the “mother,” this new Organic Maple & Honey Apple Cider Vinegar will earn a permanent place on your customers’ shopping lists.

The mother, loved for its mix of proteins, beneficial bacteria and fiber, makes this tonic a prebiotic powerhouse. As tasty as it is wholesome, this New England-inspired flavor is made from organic maple syrup and honey for a smooth and sweet finish. Expertly crafted, U.S. Department of Agriculture-certified organic and non-GMO, there’s something to love in every sip.

Make sure to check out the other flavors offered by Vermont Village, which range from Blueberry & Honey to Orange & Cinnamon. Customers are sure to enjoy them swigged, sipped or stirred into seltzer, so stock the shelves and keep 'em coming, because these tasty vinegars will quickly become a must-have addition to anyone’s routine.

Stonewall Kitchen www.stonewallkitchen.com

18

rises

KITCHENWARE NEWS & HOUSEWARES REVIEW • MAY 2021 • www.kitchenwarenews.com

the sun

in the east

Shun Classic Blonde Chef Knife

The Shun Classic Blonde 8-inch Chef’s Knife is an all-purpose knife ideal for a full range of cutting tasks. This new blonde-handled version of Shun’s Classic Chef’s knife features an 8-inch blade ideal for preparing fruits, vegetables and proteins. The wide blade keeps knuckles off the cutting board and is exceptionally handy when transferring cut food from board to pan. With its curved belly, this chef’s knife can be gently “rocked” through fresh herbs or spices to produce a very fine mince. Shun Classic Blonde’s thin, sharp blades makes it lighter and less tiring to use than comparable European-style chef’s knives. The knife retails for $188. For more information, go to shun.kaiusa.com.

Favalicious Snacks from Nuttee Bean

Wasabi & Ginger is one of four flavors of Favalicious snacks made from roasted fava beans. Like the Salt & Vinegar, Chili & Lime and Lightly Salted flavors, Wasabi & Ginger is free from the top eight allergens, gluten free and has no added sugars, trans fat or cholesterol. Inside their packaging, the beans are about the size of a peanut. They’re roasted in expeller-produced high-oleic sunflower oil, and each bean is belted by a strip of the husk that holds the two halves of the bean together. The roasted beans offer the crunch and the nutty flavor of a peanut or a tree nut but don’t pose the same hazards to someone who’s sensitive to either of those common allergens. For more information, visit www.nutteebean.com.

Kyocera Adjustable Ceramic Everything Spice Mill Set

This versatile mill features an adjustable ceramic grinding mechanism that will never rust. Excellent for coarse and wet salts, peppercorns and all types of spice seeds and herb flakes. The Everything Mill Set will spice up and add color to a kitchen. $34.95.

For more information, visit cutlery.kyocera.com.

Bredemeijer Cast Iron Teapot

The Chengdu Cast Iron Teapot from Bredemeijer is available in both black and blue, and cast iron teapots have become extremely popular recently as the loose-leaf tea market continues to expand. It is available through Bredemeijer’s U.S. distributor, Gourmet Kitchenworks. Contact them for more information by calling 417.736.9619, emailing info@gourmetkitchenworks.com or visiting www.gourmetkitchenworks.com.

19

www.kitchenwarenews.com • MAY 2021 • KITCHENWARE NEWS & HOUSEWARES REVIEW

Szechuan, China Chile Crisp

Inspired by the flavors that Fifth Taste Foods Founder discovered during his student years in China, Szechuan, China is an infusion of seeds, peels and spices into a high-oleic sunflower oil that remains liquid even in the refrigerator. The mixture will wake up the simplest of home-cooked dishes, or the oil can be spooned out alone to dazzle the flavors of a stir-fry.

A 9.2-ounce jar retails for $16. Szechuan, China is one of the two original flavors in a line that also includes Oaxaca, Mexico; Kerala, India; and Fez, Morocco – each designed as a contemporary interpretation of the flavors of its namesake region. Visit www.oomame.net.

