Issue link: http://osercommunicationsgroup.uberflip.com/i/1006640
FROM THE EDITOR KITCHENWARE NEWS & HOUSEWARES REVIEW n AUGUST 2018 n www.kitchenwarenews.com Periodicals postage paid at Tucson, AZ and additional mailing office. Kitchenware News & Housewares Review (USPS012-625) is published 12 times per year (Jan., Feb., March, April, May, June, July, Aug., Sept., Oct., 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. ©2018 by Oser Communications Group. All rightsreserved 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. PUBLISHER Kimberly Oser SR. ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER Jules Denton-Card jules_d@oser.com EDITORIAL DIRECTOR Lorrie Baumann lorrie_b@oser.com SR. ASSOCIATE EDITOR Robin Mather robin_m@oser.com ASSOCIATE EDITOR Greg Gonzales greg_g@oser.com Amanda Helt amanda_h@oser.com ART DIRECTOR Yasmine Brown GRAPHIC DESIGNER Jonathan Schieffer CUSTOMER SERVICE Caitlyn McGrath MANAGERS caitlyn_m@oser.com Susan Stein susan_s@oser.com CIRCULATION DIRECTOR Tara Neal CIRCULATION MANAGER Jamie Green jamie_g@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 www.oser.com FOUNDER Lee M. Oser OSER COMMUNICATIONS GROUP editor from the New market research conducted by Mintel for the Specialty Foods Association predicts that the specialty food products that will be most successful over the next five years will be those that help consumers feel connected to a place or connected to a cause. What it tells us is that consumers are hungry for connection. Meeting that need was supposed to be the great gift of modern communications technology, but we know that many consumers feel more isolated and alienated than ever. We're coming to grips with a kind of culture shock, a phenomenon that grips us when we find ourselves thrown into a culture that threatens our comfortable first assumptions that everyone around us is more or less just like us. Once we start actually getting to know more people, we come face to face with the realization that most people actually aren't exactly like us – they're unique individuals within their own cultural contexts. Our human reaction to that is a shock that provokes fear and anger, sometimes culminating into a retreat back into the tribes and communities in which we feel safe, and sometimes easing into a sense of safety and comfort among these new people as we continue to learn more about them. Which way that goes depends partly on whether we feel welcomed and loved by the strangers in this new world. Retailers are often the gatekeepers into these new communities, suddenly realized to be all around us in what we'd thought was our own country, peopled by people exactly like us and now revealed to be something quite other. You can teach us how to eat here – what kimchi is and how it's made, how to make the salsa for a delicious fish taco, what we're supposed to do with this weird cheese that must be good because we just paid $20 for half a pound of it. You speak the language of food and home cooking, so you can be the essential translators for us who are hungry – as much for an understanding of the strangers in the world around us as for food. It's the kitchenware retailer who can show us a tagine and lead us to some understanding of its role in North African food culture and thus into the beginning of some knowledge of a people who share a very different heritage from most, but not all, American consumers. It the specialty grocer who can introduce us to a sheep milk cheese and the people who made it. Both can help us all feel more comfortable in a world in which suddenly the people all around us eat banh mi and chitlins and cricket snacks instead of "normal" food. During his lifetime, Anthony Bourdain did a great deal to help us make these kinds of connections and to show us that growing our understanding of other people and their food and their cooking has real value in helping us feel connected. His death is a loss to our world, and his voice will be missed. KN Lorrie Baumann, Editorial Director 4 KITCHENWARE NEWS & Housewares Review