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SMORGASBORD GOURMET NEWS FEBRUARY 2020 www.gourmetnews.com SMORGASBORD 2 2 Campofrio Food Group 2, 3 www.campofriofoodgroup.com Country Fresh Food & Confections 5 www.countryfreshfood.com 888.545.8782 Elmhurst Milked 24 www.elmhurst1925.com 888.356.1925 Stonewall Kitchen 4 www.stonewallkitchen.com 888.326.5678 CALENDAR February 1-5 NY NOW New York City, New York www.nynow.com/future-market February 12-13 Food Processing Expo Santa Clara, California www.clfp.com/expo February 17-19 Northwest Food & Beverage World Spokane, Washington www.foodnorthwest.org/events February 29-March 3 Annual Frozen Food Convention (AFFI-CON) Las Vegas, Nevada www.affi.org/affi-con March 3-5 Pack Expo East Philadelphia, Pennsylvania www.packexpoeast.com March 8-10 International Restaurant & Foodservice Show of New York New York City, New York www.internationalrestaurantny.com March 15-17 Seafood Expo North America Boston, Massachusetts www.seafoodexpo.com/north-america March 31-April 2 International Artisan Bakery Expo Las Vegas, Nevada artisanbakeryexpo.com May 4-7 Food Safety Summit Rosemont, Illinois www.foodsafetystrategies.com/food-safety- summit May 16-19 National Restaurant Association Show Chicago, Illinois www.nationalrestaurantshow.com ADVERTISER PAGE WEBSITE PHONE ADVERTISER INDEX BY LORRIE BAUMANN Native Sun Natural Foods Market, with three locations in Jacksonville, Florida, is striving to be more than a grocer. Chief Ex- ecutive Officer Aaron Gottlieb is respond- ing to heavy competition among local brick-and-mortar grocery retailers as well as looming competition from e-commerce by transforming Na- tive Sun into a wellness center that works with other businesses to lower their health insurance costs and offer their employees extra benefits. "Today, brick and mortar – and retail in general – have changed faster than most retailers can adapt to," Gottlieb said. "While that can be nerve-racking, it creates white space in new areas of wellness to go into." Gottlieb, a graduate of Emory University with a degree in anthropology, was born and raised in Jacksonville, Florida, and opened his first Native Sun store there in the city's Mandarin neighborhood in 1997. He was already a convert to the idea that nutrition and wellness are intimately re- lated, and he opened his store as Jack- sonville's original natural and organic grocer. "Before that, there wasn't organic milk or organic produce," he said. "We be- lieved you could have an organic market." Native Sun now carries no genetically modified products, and products are or- ganic whenever the organic option is avail- able at a non-prohibitive cost. "Otherwise, clean and natural," Gottlieb said. Consumers see the organic produce de- partment as soon as they walk into the store. The next thing they're likely to no- tice is the signs that confirm the store's local outreach, both for its supply chain and for its relationships with its shopper community. "In addition to that, we have the organic juice bar in the front of the store," Gottlieb said. "Smoothies create in- terest in the department. It makes nice smells. It helps the experience that the consumers are having when they're shop- ping organic." Further into the store, consumers will find a meat department in which the only beef is grass-fed, although Gottlieb is ex- ploring the availability of non-GMO grain- finished options. The store also carries wild-caught fish as well as farmed fish cer- tified by the Clean Fish Alliance. "It took us a couple of years to find a partner to guarantee that the fish are not poisoning the waters or the people raising them," Gottlieb said. "It's important to raise the standard." Two of the three locations are 10,000 square feet, while the Bay Meadows store – which opened in 2006 – is 18,000 square feet. Each of the stores has a slightly differ- ent customer demographic, with the newest store, opened in the fall of 2015 only three blocks from the beach, attracting mostly younger families and the Bay Mead- ows store attracting the local business com- munity. The original location has the greatest differentiation in its customers, with more Baby Boomers and seniors in its neighborhood, Gottlieb said. "We try to give people au- thentic natural foods – not marketing 'nat- ural food,' – the way they imagine it should be when they go into a store that makes these promises," Gottlieb said. In addition to its grocery business, Na- tive Sun also features a restaurant offering scratch-made sandwiches, soups and salads inside each of its stores. "We have gone past what our community has available," Gottlieb said. "It's the only place in the community where you can order an organic meal that's delivered." Home delivery is available, and Gottlieb is exploring the po- tential for wholesale sandwich sales to local coffee shops. While the in-store restaurant and Na- tive Sun's emphasis on organic helps to differentiate the business from other local grocery stores, other grocers are closing the gap between their offerings and Na- tive Sun's, which requires Gottlieb to be nimble to compete. "Our major competi- tor is a very long list," he said. "We're in the middle of the grocery wars down here." He has responded by steering the busi- ness in the direction of providing wellness services to the community. With experts on nutrition, natural first aid and holistic wellness on staff, Native Sun offers educa- tional programs on these subjects and part- ners with local businesses to encourage their employees to participate. "We've taken passionate people who are getting degrees in the same area where our pas- sions are and taking those people out to corporations to do programs," Gottlieb said. "We're not going in there and selling our products; we're going in there and talking about what stress reduction exer- cises can do." Native Sun tracks employee participa- tion in these programs for each company and provides a report on that to the com- pany, which helps the companies earn rate reductions for their health care in- surers. Employees who participate get Native Sun discounts, coupons and sam- ples from sponsoring manufacturers, which helps bring them into the stores, where Native Sun tracks how they're uti- lizing their wellness education as they make their purchases. "The only thing we expect back is exposure and support from these corporations," Gottlieb said. "The companies see the need for wellness pro- grams." GN Native Sun Purveys Holistic Wellness May 19-21 Sweets & Snacks Expo Chicago, Illinois www.sweetsandsnacks.com May 31-June 2, 2020 International Dairy-Deli-Bakery Association Show Indianapolis, Indiana www.iddba.org June 28-30, 2020 Summer Fancy Food Show New York City, New York www.specialtyfood.com June 16-18, 2020 United Fresh San Diego, California www.unitedfresh.org/united-fresh-2019- convention-expo July 12-15, 2020 IFT Food Expo Chicago, Illinois www.ift.org/events/annual-event-and-food- expo July 14-20 The Atlanta International Gift & Home Furnishings Market Atlanta, Georgia www.americasmart.com July 22-25 American Cheese Society Conference Portland, Oregon cheesesociety.org/conference July 26-30 Las Vegas Summer Market Las Vegas, Nevada www.lasvegasmarket.com August 9-11 Western Foodservice & Hospitality Expo Anaheim, California westernfoodexpo.com November 8-11 PACK EXPO International Chicago, Illinois www.packexpointernational.com/the-show

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