Elephant-Friendly Teas from Republic of Tea

Republic of Tea has a pair of teas certified as Elephant Friendly, with its Bold Black Chai Tea and Bold Green Chai Tea. The Bold Black Chai Tea, inspired by traditional masala chai, has a base of strong black Biodynamic® Assam leaves infused with warming spices: cinnamon, ginger, cardamom, clove, and a hint of black pepper. It’s also available as part of Republic of Tea’s Chai Teas Stackable Tin, which also includes the Bold Green Chai Tea as well as Mushroom Cacao Chai Tea. The stackable tin contains 12 round unbleached tea bags for each of the three varieties and retails for $15.25 per tin. The tin of Bold Black Chai Tea alone retails for $12.25. Visit Republic of Tea at www.republicoftea.com.

Kikuichi’s 8-Inch Gyuto Chef’s Knife

Kikuichi Cutlery’s GW Series is a perfect example of the Japanese design philosophy, shibui, a balance of simplicity and complexity. A simple elegance creates a powerful appearance, and this knife’s double-beveled blade is made from three layers of SUS440 stainless steel and edged with a Ginsan (silver-3) core. It’s thin, strong and precise and is hand-engraved with the Kikuichi chrysanthemum logo. An octagonal walnut handle provides a comfortable grip and features a water buffalo horn ferrule. Email info@kikuichi.net or visit www.kikuichi.net.

Miso Mayo Sweet Black Garlic Sauce

Miso Mayo has added to its collection of Good Food Awards this year with an award for its Spicy Red Pepper Miso Mayo after winning for its Sweet Black Garlic flavor last year. Miso Mayo is based on fermented soybean paste, so it offers the probiotic benefits along with the umami bang that go along with that. It’s also vegan and ketofriendly. It’s offered in 9-ounce plastic squeeze bottles in four flavors: Original, Garlic ‘N’ Dill; Spicy Red Pepper and Sweet Black Garlic. The Sweet Black Garlic variety retails for $7.49 while the other flavors usually retail for $6.49. All are certified nonGMO, and distribution is available nationally.

For more information, visit www.misomayo.com.

20

KITCHENWARE NEWS & HOUSEWARES REVIEW • MAY 2021 • www.kitchenwarenews.com

Brought to You by Three Wives, a Bean and a Rabbi

BY LORRIE BAUMANN

A Bolivian street vendor introduced Frank Guido to roasted fava beans in 1995. He didn’t know what they were, but he had the munchies, and there was the vendor who had snacks for sale. “These kids sold these in little bags, and I thought it was like a peanut, even though the kids told me it wasn’t a peanut,” he says.

Hunger satisfied, Guido pushed his curiosity about what he’d eaten aside and went on with his day. Then he went on with his days for another 16 years or so without giving the little notpeanuts another thought.

But in 2011 and 2012, he happened to be in Qatar to work on a big project. On the weekends, he played some golf and hung out with other ex-patriots, all the while not giving fava beans any thought at all. Then that changed when his friends’ wives started showing up, one after the other. “My friends, all three of their wives were coming in for weekends on different weekends,” he says. This is where the story starts to sound a little bit like it ought to involve a priest, a rabbi and a minister, only with wives bearing fava beans, but what I tell you three times is true, and each of these three women brought along fava bean

CHO America Opens the Book on Olive Oils

snacks on their visits and offered some of them to Guido.

The first wife was British, and she had fava beans that had been fried in a tempura batter to set out on her table as an appetizer. The next weekend, it was the Italian friend’s weekend with his wife, and she brought along a little bag of roasted fava beans seasoned with Parmesan cheese.

Guido pulled himself together and asked what this was. She explained to him that it wasn’t a nut, even though it tasted like one – it was a bean. “I really did not know it was fava. I still didn’t have that connection. I found it later on Google,” he says. “The next weekend, my Australian friend’s wife comes over with a retail snack called Happy Snack.

She brought a pizza variety.”

Well, there it was – three weekends and three times that fava beans had been offered to him as a snack.

