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GENERAL NEWS 4 KITCHENWARE NEWS & HOUSEWARES REVIEW ■ SEPTEMBER 2014 ■ www.kitchenwarenews.com Summer Markets (Cont. from Page 1) to continue additions to the venue with renovations to meet the needs of the growing luxury gift, lifestyle design and gourmet housewares categories, including overhauling the trademark building and updating it with new glass fronts to serve as an area for housewares and luxury gifts launching in January. Further to the east, The Atlanta International Gift and Home Furnishings Market took place f rom July 7-14 at AmericasMart. The show drew in attendees from all 50 states as well as 90 different countries to see the 2,500 permanent showrooms and about 4,000 temporary exhibitors showcasing thousands of products. "People were here and they weren't just looking, they were ready to buy and they were definitely placing orders. So that was really exciting for us," said Chelsea Peabody, Strategic Relations and Media Relations Manager. Other highlights of the Atlanta market included cooking demonstrations from Food Network stars Sunny Anderson and Fabio Viviani and educational programming for attendees covering topics ranging f rom sustainable gardening to social media. Finalist of the 2014 ICON HONORS included the Peugeot Annecy cheese mill and Rush3 LLC's Chomp Stix for Product Innovation. Trends spotted at both the Atlanta and Dallas markets pointed towards the continuing trend of kitchenware items that perform essential tasks while looking good at the same time and tabletop products for large scale entertaining. "In kitchenwares, we were seeing a lot of the trend now is very much towards function but also design at the same time. People don't just want a meat thermometer, they want it to look nice," said Peabody. "There's a strong dominance and surge in home entertaining. There's a merging of the fashion and the function of gourmet and tabletop products," said Lugannani. "I think for a lot of the consumer base, the home is for family but also for friends and becoming much more of an environment where you want to entertain with nice things in a relaxing atmosphere too." Both Atlanta and Dallas will return in January 2015 for the winter season of markets and even more trendsetting products to showcase. Office Lunch (Cont. from Page 1) jar, I used a 1,000- milliliter Super Terrine f rom Le Parfait. These beautiful jars have the wide mouths that are essential if you're going to layer a salad into a jar and then eat it directly from the jar, which is a plan that makes sense for this particular salad, for which Mirabella suggests layering the blueberries at the bottom of the jar and then the blue cheese crumbles on top. She suggests packing the vinaigrette in a parchment paper dish packed at the top of the jar, but instead of that, I poured it into an Evriholder Dressing-2-Go container. It's made of silicone, so it squished safely into the jar and hadn't leaked when I opened the jar to pour in the dressing. The key to doing a Mason jar salad that stores well is the layering, and Mirabella's book also includes recipes in the book that call for the dressing to go into the jar first, followed by an ingredient like chickpeas, perhaps, that'll be the better for having some time to marinate in the dressing. Then the greens and other ingredients go in on top of the chickpeas, which prop them up out of the dressing so they don't get soggy. Mirabella's book was published by Ulysses Press and retails for $16.95. The Le Parfait Super Terrine fit perfectly into my PackIt lunch bag, which kept my salad beautifully chilled until time to eat. "While other bags attempt to insulate and maintain a cool temperature, our coolers actually create a cold, fridge-like environment inside the bag," says Melissa Kieling, PackIt's CEO. "You can put a room temperature item into a frozen bag. Because the walls are frozen, the bag will actually chill the item. It's one of those products that just makes sense. Once you use it you're not going to go back to using a foam-insulated bag. It makes a huge difference in how you transport perishable food on the go." Kieling started the business out of her home five years ago when the stay-at-home mom became frustrated because she couldn't be sure that food that she took out of her refrigerator in the morning would still be safe for her kids to eat hours later during their lunch breaks. Her very first prototype was made on her dinner table with freezer gel packs and lining cut f rom a shower curtain. Today the business offers nine different products in 12 different prints that are sold in more than 20 countries. My PackIt bag retails for $19.95 and is made in a French Bull print that says the right things about me when my coworkers see it. Joseph Joseph, Sistema, Rubbermaid and several other companies make whole lines of great food storage containers that are designed to suit brown- baggers' food preferences, since of course, some of us are salad-eaters, some of us like leftovers, and some of us just need a picnic table in the park to let us pretend that we're playing hooky for a weekday drive into the country. What really makes the Nest Storage containers from Joseph Joseph stand out is the space- saving design. The container boxes nest inside each other, and the lids all snap together. They're also color-coded, with a color chip on the bottom of each container box that matches the color on the rim of its seal, thus getting around that whole problem of having to paw through a cupboard to find the right size container for the leftovers you're planning for tomorrow's lunch and then having to search again for the matching lid. "They use a lot less space, and it's easy to identify which box goes with which lid, says Damon Willmott, Joseph Joseph's Senior Vice President of Sales. A company called U-Konserve makes a line of glass containers that'll be of great help to those who really are bringing their lunches to work because they want to know exactly what's going into the food they're putting into their bodies. The company was originally started in 2008 by two moms who were appalled at how much waste was being produced by the lunches their kids were taking to school. They invented a line of food-safe stainless steel containers tough enough to be tossed in a school locker, lugged home in a backpack and then repacked with the next day's lunch. Over time, though, Chance Claxton and Lynn Julian, U-Konserve's Co-founders, discovered that their products were being used not just by people who were concerned about packaging waste, but also by people who were concerned about what might be leaching into their food from their containers. "Listening to our customers has helped us define our direction and evolve into a successful company that is true to our original mission. We've always offered non-toxic products, but because of customer feedback, safety is now one of our primary messages. All products are tested in independent labs, so we know they're safe, BPA-free, non-toxic – all the things we care about," Claxton says. Consumers were embracing the U- Konserve stainless steel containers, but they also wanted glass containers that they could microwave at work. The company is now launching a line of glass containers wrapped in silicone, which adds color, some thermal protection so users can take a heated container out of the microwave oven without a potholder, and some shock protection so that the container is less likely to shatter if it's dropped. "Aesthetically, they're a notch up," Claxton says. "The rich, sophisticated colors are appealing to adults, and there are cutouts, so they can see what's inside. The silicone is a very safe material, and it adds color and a beautiful feel, so it looks nice on your counter or desk, and you feel good about taking it out of your lunch bag." The U-Konserve rectangular glass containers come in two sizes: 13 ounces and 36 ounces, and although they're sold individually, they're designed to nest inside each other. They have snap-on leak-proof lids, and they come in either eggplant purple or slate gray. The 36-ounce ounce container retails for $18.95, and the 13-ounce model retails for $12.95. The same product launch includes a line of glass bottles with silicone sleeves. The 20-ounce bottles with leak-proof stopper lids retail for $14.95 and come in neon pink and neon orange in addition to the eggplant and slate colorways. Photo by Sara Kerens Dallas Market Photo by Sara Kerens Dallas Market

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