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Specialty Food Market Drives Social Justice Shared Values Create Customer Loyalty Continued on PAGE 20 Continued on PAGE 19 Continued on PAGE 20 Continued on PAGE 19 Consumer Concerns Drive Adoption of Animal Welfare Certifications BY LORRIE BAUMANN There's a dollars and cents case to be made in favor of talking to your customers about issues of social justice, food safety, animal welfare and environmental sustainability. Grocers who know how to do that well are in better position to build relationships with shoppers that they want to meet at the checkstands. Consumers are no longer asking just the simple questions about price, taste and convenience to preface their grocer y purchasing decisions, according to David Fikes, Food Marketing Institute V ice President for Communications and Consumer/Community Affairs. They 're now often bringing more complicated questions with them on their shopping trips, including broad concerns about where a food product was produced, whether the animal was humanely treated, whether workers were treated fairly and had safe working conditions and where the ingredients came f rom. Not every consumer asks all of these questions, but most of them are asking at least one or two."What 's interesting is that, if you look at animal welfare, some of them are coming at it f rom health and wellness, and some of them are coming f rom concern for the animals," Fikes said. " W hen over half of your shoppers are coming with these questions, if you're going to establish trust, if you're going to expect loyalty f rom them, you need to meet them at the point of shared values." Understanding this and acting on it is key to establishing customer loyalty, according to Fikes. FMI has concluded, in a 2017 report on "U.S. Grocery Shopper Trends" co-authored by the Institute and the Hartman Group, experts on demand- side trends in the food and beverage industry, that retailers who communicate with shoppers about safety, health and wellness and ethics are well positioned to build trust and loyalty. Shoppers want retailers to do more than just make them feel informed – they want to shop at a store that seems open and honest and that shares their values. They believe that the foods they eat influence their health and wellness, and today 's shoppers "increasingly see being more closely connected to their food as an antidote to the ills caused by a food system that seems out of balance," according to FMI. They know they can shop wherever they want, and they believe that their BY LORRIE BAUMANN Americans' appetite for social justice as well as better food is paying premiums for farmers in developing countries. In its 2017 report on "Today's State of the Industry," the Specialty Food Association reported that in the United States, specialty food had grown into a $127 billion business, with a 15 percent jump in total sales between 2014 and 2016. By comparison, the growth rate for all food sales during the same period was just 2.3 percent. Consumers are responding to brands that invest in social justice. According to a 2011 report on research by scientists f rom the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard University and the London School of Economics, "A majority of sur veyed consumers claim to prefer ethically certified products over non- certified alternatives, and to be willing to pay a price premium for such products." What that means for farmers around the world is that specialty food producers who command premium prices f rom American consumers are able to spread some wealth to the farmers providing their raw ingredients. Under the brand The Ginger People, Abbie and Bruce Leeson produce a range of products that includes Arjuna Ginger Bites, Ginger Rescue Ginger Shots, Ginger Soother and Turmeric Latte Mix made f rom ginger grown in tropical areas around the world, including Fiji and Indonesia. The Leesons partner with groups of native farmers that grow the high-quality ginger they need as an ingredient for their products. Abbie is the company's Brand Shepherd, and Bruce is its President. In Indonesia, a farmers' group in eastern Java formed a co-op to grow organic ginger for The Ginger People. "This is their first opportunity to enter the commercial market," Bruce said. The Ginger People pays these farmers a premium price for the product that's 15 percent more than the Fair Trade pricing plus 1 percent of revenue f rom product sales. In its fifth year in Fiji, The Ginger People is the largest purchaser of ginger and now helps employ more than 100 people, including many women who are now able to pay school fees to educate their children. " This factory is helping them do that," Bruce said. " We are a company that quietly goes about what we do. It's not all about the money.... We now have a viable business partner, who with the additional support of Third World development organizations, is able to get the funding they need for better equipment. It's a cycle of success." Peering into the Haze Around Transparency BY LORRIE BAUMANN Grocery shoppers are asking more questions about the food they 're buying, and even though today 's food manufacturers are designing their labels to include more information about what 's inside the package, consumers still aren't getting the information they feel they need to make educated choices about what they 're going to feed themselves and their families. " We've reached that point where people are finally starting to question, not only what our government does, but what everybody does," said David Noll, Executive Director of Pacific Resources International, which imports its brand of manuka honey and other food products f rom New Zealand into the American market. He's been in the health food business for 40 years after visiting New Zealand and falling in love with the culture there in a country whose total population is about 4 million people. "You can't really spin something that 's not true because somebody will know," he said. "Crime is very low in New Zealand, because if you commit a crime, somebody wil know. I learned to love it.... They produce very high quality products, and they're willing to stand behind them." His manuka honey is a product, that, because it's used for medicinal purposes as well as a food, has a value that's highly dependent on being exactly what it says it is, since low-quality manuka honey won't have the same medicinal value as the premium- quality product. Because that quality isn't distinguishable from anything that can be readily observed by the consumer who's buying the honey in the store, those shoppers are particularly dependent on whether they can trust that the product really is what the label is representing it to be. That it sometimes isn't inspires distrust, Noll said. " Things cannot be hidden anymore – they're coming out all over. People are becoming disillusioned.... We find out that most of the time, it's just junk – junk being sold in the store. They 're asking the questions about food." " We're starting to see a resurgence – people who are saying, 'What's going on? We need real stuff.'" he continued. "America is on this journey right now. BY ROBIN MATHER As consumers demand more and more transparency about the origins of the foods they eat, animal welfare consistently tops the list of the considerations they bring to the market. It's hard to know which certifications mean something, and which don't, however. Californian Diane Barnard's chickens provide her with eggs, she says, and when they're not laying, she buys pastured eggs from local farmers at her farmers market. "Since I've shopped f rom those farmers forever, I don't need them to pay for certification in order to trust how they are raising their animals," she says. But when she shops at Whole Foods, she says, she appreciates the store's five-step labeling system for animal welfare so she can choose wisely. Whole Foods adopted its five-step program with guidance f rom the Global Animal Partnership (GAP) of Austin, Texas, back in 2008. Ten years ago, the company agreed to be fully transparent about how the animals that yield the meat that Whole Foods sells are treated. Everything in Whole Foods' meat counter is labeled according to how the animals are raised back at the farm. Step One, the lowest level, means no cages, no crates, and no crowding. The program continues through step two (enriched environment); step three (enhanced outdoor access); step four (pasture-centered) and on to step five (animal centered, no physical alterations). At the very top is step five-plus: animal centered, entire life on the same farm. Barnard's careful shopping puts her at the top of a triad of shoppers, says Libba Letton, spokesperson for Global Animal Partnership. "Consumers can be divided into three categories," she says. "For some, animal welfare is not a concern; for others, it's a concern but they don't care about the details. And some want to know the details, and how things are being done on the farm." Letton says consumer interest in welfare ratings is evident in the growth of GAP certifications. "We are certainly growing every year since we started," she says. "More and more ranchers and farmers are seeking certification, and more food service businesses and restaurants are letting their customers know about the certification of the products they sell. Cutting T hrough the Confusion " We started tracking certifications with our 'Shop with FOODIES FOCUS KITCHENWARE NEWS & HOUSEWARES REVIEW n AUGUST 2018 n www.kitchenwarenews.com 18

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