Some coincidences are not meant to be ignored, and after Cont. on page 21

A Plant-Based Alternative to Conventional Queso

BY LORRIE BAUMANN

Core & Rind Cashew Cheesy Sauce is a clean-label, vegan alternative to the kinds of shelf-stable cheese sauces in jars that are often sold in the snack aisle next to the tortilla chips. “It’s great for people who are on specific diets, who are plant-based, who are keto, who are vegan, but it’s also for those who are looking for more plants on the plate or just looking to cut out the junk,” said Core & Rind co-Founder Rita Childers.

“It’s versatile in that way, that it’s not for one specific vegan customer. It fits into a lot of diets.”

The cheesy sauce is made from simple kitchen ingredients by Childers and her co-Founder, Candi Haas, who met in college at Southeast Missouri State University in Cape Giraradeau, where Childers was studying journalism and Haas was studying business marketing. “We were your typical unhealthy college students,” Childers said. “It’s hard just having a busy lifestyle – you want to grab something that’s easy.” The two lost touch with each other after college, but they reconnected after Childers had decided to discard the

BY LORRIE BAUMANN

The makers of TERRA DELYSSA Tunisian olive oils are taking seriously consumers’ desires to know that they’re buying an authentic product. Each bottle of TERRA DELYSSA oil is labeled with a QR code that can be scanned to trace the lot number of the oil to the orchards from which the olives were harvested, through the process through which it was made and then analyzed before being bottled and released for sale.

The TERRA DELYSSA oils are made in Tunisia by CHO and imported into the U.S. by CHO America, the North American division of a Tunisian company owned by a family of olive farmers that have been passing their olive orchards down through generations. “We are olive oil farmers, olive oil millers. That’s what defines us,” said Wajih Rekik, the Chief Executive Officer of CHO America.

Years of fraud scandals that have roiled American markets and raised consumers’

suspicions about the origins of their olive oil were on Rekik’s mind when he came to the United States for his education and started looking at the labels of the olive oil that was being sold in American supermarkets. “As we looked at the shelves, we saw brands to which we sold our oil, but on the back of the bottle, you’d see, ‘Product of Tunisia, Italy, Spain, Morocco – a big list,’” he said. “The consumer that picks up a bottle of olive oil and can’t even tell what country it’s produced in.

The back of the bottle might list half a dozen countries. It does feed into that doubt, that fear that the consumer feels.”

“We saw that there was a place for us to have our own olive oil, a Tunisian olive oil, to take its place on the shelves of the world without being apologetic,” he added. “We wanted to be the ambassador of Tunisian olive oil on the shelves.”

The company settled its embassy to the American market in Houston, Texas, established a distribution hub in Canada and then went to work giving American Cont. on page 21

Perfect Indulgence from Graeter’s Ice Cream

careless eating habits she’d developed as a young adult and return to the vegetarian lifestyle of her childhood. “I was interested in figuring out different ways to support my health,” she said.

When she met Haas again, her friend invited her to participate in a presentation that she was preparing as a final requirement for a culinary nutrition program offered by the Academy of Culinary Nutrition.

As soon as she saw the kitchen where Haas was recording her presentation, Childers knew she’d found a comradein-arms in her battle to improve the quality of her diet. “I’d never seen anyone’s kitchen look like this except for mine,” she said.

“I’d felt like a weirdo with all the health foods, but then Candi took this program, and it ended up being very similar to what I was doing at the time, too.”

That inspired Childers to enroll in the same program, and when she’d completed it, the two started talking about how they were going to put what they’d learned into action. They decided that what they wanted to do was to develop some of the Cont. on page 21

BY LORRIE BAUMANN

Richard Graeter has turned to the makers of plant-based dairy proteins to ensure that his fourth-generation premium ice cream company can survive for another 150 years.

Graeter’s Ice Cream has teamed up with Perfect Day to launch Perfect Indulgence™, Graeter’s new line of animal-free frozen desserts, which is in its initial launch with six flavors: Black Cherry Chocolate Chip, Cookies & Cream, Oregon Strawberry, Mint Chocolate Chip, Chocolate and Chocolate Chip.

