Oser Communications Group

BY LORRIE BAUMANN More than 3,500 independent grocery retailers and wholesalers gathered in San Diego Feb. 23–26 to explore issues affecting the grocery industry, to discuss ideas for how they're going to remain relevant and competitive in an omnichannel environment and to hear success stories from their colleagues who have winning strategies in place in their stores. This was National Grocers Asso- ciation President and Chief Exec- utive Officer Peter Larkin's final time to preside at the gathering before he retires at the end of this year. Larkin has served the asso- ciation for nine years. BY LORRIE BAUMANN Cheese Cave in Claremont, Cali- fornia, may not have been born in Finland, but it was certainly conceived there. Co-Owner Marnie Clarke and her sister and fellow co- Owner, Lydia Clarke, were in Finland visit- ing their brother Noah Clarke, a professional hockey player, when the two started dis- cussing Marnie's reser- vations about her job as a cheesemaker for Winchester Cheese Company. Cheese Cave Brings Artisan Cheese to Light in Claremont, Calif. Continued on PAGE 9 Continued on PAGE 8 Continued on PAGE 9 It wasn't that she didn't like making the cheese – Marnie grew up in a dairy family, representing the dairy started by her grandfather Harold Stueve at natural food shows and helping out with the chores around the farm. When she'd landed the job as a cheese- maker, she'd thought she'd found her own career within that world. "I totally thought that was the route I was going to go down," she said. But then she'd found that she didn't like the early mornings, and she didn't like the loneliness. She wanted more connections with people, she started telling her older sister in 2007 or so. "My sis- ter and I have always been very close," Marnie said. "We knew that at some point in our lives, we were going to do something to- gether." While the two were in Finland visiting their brother, who was there after he'd been traded from his Swiss team, Marnie confided her uncertainties about the direc- tion of her career, and they talked about how Marnie was living in southern California, while her sis- ter was way up in Napa. "I wanted her to come back down to southern California," Marnie said. By the end of the trip, Marnie and Lydia had figured out a solution that made them both happy – a cheese shop that they'd run together. "Our original busi- ness plan was that we were going to be two sisters running the shop by ourselves, and we'd become little old ladies doing the same thing," Marnie said. In 2010, they opened Cheese Cave in Claremont, a clean little Specialty Foods Offer Center-Store Growth Potential NGA Show Draws Thousands of Independent Grocery Retailers to San Diego Richard Volpe, a professor in Cal Poly's Agribusiness Depart- ment and a member of the Food Industry University Coalition, brought a group of students to the NGA Show to compete in the NGA's an- nual Student Case Study Competition and to partic- ipate in the m e n t o r i n g opportunities offered to them by the associa- tion. To prepare for the competi- tion, his agricultural economics and food marketing students had spent four months researching the economics of getting food from the field to the fork and had prepared to present that research to the association as part of their capstone projects for their degrees, he said. This year's Stu- dent Case Study Competition was around the topic of how independ- ent grocers can encourage Millen- nials, especially those from di- verse backgrounds, to join their BY LORRIE BAUMANN Mercato was one of the vendors who set up shop in the NGA Show's technology pavilion this year, and Bobby Brannigan, the company's Chief Executive Offi- cer, found a ready reception from independent grocers who wanted to know how his technology plat- form could help them extend the same friendly service that brings shoppers into their brick and mortar stores to neighbors who want to reach their stores through online channels. He was just as eager to oblige. Continued on PAGE 12 Online Platform Offers Ease and Customer Service "Our mission is to match in- store experience with the same personal connection," he said. "We've built something that would be really hard for inde- pendent marketers to do, but we have more than 20 years of Inter- net marketing experience." Brannigan grew up in Brook- lyn, New York, where his family operated B&A Pork Store, an Ital- ian grocery. "I grew up working there, and as a kid, I delivered groceries," he said. After learning something about how to make a living as a neigh- borhood grocer, he went off to college and then built a college textbook company. After he sold that, he decided to come back home to the grocery business, where his dad was still doing business without any of the mod- ern technology that Brannigan had used to help him build the business he'd just sold. Brannigan couldn't find any- thing on the market that could help his father as an independent grocer, so he decided to build his BY LORRIE BAUMANN Independent grocers had more or less overlooked specialty foods for a long time, but now they're looking at the category as a way to help them compete with younger, Internet-savvy cus- tomers who are demanding more from their local grocers. "Spe- cialty was kind of overlooked for a time," said Kurt Rodhe, Presi- dent of Rodhe's IGA Marketplace in Chicago, Illinois. "That's totally changed.... Things we used to consider not conventional are be- coming more conventional. The lines are blurred.... Everybody's playing in this game now." "We're not selling Cheerios like we used to," he added. "We've got to pick that up with something else." More than half of American consumers are buying specialty foods, with core customers in the age range of 25 to 44, and about 75 percent of specialty food volume is being sold in brick- and-mortar stores. Younger con- sumers, the Z Generation, are active in the specialty foods cate- gory at rates approaching 80 per- cent of them, said Dan Funk, Chief Supply Chain and Mer- chandising Officer for Associated VOLUME 84, NUMBER 4 APRIL 2019 n $7.00 www.gourmetnews.com G OURMET N EWS T H E B U S I N E S S N E W S P A P E R F O R T H E G O U R M E T I N D U S T R Y ® UPDATE: Creative Flavors SEE PAGE 15 HOT PRODUCTS: Angel's Salumi & Truffles SEE PAGE 20 NATURALLY HEALTHY: Bare Snacks SEE PAGE 13 NEWS & NOTES n USDA, FDA Agree to Regulate Cell-Cultured "Meat" PAGE 6 RETAILER NEWS n Mother's Market & Kitchen Opens New Los Angeles Location PAGE 8 SUPPLIER NEWS n Oregon Coast Wasabi Expands to Offer Seasoning Salts PAGE 10 NATURALLY HEALTHY n Rumiano Celebrates Centenary with Cheese — and More Cheese PAGE 13 SUPPLEMENT n Creative Flavors PAGE 15 News ..............................................6 Ad Index .......................................22 Calendar.......................................22

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