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Supplier News BRIEFS GOURMET NEWS MARCH 2020 www.gourmetnews.com SUPPLIER NEWS 1 2 Icelandic Provisions Promotes Skyr with Ad Campaign Icelandic Provisions is rolling out its first national advertising campaign created, in part, to answer the questions 'what is Skyr' and 'how do you say the word 'Skyr.' Developed in tandem with advertising agency Circus Maximus, the campaign was created to help introduce consumers to the nutritious, Nordic alternative to traditional yogurts. The campaign, which kicked off in Washington D.C. in February, includes geo-targeted social and digital content coupled with quality, out-of-home experiences that will include transit takeovers, including full bus wraps, bike share kiosks and digital transit shelters. Yofix Raises US $2.5 Million to Fuel Growth Yofix Probiotics Ltd., has concluded an extended series-A round of strategic investment from new key investors: Germany-based Müller Ventures, AG; the French Bel Group; and LionTree Partners LLC, based in the US. This brings in a total of US $2.5M in investment. The new funding will be used to expand the reach of the company's current portfolio of award-winning plant-based yogurts and to accelerate development of its technology platform to launch more innovative soy-free dairy alternatives in additional categories. GrubMarket Completes Acquisition of Organic Harvest Network GrubMarket has completed the acquisition of Organic Harvest Network, a provider of outstanding organic produce. Founded in 1988, Organic Harvest Network is responsible for the crop planning, sales, marketing, logistics and accounting for the growers the company represents, connecting retail and wholesale buyers and growers. A key feature of Organic Harvest Network is a proprietary internet software platform that is specifically designed to assist growers with crop planning, accounting, pricing, and supply chain. As a result of this acquisition, GrubMarket will provide Organic Harvest Network with additional technological expertise and an existing customer base across the West Coast. The headquarters for Organic Harvest Network will remain in northern California, and the company will continue to be led by Founder Giuseppe Salvato and business partner Peter Oszaczky. Sabra Introduces Dark Chocolate Dessert Dip & Spread Sabra is introducing Dark Chocolate Dessert Dip & Spread. Deliciously decadent with a rich chocolate taste, the plant-based dip pairs perfectly with sweet, savory and snackable favorites from strawberries and bananas to churros, graham crackers and pretzels. The newest Sabra product is plant based, vegan, gluten free, kosher and made without genetically engineered ingredients. Sabra Dark Chocolate Dessert Dip & Spread, in an 8-ounce tub, will be available year-round online and at retailers nationwide. Ice Cream for All: Van Leeuwen Launches New Vegan Line BY LORRIE BAUMANN Van Leeuwen Ice Cream came to the Win- ter Fancy Food Show this year ready to win the dairy avoidant back to the pleasures of ice cream with seven flavors of its new oat milk frozen desserts. Van Leeuwen Ice Cream has been making vegan ice creams since 2013, but with its new oat milk ice creams, the company is ready to offer a vegan ice cream that Ben Van Leeuwen, the company's Founder and Chief Executive Officer says has a texture and taste that wows even dairy lovers. "The mission is to make ice cream for everybody. We've got you covered," he said. "Our dairy cus- tomers switch between both, which is re- ally exciting to us. To us, this is the ultimate vote of confidence that the vegan is just as good as the dairy." The company's new oat milk ice creams are offered in seven flavors: Chocolate Oat Milk Cookie Dough Chunk, Oat Milk Brown Sugar Chunk, Brownie Sundae Raspberry Swirl, Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter Swirl, Oat Milk Mocha Latte, Oat Milk Caramel Cookie, and for the tradi- tionalists, Strawberry. "With ice cream, we want to do flavors that are familiar, but made in our way, sourcing the best choco- late, the best strawberries," Van Leeuwen said, adding that the familiar flavors add a level of comfort for customers who are un- certain about trying a non-dairy ice cream. "Vegan ice cream is new to a lot of people," he said. "Even the term 'vegan' is not fully understood by everybody." The oat milk ice creams are already being rolled out in the company's 21 scoop shops in New York City and Los Angeles, Califor- nia, and pints will be available early this year to retailers nationwide. Pints of the new oat milk-based desserts retail for $6.99 to $7.99. The new price is lower than the price for the company's previous vegan line, which was made with cashew milk, organic coconut milk, extra virgin coconut oil, organic cane sugar, organic carob bean and pure cocoa butter. "We love the cashew- based vegan, but it didn't allow us to serve people who had nut al- lergies," Van