Perfect Indulgence is made with the same hand-crafted quality as the rest of Graeter’s premium line and it’s virtually indistinguishable from traditional ice cream, Graeter said. “Graeter’s is about one word – indulgence. We are about treating yourself; it’s a reward,” he said. “We won’t put our family name on a product that doesn’t deliver indulgence.”

Graeter’s has had a lot of experience ignoring passing fads in frozen desserts – the company never made a frozen yogurt – but Perfect Indulgence is both animal free and lactose free, opening up the market for it to people who have avoided dairy in the past. “Whenever we can remove an obstacle from somebody enjoying our product, then why wouldn’t

we do that?” Graeter asked. “If you are fine with traditional dairy, then great. But there are people who heretofore couldn’t enjoy it before, and now they can.”

While previous experiments with plantbased desserts couldn’t produce a product with sufficient quality to interest Graeter, his interest was piqued when he read a trade magazine article about Perfect Day’s fermentationbased method of making actual dairy proteins from microflora. His first reaction was skepticism.

“When I first read about Perfect Day’s product, what went through my head was, ‘frankenmilk,’” he said. “We partnered with Perfect Day almost a year ago, and we’re learned that is it quite the opposite. It’s a modern iteration of a very old process – using fermentation to make and prepare food.... This delivers what you need to make something creamy and Cont. on page 21

21

www.kitchenwarenews.com • MAY 2021 • KITCHENWARE NEWS & HOUSEWARES REVIEW

GRAETER’S ICE CREAM Continued from page 20 indulgent – you need dairy proteins. You just don’t need the cow.”

Graeter’s gets its Perfect Day proteins in the form of a liquid base from Smith Dairy in Ohio, which has supplied the ice cream base for Graeter’s in the past. “They receive the Perfect Day protein, rehydrate it, add sugar and pasteurize it,” Graeter said. “Once we get the base from Smith, it goes to the flavor vat just like our traditional dairy mix does.” From there, the mix goes to Graeter’s 2.5-gallon French Pots to be made into an ultra-premium dessert with the same process that Graeter’s greatgrandmother used when she took over the business after the death of her husband in

QUESO ALTERNATIVE Continued from page 20 tasty vegetarian products they’d been preparing for their own consumption and turn them into packaged products they could sell to others with similar dietary goals. “We came up with 12 items just to test out if people wanted these things the way we wanted these things,” Childers said. Then they took their products to a farmers market in St. Louis, Missouri. “We had a great reaction, but people really went crazy for our cheesy sauce,” she said. “They just loved the flavors and couldn’t believe that it wasn’t cheese.”

THREE WIVES Continued from page 20 he’d looked up fava beans on Google, Guido started asking his other friends if they’d ever heard of them. Turns out they had.

It dawned on Guido that maybe Americans were the last to know about the little beans that could be roasted until they had the crunch of a corn chip and the flavor of a roasted Brazil nut. “I just knew that there was a void [in the American market],” he says. “I studied the market to see what was going on.”

CHO AMERICA Continued from page 20 and Canadian consumers the single-origin Tunisian olive oils that consumers didn’t yet know they were craving. What Americans did know they were craving was transparency and authenticity, so CHO America decided on radical transparency as a means of persuading North American customers that they should give TERRA DELYSSA olive oil a try. Blockchain technology made that possible.

Each bottle of TERRA DELYSSA olive oil is labeled with a QR code that provides access to consumers with information about the particular lot of olive oil that’s in that bottle, from the orchards where the olives were harvested to the process used to extract the oil from the olives in CHO’s waste-free plant in Tunisia and on to the analysis step that took place before the oil was bottled. Each step in the process

the very earliest days of the 20th Century.

That process keeps Graeter’s from becoming the next mass-market premium ice cream brand, but it doesn’t keep Richard Graeter from thinking about the future of the planet, the dairy industry and the company, he said. “If this is the future of dairy, we’d like to take note of it, and I’d like to be in on it from the beginning,” he said.

