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www.gourmetnews.com n JANUARY 2020 GOURMET NEWS 7 0 Urban Farmer Gets Pickled in South Carolina By Lorrie Baumann City Roots is introducing a line of specialty pickles. They come from a brand more fa- miliar in the Southeastern U.S. for micro- greens and mushrooms, and while the new line of pickles will be available first to retail- ers in the Southeast, co-Founder Eric Mc- Clam hopes to expand the pickles, along with new CBD oil products, beyond the re- gion as the organic farm at the heart of the operation develops. City Roots was started in 2009 by father and son Robbie and Eric McClam, who were both architects. Robbie was nearing the end of his career in architecture even as his son was completing his graduate degree in the field from Tulane University. With the col- lapse of the real estate market in the Great Recession, both Robbie and Eric decided to abandon architecture to return to family roots in agriculture. Robbie had become interested in Will Allen's Growing Power urban farm- ing project in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and en- rolled in its commercial urban agriculture training program. "In his retirement, he de- cided that he wanted to provide local organic produce to our community," Eric said. After his training in Wisconsin, Robbie re- turned to Columbia, South Carolina, his home town, and arranged to lease a 5-acre piece of city-owned property in an underde- veloped part of Columbia's downtown and turn it into an urban farm. "It was a joint project, initially," said Eric. The organization built a greenhouse on the property and added a commercial kitchen. Local students were encouraged to come and tour the property with their schools so they could learn some- thing more about where food comes from. As the farm developed, City Roots started win- ning awards for successful urban develop- ment, and eventually, the city sold the land to City Roots. City Roots has experimented with a number of crops and business enterprises through the years, from microgreens to mushrooms and cut flowers and from agri- tourism to catering and became one of the largest microgreens sup- pliers in the Southeast, distributing to retailers and chefs across the re- gion. "We're close by and engaged in our community," said Eric McClam, who finished his studies at Tulane and returned to Columbia to become part of the project. "I got my hands dirty and started enjoying farming.... I've picked it up and run with it." Two years ago, the organization added an 80-acre organic farm that's a few minutes away, and the farm now employs 25 staff and is focused on its successful microgreens business, root crops and commercial hemp production and on continuing to be a com- munity hub where students from local ele- mentary schools and even the nearby University of South Carolina can come to learn about urban agriculture. "That's been a mission for a long time as well," Eric said. "We serve as a resource for them." The company will introduce pickles made in its commercial kitchen and CBD oil products made from its hemp into the retail market, starting with its home territory below the Mason Dixon Line, where City Roots is already a familiar name in produce aisles across the region. "Our initial marketing push will be in the Southeast," Eric said. "Regionally in the Southeast is the initial focus, but we're not going to restrict where we go. We're already drop-shipping across the U.S." The pickles' initial launch will include five products, all certified organic: Classic Beets; Curry Beets, made with golden beets; Spicy Carrots and Ginger Carrots, both made with rainbow carrots; and Sweet Onion, which is made with red beets and onions. They're all packed in 16-ounce glass jars that will retail for $12 to $14 as well as in 32-ounce pack- ages for foodservice applications. The com- pany will also be launching its City Roots CBD line. For more information, visit www.city rootspickles.com, www.cityrootscbd.com or www.cityroots.org. Meal Kits Prompt Consumers to Cook More than half of U.S. adults claim they re- ally enjoy cooking (53 percent) and more than a third consider the kitchen to be the most important room in the home (35 per- cent), according to data in the new report "Eating Trends: Cooking & Food Shopping" from market research firm Packaged Facts. These percentages are up compared to a decade ago. Packaged Facts found that most people who don't cook at home either have a lack of time to grocery shop and meal prep or they lack confidence in their cooking skills. The latter reason is especially prevalent among Gen Z adults (ages 18-24) and to a lesser extent Millennials (ages 25-39). The meal kit industry is arguably the best example of a food industry segment that's making it easier for adults to start cooking more at home again. The products are mar- keted to emphasize several advantages that pique consumer interest and encourage cooking at home. Meal kits appeal to impor- tant consumer segments, namely busy con- sumers who don't have time to shop for groceries or plan meals, high income con- sumers who don't want to or like to shop for groceries or plan meals and are willing to pay more for convenience, consumers who have few cooking skills but who want to learn to cook and consumers who live alone or in a small household who don't like wast- ing food and want proportions tailored to their needs. Online grocery services provided by Ama- zon Prime Pantry, AmazonFresh, Instacart and Peapod, among others, have also proven to be time savers for aspiring home cooks. Since 2013, online sales of groceries have more