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Restaurant Daily News 4 3 Tuesday, May 21, 2019 United Fresh Promotes Mary Coppola to Vice President, Marketing & Communications The United Fresh Produce Association has promoted Mary Coppola to Vice President, Marketing & Communications. Coppola joined the association in the fall of 2014, spearheading the organization's marketing and communications efforts. "When Mary joined our team, we asked her to take on two major tasks," said United Fresh President and Chief Executive Officer Tom Stenzel. "First, she focused on growing the association's marketing and communications capacity to deliver targeted messaging to our members and broader fresh produce industry. "Equally important, Mary also took on the role of staff liaison to the association's Produce Marketing & Merchandising Council, a group of 45 leading marketing professionals from our member companies. Working with these volunteer leaders, Mary has helped create a strong professional community of pro- duce marketers that is helping our industry bring great new products to consumers around the world," he said. The Produce Marketing & Merchandising Council is known for organizing and hosting BrandStorm™, the industry's premiere interactive learning and professional development event for produce marketers. The fourth annual BrandStorm conference took place in San Francisco in February. "Congratulations to Mary on this great and well-earned career step," said Mark Munger, Vice President, Sales & Marketing, 4Earth Farms and Chairman of United Fresh's Produce Marketing & Merchandising Council. To learn more about BrandStorm and the Produce Marketing & Merchandising Council, contact Mary Coppola, Vice President of Marketing & Communications at mcoppola@unitedfresh.org. GIANT Plans Three New GIANT Heirloom Market Locations in Philadelphia GIANT Food Stores plans to expand its strategic growth in the city of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, with the opening of three more GIANT Heirloom Market™ stores during 2019. Building on the success of the first loca- tion of this innovative urban store con- cept in the Graduate Hospital area, the new GIANT Heirloom Market stores will bring a format and assortment spe- cially curated for each of the unique Philadelphia neighborhoods of University City, Northern Liberties and Queen Village, with local vendor part- nerships lending authentic and familiar flavors. "GIANT Heirloom Market is the next chapter in our innovative growth story. The response to our first location in Graduate Hospital has exceeded our expectations, and we couldn't be more excited about the future of our GIANT Heirloom Market brand," said Nicholas Bertram, President, GIANT Food Stores. "Equally as important, today's news also supports GIANT's commit- ment to the city of Philadelphia and the people who call it home. We can't wait to introduce our GIANT Heirloom Market concept to more of the city's unique and treasured neighborhoods." First to open over the summer will be the University City store at 3401 Chestnut Street, situated between Drexel University and the University of Pennsylvania to offer easy access to fresh, convenient food for these two large populations of students, faculty and administration. The Northern Liberties site will open its doors at 1002 North Second Street, across from the popular Schmidt's Commons in the fall, followed by the Queen Village location at 201 South Street by the end of 2019. The three new stores are anticipated to further bolster Philadelphia's economy by hiring approximately 150 full- and part-time associates in total from surrounding communities. "We are always grateful when com- panies decide to open or expand in Philadelphia, and that is especially true when the business helps provide access to fresh foods for our residents," said Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney. "GIANT has become an integral part of the Philadelphia region, and we're looking forward to the opening of these three new stores across numerous neighborhoods over the next year." While GIANT has held a long- established position in Philadelphia's suburbs, the company's presence within Philadelphia itself has been limited in the past. The opening of the three new GIANT Heirloom Market stores not only reaffirms GIANT's continued commitment to the Philadelphia region, but to its strategic investment in the city's urban core. GIANT unveiled this expanded commitment at the compa- ny's 95th anniversary celebration in October of 2018, when Bertram joined Mayor Kenney to announce the opening of the first GIANT Heirloom Market in Graduate Hospital, as well as GIANT's $1 million donation to Philabundance, the region's largest hunger relief organ- ization. With the addition of the three new GIANT Heirloom Market locations, the company will operate five locations within the city limits, including one GIANT on Grant Avenue in northeast Philadelphia that opened in 2011. While the GIANT Heirloom Market stores occupy a smaller foot- print than a traditional GIANT store, they maximize space and the customer experience with selections and