“Perfect Indulgence is vegan, so folks who have made the decision to go vegan for ethical reasons can eat it.

It also has the benefit of being lactose free.

That opens up Graeter’s for a whole

segment of the population who previously couldn’t eat ice cream. But it is dairy and does contain milk allergens. Our customers need to understand that it is not dairy free.”

After its initial roll-out with six of Graeter’s traditional flavors, a seventh flavor, Madagascar Vanilla is rolling out in early 2021, and Black Raspberry Chocolate Chip is on the way, too. “The vanilla we have developed now will stand up to our traditional vanilla,” Graeter said.

Perfect Indulgence has a higher retailing

at a little higher price point than the traditional ice creams, $7.99 a pint compared to about $5.50 to $6 a pint, but Graeter’s is hoping that economies of scale will bring down the price differential in spite of the additional complexities created by the higher price of the Perfect Indulgence mix as compared to the dairybased ice cream base and the special sanitation that’s required to prevent crosscontamination of the product with cow milk dairy. “That adds a lot of cost and complexity, but that’s what you have to do,” Graeter said. “Our little plant is chugging along pretty hard. It’s just a matter of planning it all in and working hard to safely keep up.”

For more information, visit www.graeters.com. KN

After multiple markets produced the same enthusiastic reaction, Childers and Haas decided it was time to think about how to get their vegan cheesy sauce onto supermarket shelves. “It took a year and a half after going to the farmers market to make it shelf-stable,” Childers said. “We launched Cashew Cheesy Sauce in October, 2017.”

Core & Rind Cashew Cheesy Sauce is now available in three flavors. The shelfstable original is called Sharp & Tangy Cashew Cheesy Sauce. Bold & Spicy launched in 2018, and the newest flavor is Rich & Smoky. “It’s a unique item because it’s a cheese alternative, but it’s

also shelf-stable and clean label,” Childers said. “A lot of our competition is refrigerated, so we definitely wanted to differentiate ourselves in that way. It’s super-versatile, and you can keep it as a pantry staple, as a snack or a sauce on pasta.... Candi and I like to say that we just want to get more real food on people’s plates, and our flavor-packed sauces help people do that.”

The sauces contain no chemical additives, no preservatives, no gums and no fillers. “It’s just ingredients you can pull out of your own pantry and make a sauce at home with,” Childers said. “We’re not your average food entrepreneurs. We don’t

have a background in food science. We do have a passion to create these products that people are asking for – that are more transparent and more health-focused, health-building.... I think we were just sick of picking up every sauce on the shelf and seeing ingredients that we didn’t want to put in our bodies, and we knew that other people felt the same way too. That’s been a big driver of ours.”

Core & Rind Cashew Cheesy Sauce is packaged in an 11-ounce glass jar for dipping that retails for $9.99. It’s vegan and gluten free.

For more information, visit www.coreandrind.com. KN

When he got back to the United States after his project in Qatar had ended, he looked up American friends who encouraged him to design a package for what he’d started calling Favalicious snacks and go into production in a small way.

“Somebody let me put it into 150 stores to see what happened,” he says. “It sold.”

Guido’s next step was to find a co-packer who would work with him on small batches in a facility where the product could be kept uncontaminated by common allergens.

Then he went to work to obtain thirdparty certifications. The co-packer already had a rabbi in his facility to help with the

kosher certification – You knew there would be a rabbi somewhere in this story, didn’t you? – and Guido found the Snack Safely organization to help him certify as allergen free. One in four Americans has some type of food allergy, and allergies to tree nuts and peanuts are common, so Guido’s gut was telling him that he needed that allergen-free certification even though his friends were telling him that he wasn’t going to need that market segment. “We have a perfect snack that’s a plant protein that’s a nut alternative that looks like a nut, tastes like a nut, but it’s a bean,” he says. “Fava’s really the future.”

