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Restaurant Daily News 8 9 Monday, May 20, 2019 eco-friendly straws is perfect for those looking to find a solution for their straw problems. Karat Earth carries a variety of sizes and designs of paper and PLA straws. Karat Earth offers a variety of products made from PLA, a plastic made from renewable resources that are compostable in commercial facili- ties. These PLA products include straws, disposables and utensils. Karat Earth also offers containers and dinner- ware made from bagasse, which is a natural fiber made from sugar cane residue that is a great alternative to foam products. These products can easily be used to replace everyday plas- tic products that are not environmental- ly friendly. Karat Earth's wide selection of eco- friendly products makes it easier for its customers to become more eco-friendly. All products are responsibly sourced from renewable resources that can be Karat Earth (Cont'd. from p. 1) biodegradable back into the earth, as opposed to standard plastics derived from fossil fuels that are not biodegrad- able. By choosing Karat Earth eco-friend- ly products, you are making a choice to better our land, our water and our air. Make the switch today. (Custom printing available on select items.) Karat Earth is a brand under Karat by Lollicup USA, Inc., which is a pre- mium manufacturer and supplier of dis- posable beverage and foodservice dis- posables. Karat Earth was established in 2008 under Karat by Lollicup with the thought to become more environmen- tally conscious. Since then the compa- ny, its employees and new products live by being more environmentally friendly. For more information, visit booth #1257, go to www.karatpackaging.com or www.lollicupusa.com, call 626.965.8882 or email marketi ng@karatpackaging.com. RDN: What differentiates your product offering on the market? JG: Product flexibility. Multiple config- urations of cold rooms are available for our customers such as coolers, freezers, combos, refrigerated or dry storage. Furthermore, Norbec solutions are tai- lored to your needs and ensure the high- est quality, performance and space opti- mization. Also, we offer unparalleled customer support. Norbec prides itself on being a trusted partner for all types of projects in a variety of sectors, including supermar- kets, convenience stores, restaurants, food processing plants, refrigerated warehouses, hospitals and research cen- ters. Our goal is to ensure your complete satisfaction and help you achieve your project goals. RDN: What's new at Norbec? JG: Foodservice industry workers rely on a safe and enjoyable work environ- Norbec (Cont'd. from p. 1) ment. Kitchen and cold room floors, when subjected to unsanitary conditions, poor cleaning or frost, can be very slip- pery and potentially dangerous. Norbec is proud to present NextGrip, a new slip resistant floor. The NextGrip floor is character- ized by an enhanced adherence, improved security measures as well as being stable for heavy loads, durable and much more. This new embossed floor by Norbec, in comparison to the traditional diamond tread plate, has superior properties creating a more optimal and secure working environ- ment for its users. RDN: Will you be showcasing the NextGrip floor at the NRA Show? JG: Yes. Visit us at booth #5457 to dis- cover and try this new slip-resistant floor, and find out how Norbec solu- tions can enhance the value of your projects. Visit Norbec at booth #5457. For more information, go to www.norbec.com. cutting dies, graphics, etc.) and all pro- duction is done under one roof. This makes us extremely competitive in the marketplace because we are not moving materials from facility to facility. RDN: What makes your company unique? MS: What makes our company unique is the way we have invested in our business. No company in our category has invested in their equipment and infrastructure like Accurate Box has in the last five years. The combination of our design capabilities and our folding carton mentality bring unusual styles and concepts to the QSR industry. Our manufacturing facility is FSSC 22000 food safety certified, which is a glob- ally acknowledged benchmark food safety standard stabled by the Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI). Also, we just received our G7 Certification, which is an internationally recognized methodology for calibrating printing presses and proofing systems to ensure color consistency and gray bal- ance. RDN: Why have your sales in the QSR industry grown so rapidly? MS: We are excited that Accurate Box's foray into the QSR market has paid off with extreme growth from new cus- tomers. We believe our combination of creative structural design and unlimited graphic capabilities has been a major rea- son for our product to be introduced into Accurate Box (Cont'd. from p. 1) this category. Our customers have the ability to change the graphics on their packaging as frequently as they would like. We have some customers who change their graphics for every upcom- ing holiday. Our graphics, tooling and platemaking are all done in-house so these changes