Issue link: http://osercommunicationsgroup.uberflip.com/i/1196295
www.gourmetnews.com n JANUARY 2020 GOURMET NEWS 8 8 A Righteous Salty Snack with Crunch By Lorrie Baumann Bubba's Fine Foods offers a line of snack mixes for customers who love the salt and crunch of the snack foods they grew up eating but who've gone grain-free in adulthood. Bubba's Fine Foods Grain Free Snack Mixes were invented by gourmet chef Jared Menzel, who co-founded the company along with Jeff Schmidgall, a for- mer CrossFit trainer and health coach. "We couldn't find salty, crunchy snacks that fit our new diet criteria," Schmidgall said. "If the food had the right ingredients, it didn't taste good. If it tasted good, it just had too many ultra- processed ingredients." The two men are brothers-in-law and be- came business partners in 2014 after Menzel – nicknamed Bubba as a child – showed up at a family vacation with a grain-free snack mix he'd put together so he could nosh with- out throwing his blood sugar out of whack. "Both of us had started changing our diets to- ward more whole foods, less processing, less sugar," Schmidgall said. "Jared ended up making this snack mix from banana chips and nuts with nothing but kitchen pantry ingredi- ents, and it tasted great and had the crunch." At that point, neither of the men had any experience at all in bringing a food product to the retail market – they just knew they were onto something that people like them- selves needed and the market wasn't offering. "We started Googling all the basics on how do you legally start producing a packaged food product for sale. That same morning we were brainstorming all of this," Schmidgall said. "One month later, we'd produced 150 packages of this grain-free snack mix." The first sales for the product came through the company's website, but it wasn't long before a manager at Hy-Vee came to them saying the store was getting customer requests for the product, and would they like to put it on shelves? "That was our first ex- perience with supermarkets was this little health food division of Hy-Vee," Schmidgall said. "They were just really great partners for us to sort of grow into and learn the ropes." Shortly after the two started the company, Schmidgall relocated from Iowa to the Boul- der, Colorado, area, where he found a com- munity with the infrastructure to support the natural foods industry. The company relocated its operations to Loveland, not far outside Boulder, in 2016. Freed from the constraints imposed by the restaurant kitchen that Menzel had been able to borrow after hours, produc- tion of the snack mix started in earnest. In the five years since Menzel came up with that first snack mix, now known as Bubba's Fine Foods Original Savory Grain Free Snack Mix, the company's product range has grown to include several new flavors of snack mixes and then several flavors of UnGranola. The most recent addition to the range is 'Nana Chips, which is the snack mix without the nuts. Righteous Ranch is one of the most popu- lar flavors of the snack mix. "If you look at the ingredients of a lot of ranch flavors of anything, the ingredient deck gets a bit processed. What makes ours righteous is that the ingredient deck is just spices from your kitchen pantry, dairy-free as well for people who have problems with that allergen," Schmidgall said. Like all of the company's products, the Righteous Ranch Snack Mix is grain free, gluten free, Paleo, non-GMO and kosher, with no refined sugar, no soy and no dairy. "The big trick that we're pulling off is naughty taste but with super-simple ingredients, and it's what sets us apart from almost all the other salty snack producers," Schmidgall said. The Bubba's Fine Foods Snack Mixes are packed in 4-ounce bags that retail for $4.29. 'Nana Chips packages are 2.7 ounces retail- ing for $2.99, and UnGranola, recently named the top Paleo granola by the readers of Paleo magazine, is packaged in 6-ounce bags that retail for $6.29. The products are distributed nationally, with the greatest density now in Colorado, Texas and California. They're generally sold in the natural channel and in conventional grocers with a strong natural foods presence. For more information, visit www .bubbasfoods.com. Rustic Bakery Gains Mainstream Popularity By Greg Gonzales Rustic Bakery, which started 14 years ago as a small operation in the back of a wine bar has expanded into four upscale cafes and a national wholesale operation with a 35,000 square-foot production facility and more than 300 employees. It produces flatbread crackers, artisan crisps, cheese coins and shortbread cookies in a variety of flavors. According to Scott Frank, Rustic Bakery's Vice President of Sales, the company's success comes from strong attention to quality and de- tail. "We really follow our recipes," Frank said. "If it's not perfect, it doesn't go out the door, whether the product is just a bit too dark or doesn't have the right texture or flavor." The bestseller – a 2019 Good Food Award Winner – is the Olive Oil & Sel Gris Flat- bread. "That's our number-one seller by far," said Frank. "It's been around for 14 years. It's really what we started with." The company expanded its lineup this year to capture the attention of the on-the-go snacking crowd. Originally, its single-serve products were only available for airlines, but Rustic Bakery and its retail partners saw an opportunity to appeal to a new crowd. They're now available in 0.7-ounce pack- ages for a suggested retail price of 99 cents. Along with the single-serve packages, Rustic Bakery also launched its Everything Spice Flatbread Crackers, which the brand introduced at the 2019 Summer Fancy Food Show. It also refreshed its packaging in re- cent years. "We do a really good job on our packag- ing, letting the consumer know what's inside that box," Frank said. "We have a lot of pho- tography on our packaging now." In addi- tion, the design team refreshes the holiday packaging frequently. That includes designs for Valentine's Day, Easter, Halloween and Christmas. "It's not the Rustic Bakery image you see on our everyday line, which is very clean, elegant and sophisticated," Frank said. "Our holiday lineup is really fun." For more information, visit www.rustic bakery.com. Gillibrand Calls for USDA Study of Produce Industry Market Conditions U.S. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, a member of the Senate Agriculture Committee, has called on the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to investigate if fruit and vegetable farmers in New York and across the country are receiving fair prices for their produce. While the prices of fruits and vegetables have increased for both consumers at the grocery store and for wholesale buyers, the prices that farmers receive for these same products has not kept up with these increases – and even gone down in some cases. "Our New York farmers are facing a pro- duce-pricing crisis. Throughout the state, fresh fruit and vegetable growers are hurting because the prices they get for their produce have stayed flat, and in some cases have even gone down, while the middlemen who move the produce from farmers to grocery stores and grocery store shoppers have seen the prices for the same produce increase," said Senator Gillibrand, a member of the Senate Agriculture Committee. "Despite this, the USDA has not reviewed the fruit and vegetable industry in decades. We need to understand what is causing these unfair prices for our farmers, and I am calling on the USDA to complete a top-to-bottom re- view of the fruit and vegetable industry so that we can help New York's farmers better price their produce and plan for their future." United Fresh Produce Association is tak- ing issue with Gillibrand's position. "The fresh produce industry operates on extremely tight margins, at every stage from grower to wholesaler to retailer. Our industry is the ul- timate supply-and-demand economy, and our real goal must be to increase demand for fresh fruits and vegetables," said Tom Sten- zel, President and Chief Executive Officer. "That's the key to raising prices paid to farm- ers, allowing reinvestment for growth. Trans- parency in any supply chain is a good thing, and we always welcome USDA's analysis of our markets. It's important for each sector in our supply chain not to lose sight of our goal to grow fresh produce consumption, while fighting with one another over whose share of a dwindling pie is bigger." There are thousands of farms and orchards throughout New York State, and New York consistently ranks as one of the top agricul- tural states in the nation, Gillibrand noted. "However, data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and National Agricultural Statistics Service shows that the prices paid to farmers for many of New York's specialty crops – including apples, snap beans, cab- bage, and broccoli – lag behind the terminal prices (the prices that the middle men who move these same crops from farms to grocery stores receive)," she said in a statement. "Fur- thermore, structural changes to the fruit and vegetable industry in recent decades, such as new farming technology, nutrition science, and consumer behavior, have left farmers fac- ing uncertainty as they feel that the market is not transparent enough to know if the price they are offered for their produce is fair." The persistently low prices that farmers re- ceive for their fruits and vegetables have led to the loss of small family farms, and in the last five years alone, New York lost 11,000 acres of vegetable production. The USDA hasn't conducted a full review of the fresh fruit and vegetable market for decades, and Gillibrand's push for a new study of this in- dustry would help identify which factors contribute to unfair prices for farmers and in- crease transparency in the market. Gillibrand is also calling for the USDA to use new tech- nology to improve farm sales reporting to en- sure that data is updated in real time, increasing transparency for farmers and al- lowing them to see if the prices they receive are fair. New Hot Sauce Brings Flavor of Brazil to U.S. Market Légal (pronounced Lay-Gal) is launching its new Brazilian hot sauce in the U.S. market. Légal Hot Sauce, owned by Homer Foods LLC and based in Hollywood, Florida, is made from a special recipe that incorporates the Brazilian malagueta pepper, which has been passed down for generations, and is now available for the first time in the U.S. With its uniquely Brazilian flavor, Légal is well- poised to shake up the U.S. hot sauce market, which has already been on fire over the last few years, according to its makers. The malagueta pepper, discovered by the Portuguese while exploring modern-day Brazil, is the key ingredient in Légal Hot Sauce. The pepper has been used for thou- sands of years by the natives for medicinal purposes and has also been considered a sign of good luck. Legend has it that when ex- plorers came across the malagueta plant, gold was discovered nearby shortly there- after. For years, the plant was used to season food in local recipes, but it wasn't until a local village woman started to create a sauce using the malagueta chile that the precursor to Légal was born. The name "Légal" means "cool" in Portuguese and conveys the care- free lifestyle of the Brazilian people, coupled with their spice and zest for fun. Légal Hot Sauce is available for purchase at www.legalhotsauce.com, at all Heatonist and Fairway Market stores throughout New York City and online at Heatonist and Ama- zon. The sauce retails for $8.99/bottle.