His Favalicious snacks are currently offered in three flavors: Salt & Vinegar, Chili & Lime and Wasabi & Ginger as well as Lightly Salted. They’re free from the top eight allergens, gluten free and have no added sugars, trans fat or cholesterol.

Inside their packaging, the beans are about the size of a peanut. They’re roasted in expeller-produced high-oleic sunflower oil, and each bean is belted by a strip of the husk that holds the two halves of the bean together. “The aesthetics we get out of that are unbelievable – a little extra crunch and beautiful appearance,” Guido says. For more information, visit www.nutteebean.com. KN

is detailed for the consumer through the website’s access to the blockchained ledger accounts that were entered along the oil’s path from orchard to the market. “As far as our Tunisian olive oil goes, we wanted to double down on the transparency aspect of it, and that’s how we came to adopt the blockchain to show consumers when and where it was harvested, when and where it was bottled, giving sales staff instant access to that information. All information that is on the database is entered as it is happening. We have no back access to it, so that whatever’s entered cannot be changed. Our retail grocery partner has direct access to that information,” Rekik said. “We do not have control of the information out there; it is out there. We can offer the consumer the whole transparency of the whole chain.”

Consumers embraced the transparency offered by the brand, and when they tried the oil, they loved its fresh, smooth flavor

profile, according to Rekik. “We are now Canada’s number one brand of olive oil,” he said.

The company’s latest innovation is a range of Fork & Leaf-brand blended oils that answer consumers’ desires for healthful oils that match their dietary preferences, and at the same time, match particular blends to the way that consumers plan to use them. These are blends of CHO America’s Tunisian olive oil with other oils that possess different attributes with respect to their smoke point, health attributes and flavor profile. “Our mastery of quality and analysis and understanding the different parameters and oil analysis

in general and the quality put us in position where we can make an informed decision on which oil to collect and select,” Rekik said.

“We try to use only nonGMO oils, mainly organic. We are mindful of the way those oils were produced – we prioritize expellerproduced oils. We tried to simplify that to our consumer by giving them the option of using an oil that is specially for sauteing or for frying.... We did the composition and selection with registered dietitians and working with chefs to get to the optimal blend.”

For more information, visit www.choamerica.com and www.terradelyssa.com. KN

22

KITCHENWARE NEWS & HOUSEWARES REVIEW • MAY 2021 • www.kitchenwarenews.com

New Kuhn Rikon Cookware Lines

Kuhn Rikon is launching into the American cookware market this summer with three lines representing a good-better-best model. Although known in the U.S. for its gadgets, Kuhn Rikon is one of the best-selling cookware manufacturers in Europe. Easy Induction is the “good” line, Easy Pro is the “better” line, and Peak is the line for the passionate home cook. It features stainless steel multi-ply construction with a full aluminum core.

The textured ceramic-reinforced nonstick surface provides exceptional searing and release with minimal oil, and it’s safe for metal utensils. A stainless steel stay-cool hollow handle allows the pan to be transferred from stovetop to oven, where the pan is safe up to 450 degrees Fahrenheit. Peak is available as a seven-piece set that includes a 10-inch fry pan, 2.5-quart saucepan with lid, a 3-quart, 11-inch saute pan with lid and a 5-quart Dutch oven with lid that retails for $390.00. The individual items are also available in open stock. Additional items offered in open stock include 8-inch and 12-inch fry pans and a 1.5-quart sauce pan with lid. The line will be ready to ship for June sales. KN