Leeuwen said. "This was a way to create a com- pletely nut-free ice cream." The ice creams, like all of the Van Leeuwen products, are made in small batches in the company's Brooklyn, New York, facility, from premium ingredients, so it competes directly in the ultra-premium space, as it has since Van Leeuwen and business partners started making ice cream and selling from their truck on the streets of New York in 2008, Van Leeuwen said. "We added vegan ice cream in 2013," he said. "Our customers were asking for it, and we obviously wanted to serve them.... We were never trying to make good vegan ice cream; we were just trying to make more good ice cream that happened to be vegan – just as good as the best dairy ice cream." In those early days in business, Van Leeuwen was inspired both by the summer job he'd had in college, when he drove a Good Humor truck, and by his experience traveling around the world after leaving college. "I was going around the world to countries where high-quality food was more wide- spread, and I was really excited about the acces- sibility of good food. The ice cream truck seemed like a re- ally good model to launch into because it's so accessible.... That was before food trucks were cool," he said. While he was driving ice cream in those early days, it's the ice cream that drives him now, he says. "It's an overall love for food that's made with a lot of care and intention and with quality as a num- ber-one goal," he said. "My favorite part of the business is the sourcing and visit- ing the farms and learning how the food is grown." GN Hot Sauces Continued from PAGE 1 other farmers who were bringing produce to the market, they came up with a solution that a lot of other farmers have also come up with – they were going to need to make a value-added product. "It just sort of hap- pened very much organically," Bancroft said. It was Bancroft who brought hot sauces to the table. He'd been making hot sauces at home as a hobby, so he already had some successes – and a few failures – in product development. "I also had some recipes that I was testing on friends and family," Ban- croft said. "Some of our friends and family were dreading it by the time that we came up with our first SKU that we started off with." Altogether, the evolution from visual arts program to hot sauce manufacture took about 15 years. The hot sauce company split off from the non-profit youth program about eight years ago and is now a for- profit venture that directs a portion of its revenue into the youth program and con- tinues to employ graduates of the youth program in the cafe that shares its manu- facturing facility. "We still employ kids who were part of the program, but for the most part, we're just a funder of great stuff," Ban- croft said. In 2018, the company donated more than $20,000 to organizations includ- ing ArtReach Chicago, Project FIRE, Girl Forward, Centro Romero and the Marjorie Kovler Center. The hot sauces are all wild-fermented – when Bancroft and the teens he was work- ing with started making them, they didn't have refrigeration, so they needed to find another way of preserving the peppers that tended to ripen all at once. "We started fer- menting in whiskey barrels just out of ne- cessity," Bancroft said. Some of Co-Op Sauces are still fer- mented in whiskey barrels, although now it's done more for flavor than out of neces- sity. That has led to collaborations with local craft distillers and brewers. "Goose Is- land is one of our larger collaborators," Bancroft said. "We do something with them every year with one of their barrel-aged beers." All of the new sauces are sugar free, cre- ated by tweaking the ingredients – adding a little more of the sweeter ingredients or substituting one pepper variety for another, sweeter variety – to sweeten the sauces just a bit without adding sugar, Bancroft said. "There's no compromise in flavor in that," he added. "No compromise, but also not something that overpowers what you're eating." The Barrel is a classic, all-purpose sauce that derives its name from the Koval Whiskey barrel that's used to age the sauce, which is finished with Dark Matter roasted Harrar and Nicaragua coffee. Carrot Habañero is a sauce with what Bancroft calls an "eye-popping glow." On the milder side, ChChCherry Bomb features cherry bomb chiles done three ways – the sauce combines fresh, fermented and roasted peppers along with a touch of smoke from morita chiles. Jalapeño Lime is also a milder sauce, com- bining both fresh and roasted jalapeño for a sauce that's simple and sweet. Chi-Racha is just a little spicier and combines fermented jalapeño and garlic for an Asian twist that pairs well with noodle and rice dishes. The sauces are packaged in 5-fluid ounce bottles that feature gold foil-trimmed labels and bold graphics. They retail for $4.99. For more information, visit www .coopsauce.com. GN

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