are done with little to no cost to our customer. RDN: What do you attribute to your company's success? MS: Our new enhanced plant has improved our workflow and our state- of-the-art equipment has allowed Accurate Box to bring extremely attrac- tive pricing to the marketplace. Our brand new equipment can outproduce our competition and our attention to design helps our customers in this cate- gory wow the consumer. Our number one core value is to be customer focused; we cannot succeed unless our customers do. RDN: What are your delivery turnaround times like? MS: Accurate Box specializes in vendor managed inventory programs where we can work within various different sys- tems to manage our customer's invento- ry. This concept has the ability to reduce lead times to a matter of days and allows our customers to keep their inventories low without the fear of ever running out of product. Visit Accurate Box at booth #7260. For more information, go to www.accurate box.com or call 973.345.2000. Alter Eco Evolves to Stay Mostly the Same By Lorrie Baumann Alter Eco's hiring of Mike Forbes as its new Chief Executive Officer late last year sets the company up with executive leadership with experience in growing a brand through timely acquisitions and leadership in environ- mental issues. The move also frees co- Founders Mathieu Senard and Edouard Rollet from day-to-day responsibilities with company management so they can pursue plans for a new foundation that's under development with funding from Alter Eco's owner, NextWorld Evergreen, the private equity firm that acquired Alter Eco in 2017. "We want to elevate the livelihoods of the farm- ers we work with to make sure that they live a good, rich, full life off the cacao they sell." Forbes said. Forbes came to Alter Eco from California Olive Ranch, where he played a key role in the company's 2015 acquisition of Lucini Italia and grew the company past $100 million in sales, expanding its production and reach into the American olive oil mar- ket. Alter Eco is known primarily as a producer of chocolate, backed by a strong environmental philosophy, and was originally founded in 2005 by Senard and Rollet as a venture into social entrepreneurship with a humani- tarian mission in economic and social justice. The company's first range of products, introduced to the market in 2008, included quinoa, rice, tea and coffee as well as cacao – all sourced from farmer-owned cooperatives prac- ticing sustainable agriculture. Over time, the company's product range has evolved away from other products to focus on its chocolate bars, truffles and coconut clusters, all of which are certified non-GMO, organic and Fair Trade. According to Forbes, its environmental and social ethics have remained, even through the com- pany's acquisition by NextWorld Evergreen,who first met Senard and Rollet through their common member- ship in OSC2, a San Francisco-based community of sustainability-focused natural products industry executives. The Climate Collaborative is an off- shoot of OSC2 in partnership with the Sustainable Food Trade Association that's specifically focused on leveraging the power of the natural foods industry to reverse climate change. Both Alter Eco and California Olive Ranch are donors to the organi- zation, as well as members, pledging concrete actions within their own com- panies to address the problem. In addition to its commitment to environmental sustainability, Alter Eco remains committed to the social values with which it was founded, and that will not be changing under Forbes' leader- ship, he said. "We're not going to waver from that path," he said. "That is in the DNA of the company." Alter Eco does plan to grow its operations, but will continue to focus on chocolate, but NextWorld Evergreen is committed to scaling its growth in a way that stays true to the company's core values, according to Forbes. "NextWorld is a very patient investor," he said. "They want to do it the right way.... Having been at California Olive Ranch, I have seen what growth looks like. You want to keep your values the same, but so much about how you do busi- ness as you scale has to change." As the company grows, Alter Eco will be working on how to introduce sustainability to more people; both the consumers who purchase its products and those who are involved in the company's sup- ply chain, including its cacao farmers in Ecuador who may be urged to think beyond their current organic farming practices. "Organic is much more famil- iar, but how do we go beyond that? We intend to look at regenerative organic," Forbes said. Alter Eco is also pursuing devel- opment in its product line, including product innovation in its truffle line, starting with the introduction of a plant-based Superdark Truffle this year. "The new Superdark Truffles will be offered in 10-count and 60-count packages as well as single-count pack- aging," Forbes said. "Retailers love to put those by the cash register so cus- tomers can pick them up and start eat- ing them while their groceries are being bagged," he said. "I always buy their truffles at Whole Foods. I am that customer."