Kilner Sourdough Starter Set Kilner is catering to the social media creator as well as those who love their social media creators with its new Kilner Sourdough Starter Set. Packaged in a gift box, the set includes two 12-fluid-ounce wide-mouth glass jars, one with a measuring cup lid, a spatula and two rubber bands to monitor the progress of the starter as it grows over seven days. After a quick look at TikTok as well as a demonstration during the International Housewares Association’s spring Connect event, this is how this works: The camera is set up to record video. The box is opened; flour is measured into one of the measuring cup lid, which has one line to indicate the right amount of flour and another to measure the right amount of water. The flour and water are stirred together with the spatula, ending with a scraping of the jar so that the contents are visible through the clear glass. The lid goes on the jar, and a rubber band goes around the outside of the jar to indicate the level of the ingredients inside the jar. Then the video is posted on TikTok with a hashtag, #sourdough, and another one, #breadtok. The sourdough starter mix ferments over the course of seven days, and after it’s risen quite a bit, it’s time to snap the progress and post the photo on Instagram. At the end of seven days, the starter should be ready for use, which seems to call for another TikTok video. The Kilner kit contains everything needed to make the starter except 60 grams of flour and the water. The actual bread will, of course, require a bit more equipment! And also another Instagram post and TikTok video. The suggested retail price is $25.00. KN

Stuff Every Coffee Lover Should Know

In the latest addition to Quirk Books’ best-selling how-to series, “Stuff Every Coffee Lover Should Know” (Quirk Books; March 2, 2021; $9.99), author Candace Rose Rardon guides readers through the fascinating world of coffee culture. Within the pages of this 144-page pocket-sized guide, coffee enthusiasts of all levels will enjoy learning about manual brewing methods, interesting trivia, fascinating history, and coffee customs across the globe. Topics include how to store coffee, the basics of caffeine content, a look at coffee-growing regions and coffee traditions around the world, a guide to ethical cocktail and a section on coffee cocktails.

The book also includes guides and tutorials for everything from grinding your own beans to hosting a coffee cupping like a pro. Full of useful information for experts and newbies alike, “Stuff Every Coffee Lover Should Know” is an invaluable resource and great gift for anyone who appreciates coffee. KN

ADVERTISER INDEX Cook Pro Inc. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .17 Gourmet Kitchenworks . . . . . . . . . . . . .2 Franmara . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2 International Market Centers . . . . . . .24 The French Farm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .3 O2COOL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .5

23

www.kitchenwarenews.com • MAY 2021 • KITCHENWARE NEWS & HOUSEWARES REVIEW

The Pantry EKOA FRUIT BARS

Ekoa Fruit Bars are pure, natural, and full of flavor. Each fruit bar has a maximum of three ingredients, and all are gluten free, vegan and kosher. They have no added sugar and no artificial flavors. Ekoa Fruit Bars are available in four flavors, including Mango, Coconut, Banana and Pineapple.

Ekoa Brands www.ekoabrands.com

GOODNOW FARMS COCOA MIXES

Goodnow Farms Single Origin Hot Cocoa, Almendra Blanca won a silver sofi Award in the hot beverages category in 2019. To make its cocoas, Goodnow Farms roasts, grinds and presses premium cacao beans to create 100 percent pure cacao powder which is then blended with organic sugar to create a delicious mix. There are no additives and Goodnow Farms doesn’t alkalize, so the pure flavors of the cacao are in each sip.

Goodnow Farms www.goodnowfarms.com

FUNCTIONAL TEAS FROM REPUBLIC OF TEA

SuperAdapt™ Burnout Blocker® and Beautifying Botanicals® Daily Beauty teas from Republic of Tea each won gold sofi Awards from the Specialty Food Association earlier this year. SuperAdapt Burnout Blocker was awarded the gold in the tea category, while Beautifying Botanicals Daily Beauty won in the functional beverage category.

The great taste of the SuperAdapt Burnout Blocker is attributed to aromatic cinnamon, sweet dates and zesty ginger. The SuperAdapt collection of teas feature adaptogens, a category of healing herbs to help handle stress. The air-tight tin contains 36 round, unbleached paper tea bags and retails for $13.75 per tin, which is just 38 cents per cup. This herbal blend is caffeine-free.

Beautifying Botanicals Daily Beauty, winner of the functional beverage category, is a collagen-promoting blend of nourishing ingredients including the exotic blue butterfly pea flower, hibiscus, rose hips, bamboo and schizandra berries. This caffeine-free herbal tea is a beauty ritual, hot or over ice, with juicy blueberries and calming lavender. Daily Beauty is a great value, retailing for $13.75 per tin, 38 cents per cup.