features uniquely curated for the neighborhood it serves. The new 9,950 square-foot GIANT Heirloom Market in University City, for example, will cater to the convenience and needs of its busy academic neigh- bors by offering a wide selection of grab-and-go meals to take to work for breakfast or lunch, to enjoy in the gath- ering area with friends, or to take home for an easy, nutritious dinner. The University City store also intends to accept payment by DragonCard and Penn Card. "We're excited to be able to collabo- rate with our new urban communities to create a store tailored to their specific needs, preferences, and neighborhood flavor," explained Bertram. "Finding ways to better serve our neighbors drives everything we do at GIANT." Like the Graduate Hospital store, all three new locations will offer an inspiring selection of high-quality, fresh, local, and seasonal foods, every- day essentials, and GIANT's organic brand Nature's Promise ® . An onsite Produce Chef will be available to cut fresh vegetables and fruit on demand, while a sampling station will encourage customers to explore new flavors. The GIANT Heirloom Market stores will also feature a curated selection of craft, imported, and domestic beers and wines, as well as a vast array of plant-based foods, local artisanal breads, fresh-made sushi, kombucha on tap, and a do-it-yourself olive oil and vinegar blending station. Local customers will be pleased to see favorites from Philadelphia-area food purveyors such as High Street on Market, Claudio's, Isgro Pastries, and One Village Coffee. For added conven- ience, all three new GIANT Heirloom Market stores will offer both self and mobile checkout. In addition, the "Endless Aisles" service will enable customers who need something unavailable in-store to order via iPad for next-day pick up or delivery. Elements Truffles Brings Balance to Indulgent Chocolate By Greg Gonzales Stopping to take a breath now and then can help us pay attention to our inner voices. That's how Alak Vasa, co- Founder of Elements Truffles, says she found her way to making chocolate. She left a career on Wall Street to follow her passion, and now she and her team make truffles and chocolate bars with a mission in mind. Vasa spent more than a decade on Wall Street before she quit to train at Financier Patisserie in Manhattan. A friend had introduced her to meditation, which enabled her to understand herself better, she said. While she appreciated the chance to learn a new craft, she still didn't feel at home. That inner voice kept getting louder, she said, telling her she had to create something of her own. In 2015, she got to work finding the right product. "I never thought I would be mak- ing chocolate," said Vasa. "When I quit my job I didn't know what I wanted to do, but I did know I wanted to do something with food and with good food – food that you can trust, food that you can give to your child and not worry about what they're eating – and to build a company with values, in terms of the partnerships, the sourcing of ingredients, the packaging, the peo- ple. When we decided we wanted to build the company, we wanted to be mindful, to make it a human-centric company." The brand makes chocolates in small batches that are raw, organic and dairy-free, with no refined sugars, preservatives or emulsifiers. Each of its products is made in its New Jersey facility, where they're sweetened with local honey that makes each bite melt slowly. Elements Truffles mixes essen- tial oils, ginger, black pepper, beet root, turmeric and lavender into its products. The result is a new kind of flavor expe- rience, and a bar that's less likely to end in a sugar crash. Much of the inspiration for these flavors comes from Ayurvedic eating, something Vasa and her husband learned as kids in Ahmedabad, India. She explained that where most diets are about do-and-don't thinking, Ayurveda is about bringing balance to the diet. "For example, in the fall the air element is dominant, which means that element can go off balance in you very quickly," she said. "So that's when you eat more grounding foods, like beets, sweet potatoes, foods that grow in the ground. You eat warm spices too." Beyond providing nutrient-dense, delicious chocolate to customers, Elements Truffles also donates 25 per- cent of its profits to the Care for Children project by the Art of Living Foundation, a non-profit. The project helps educate underprivileged kids in India. It's not just chocolate bars at Elements Truffles. The company also sells Turmeric-Infused Drinking Chocolate, truffles infused with flavors like turmeric or cardamom or lavender, and gift boxes that contain an assort- ment of all the company's products as well as smaller bars in the Pantry Edition line. All the bars come in a cardboard box, with a fabric label hand-stitched onto the box, colored with vegetable ink. On the back, consumers can read about Ayurveda and Ayurvedic doshas, right above the nutrition facts. Suggested retail prices are $6.99 for the bars, $4 for Pantry Edition bars, $12 for drinking chocolate, $12 for a small box of truffles and $35 for a large box of truffles.