than tripled from $6 billion to $20 billion in 2018 at a compound annual growth rate of 26 per- cent. Through 2023, online grocery sales are forecast by Packaged Facts to rise 34 percent annually, more than quadrupling from the lev- els in 2018 and coming to represent 7 percent of the total grocery market. Worth watching in coming years will be how grocers and food retailers capitalize on contextual commerce (also known as con- nected commerce, voice commerce or con- versational commerce). Contextual commerce offers consumers options ranging from buy buttons to messaging bots and voice assistants to scan-and-bag apps. With contextual commerce, consumers have the opportunity to make purchases anytime or anywhere with a button click if they choose, but even more conveniently, with just their voices. Ultimately, the goal of contextual commerce is to expand retailers' reach, al- lowing them to effortlessly implement pur- chase opportunities into consumers' daily activities and natural environments. Much like meal kits and food ecommerce, it's ulti- mately another step toward saving home cooks time. Chef Darin's Kitchen Table Cooks in Savannah By Lorrie Baumann More than three decades of cooking pro- fessionally has taught Chef Darin Sehnert that the three things that lead to success for any cook – whether at home or in a com- mercial restaurant kitchen – are tech- niques, ingredients and equipment. That's the philosophy he passes along to the home cooks who come to his Savannah kitchen store, Chef Darin's Kitchen Table, to learn about Southern coastal cooking while they're weekending in the city. While they're in the store, he's also happy to sell them the kitchenware that they'll need to be successful at home with the dishes they've learned in class. "The ap- proach is to look at what's out there and offer what has great performance plus value," Sehnert said. "My approach is not to be everything to everyone because I think it's easy to fill up with a lot of inven- tory that may or may not be purchased." Sehnert opened his store as a cooking school four years ago, then added the re- tail end of the operation about two years ago after other Savannah kitchenware stores closed. His business is now the only specialty kitchenware store in the commu- nity of more than 145,000 people. "We're still getting the word out that there's still a store here in Savannah," Sehnert said. His business draws most of its clientele from Savannah's tourist trade, and Sehnert encourages that by marketing his cooking classes through TripAdvisor and adver- tisements on Savannah's Convention and Visitors Bureau's guides to local attrac- tions. "We're number one for food and beverage activities on TripAdvisor, so customers find us when they're looking for things to do in Savannah," he said. His premises includes about 1,000 square feet of teaching kitchen equipped with four separate dual-fuel KitchenAid ranges on two stations with a chef 's sta- tion at the front. Up to 16 guests at a time work in small groups of four or five on menus that reflect seasonal ingredients and an emphasis on local culinary tradi- tions. Low Country Shrimp and Grits is the single most popular class, offered monthly in a rotation that includes seven to nine topics a month with five to seven classes offered in an average week. In the winter months, a class on northern Italian cooking that features a menu with osso buco and saffron risotto is popular. "I do all the teaching," Sehnert said. "One of the things that people like is the focus on science and technique, which resonates particularly among men. They like it fun.... When it's a leisure learning experi- ence, where you're choosing to do it – if it's not fun, people aren't going to want to come back." In addition to his regularly scheduled classes, Sehnert also offers private classes and events for up to 60 people at a time. "People do book classes as special events like family reunions," he said. "We have a special New Year's Eve class, and there's a Thanksgiving class for out-of- towners or locals who aren't going out with their family. It's out of the ordinary, and it's better than sitting in a busy restau- rant." At the front of the store, he has about 1,000 square feet of display floor in which he offers products from Microplane, cook- ware by Hammer Stahl and baking pans from USA Pan as well as Messermeister knives and Epicurean cutting boards. All of the tools and equipment in the store are items that he actually uses in his classes, chosen because he and his one store assis- tant can personally vouch for the value proposition offered by each piece. "I like to be able to explain how a piece of cook- ware will perform for them," he said. "I want people to feel confident in what they're buying rather than buying a name that they recognize that may or may not serve their purposes." The sales floor is part of the attraction for the location when Sehnert volunteers his store as a host site for guest chef classes during the Savannah Food and Wine Festival. Over the course of the week-long festival held in November of each year by Savannah's Tourism Leader- ship Council, Chef Darin's Kitchen Table will host 12 to 15 classes, with class fees benefiting the council's TLC Scholarship Fund, which offers educational opportuni- ties for students enrolled in hospitality programs in the region's colleges and uni- versities. "We get a lot of out-of-town vis- itors for that as well as year-round," Sehnert said. "The store acts as a waiting area between the festival classes. It's def- initely a marketing effort; it draws people in who would not have known about us otherwise."