Republic of Tea www.republicoftea.com

ONCE AGAIN NUT BUTTER CASHEW BUTTER WITH SEA SALT CARAMEL

HOME WITH THE KIDS

FEVE BARS

Feve Bars represent a unique take on the traditional chocolate bar. Skillful chocolatiers have taken nostalgic flavors that harken back to happy childhood memories: comforting memories of Grandma’s cinnamon toast, Mom’s raspberry cheesecake, and old-fashioned peanut butter bars, and revived them as tasty confection bars unlike anything else on the market. Combined with healthful ingredients such as crunchy puffed quinoa, Feve Bars are a retro treat, handcrafted in San Francisco in a reimagined way, appealing to both younger and older customers alike. Brand new for fall 2020, Feve Bars are available in three nostalgic flavors: Cinnamon Toast, Peanut Butter Crunch and Raspberry Cheesecake.

Feve Chocolates www.fevechocolates.com

A FLOUR TO SAVE THE PLANET

Shepherd’s Grain offers Whole Wheat and Enriched All Purpose Unbleached Flours in 5-pound bags for home bakers. Each bag of Shepherd’s Grain flour is identity-preserved, so customers can use special coding printed on their bag to check the Shepherd’s Grain website and identify the two to four farmers who grew the wheat for that particular bag. As a grower-owned company, Shepherd’s Grain works with 42 farmers who represent about 220,000 acres in Washington, Oregon and Idaho. With a transparent approach to pricing, Shepherd’s Grain pays its farmers a sustainable and equitable price based on the cost of production so they’re not subject to market volatility— otherwise unheard of in the commodity-driven industry. Non-profit agriculture organization Food Alliance also regularly certifies each farm to ensure that the tillage-free crops are being sustainably grown the way Shepherd’s Grain claims they are. The result of the company’s regenerative farming practices is a working landscape that’s more resilient against climate extremes.

Shepherd’s Grain www.shepherdsgrain.com

MUSHROOM JERKY WITH MEATY TEXTURE

Vegky is a new vegan mushroom jerky with flavor and texture both designed to satisfy a craving for meat.

Vegky is minimally processed, comes in five flavors and offers the nutritional benefits of the shiitake mushrooms from which it’s made. Flavors include Original, Spicy, Pepper, Wasabi and Curry.

Vegky www.vegky.com

NIWRI FROM WHITE COFFEE

Decadently rich and beautifully buttery, the premium product is crafted from carefully selected, organically grown cashews that are dry roasted for color and flavor and milled creamy with natural caramel flavor, high-quality sea salt and organic sunflower oil. The U.S. Department of Agriculture-certified organic product features 5 grams of plant-based protein per serving and is free of sodium, preservatives, cholesterol and trans-fat. It’s also NonGMO Project Verified, gluten-free certified, vegan, paleo-friendly, keto, kosher, and part of the brand’s Honest in Trade program.

Made in a dedicated, peanut-free facility with no sugar added (so it’s just the right amount of sweet!), this flavored cashew butter is so delicious, it’ll make you do a double dip.

NIWRI Cold Brew from White Coffee Corporation is a unique beverage cold brewed from green tea and coffee cherries, also known as cascara. “Cascara,” which means “husk” or “skin” in Spanish, is the dried skins of the coffee cherries. These pulped skins are collected after the seeds (i.e. coffee beans) have been removed from the cherries. While it can’t be defined as strictly coffee or tea but rather something in the middle, NIWRI does derive from the coffee plant. Specifically, cascara is a product of the fruit of the coffee tree.

Since NIWRI is a cascara-based drink, consumers can expect a sweet, fruity taste with notes of rose hip and hibiscus. The essence is like a superb blend of fruits including raspberry, currant, cranberry and cherry.

Once Again Nut Butter 888.800.8075 www.onceagainnutbutter.com

White Coffee 718.204.7900 www.whitecoffee.com