Oser Communications Group

BY LORRIE BAUMANN The next edition of the U.S. De- partment of Agriculture's Dietary Guidelines for Americans is due to be issued this year, but the broad outline for those guidelines has already been released in the form of the Scientific Report of the 2015 Dietary Guidelines Ad- visory Committee, released this February. Among the highlights of the report: suggestions for more urging for Americans to modify their diets and get more exercise; more pressure on the food industry to reformulate food products in a healthier direction; and a tax on sugar-sweetened beverages, snack foods and BY LORRIE BAUMANN This year's Ben Schwartz Retail Grocery Visionary Award from Unified Grocers went to the Newport Avenue Market in Bend, Oregon, just the latest in a long string of awards recogniz- ing the achievements of Rudy and Debbie Dory and Lauren Johnson, who have transformed a traditional grocery store into a specialty market that appeals to the hippest of the foodies as well as a loyal following of home- town regulars. The store that's now the New- port Avenue Market was founded by Rudy and Debbie Dory, who Meet Viris the Cow and Francine Bearbottom at Newport Avenue Continued on PAGE 6 BUYERS GUIDE: Summer Entertaining SEE PAGE 18 HOT PRODUCTS: Frontier Soups SEE PAGE 7 UPDATE: Snacks SEE PAGE 15 Continued on PAGE 6 Continued on PAGE 4 have made their whole career in the grocery business, in 1991. The building had been a 22,000 square-foot Piggly Wiggly store built in the 1960s; and the Dorys and a partner who is no longer part of the business bought it in 1983. Over the years, they've added a deli and bakery and seafood counters, changed the re- frigeration twice, installed new shelving, improved the lighting and installed a spectacular wall of produce. The partner left the business in 1991, and Rudy and Debbie renamed the Bend store to make it the Newport Avenue Mar- ket and continued on their own. "The store has evolved. Every year we make major changes," Debbie says. "It's a never-ending story, but we try and focus very specifically on a shopping experi- ence – that every time our customers come in, it's very visual with won- derful produce and wonderful meat. We focus on gour- met, such as beautiful seafood, gourmet cheese. Our produce is not only very visual but excellent quality. We have everyday gro- ceries, of course, but we also have organic, natural and specialty throughout the store. Customers today are well- traveled, so we really try to bring in foods from around the world, so that we are the go- to source for people who love to cook." "We originally thought we would be more like Whole Foods, Grocers Look to Manage Consumer Nutrition Concerns Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee Urges More Attention to Inadequacies of American Diet desserts that could be used to fund obesity prevention pro- grams. The U.S. government uses the Dietary Guidelines as the basis of its food assistance programs, nu- trition education efforts and deci- sions about national health objectives, including the menu planning for the National School Lunch Program. Dietary Guide- lines for Americans were first re- leased in 1980 and have been updated every five years since. The point of this report is to in- form the next edition of the Di- etary Guidelines. Today, about half of all Ameri- can adults have one or more pre- ventable chronic diseases related to their diets and about two thirds of American adults are overweight or obese. These two conditions have been highly prevalent for more than two decades, and few, if any, improve- ments in consumers' food choices have been seen in recent decades, the report says, adding that a food environment epitomized by an abundance of highly- processed, convenient, lower- cost, energy-dense, nutrient-poor foods makes it particularly chal- lenging to persuade Americans to change their ways. BY LORRIE BAUMANN Polska Foods is bringing a tradi- tional pre-Soviet Polish culinary staple to American grocers' freezer cases. The young Califor- nia company goes to great lengths to make its Organic Po- tato Cheese Pierogi, Mushroom Cabbage Vegan Pierogi with Sauerkraut, Organic Spinach & Feta Pierogi and Savory Beef & Pork Pierogi from high-quality organic ingredients and time- and labor-intensive methods to pro- duce products that honor the culinary traditions of Chief Op- Continued on PAGE 11 Polska Foods Serves up Tradition in Pierogi erations Officer Tomasz Piszczek's Polish grandmother, says Bridget McQueen-Piszczek, the com- pany's CEO. McQueen-Piszczek discovered pierogi when her new husband, Tomasz Piszczek, took her to Poland to meet his family in 2010. "Everything we ate at his parent's farm was from the gar- den, the fields, or wild-picked from the neighboring forest – even the meat we ate was from a neighbor," she says. "When I had their pierogi with all the fresh in- gredients, I thought, this is in- credible." Piszczek's parents and grandmother didn't speak any English, and McQueen-Piszczek didn't speak any Polish. "We ended up communicating through the food," she said. "Good food allowed us to share a moment of love and appreciation when the language barrier pre- vented us from connecting." "When I came back to Califor- nia, I said that we had to get some of these pierogi," she continued. "We tried everywhere, even went BY LORRIE BAUMANN New dietary guidelines expected out this year from the U.S. De- partment of Agriculture are ex- pected to result in changes to Nutrition Facts labels that will confuse consumers, and grocers will need to be prepared to edu- cate their customers on the rea- sons for the changes and the implications for their diets, ac- cording to The Supermarket Guru, Phil Lempert. Lempert has been advising gro- cers and consumers about grocery products and strategies for almost 30 years and is a respected voice in the industry. He thinks that two particular recommendations of the Dietary Guidelines Advi- sory Committee, which in Febru- ary released the report covered in the story at the top of this page, will increase the confusion of consumers who are already con- fused about what they should be eating and why. Those two changes that are expected to ap- pear on Nutrition Facts labels within the next year are a new line item for added sugars and the removal of the line item for cho- lesterol. Lempert expects that cat- tle associations and other meat producers might very well file VOLUME 80, NUMBER 4 APRIL 2015 n $7.00 RETAILER NEWS n Food Lion Names Rhonda Mauldin 2014 Store Manager of the Year PAGE 9 SUPPLIER BUSINESS n Melissa's Produce: From Local to Global in a (Sugar) Snap PAGE 10 NATURALLY HEALTHY n Better-for-You Product Launches Abound at Expo West PAGE 12 SPECIALTY DISTRIBUTORS & BROKERS n Unified Grocers' Springfield Logo and Packaging Honored PAGE 14 SMALL ELECTRICS n Small Appliances for Frozen Desserts PAGE 22 News ..............................................2 Ad Index .......................................13 Smorgasbord ................................13 www.gourmetnews.com G OURMET N EWS T H E B U S I N E S S N E W S P A P E R F O R T H E G O U R M E T I N D U S T R Y ®

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