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GOURMET NEWS NOVEMBER 2015 www.gourmetnews.com New & Notes NEWS & NOTES 5 BRIEFS Michael McManama Appointed as President and CEO, Decas Cranberry Products Inc. Decas Cranberry Products, Inc. of Carver, Massachusetts, announces the appointment of Michael McManama as President and CEO replacing Chuck Dillon effective September 28, 2015. Dillon is retiring. McManama has had a diverse and successful career having held senior management, marketing, brand, product development, sales and trade management positions with HP Hood, Ocean Spray Cranberries, Papa Gino's/D'Angelo and most recently, The New England Coffee Company, a Division of Reily Foods Inc. He has a BS degree in Operations from Boston College and an MBA from Suffolk University. Terry Meyer Named VP of Sales for Rhythm Superfoods Rhythm ® Superfoods, which makes plant-based superfood snacks, has named Terry Meyer as its new Vice President of Sales. Meyer brings more than 20 years of sales, operations and management experience to Rhythm Superfoods. Meyer has previously worked at brands such as Unilever-Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream; Naked Juice, where he led the rapid expansion of the brand into double- digit growth; Good Health Natural Foods, Inc., where he positioned the brand as a leader in innovation with healthier oils and vegetable- based nutrition in salty snacks; and Podponics. Meyer will manage the company's sales team and strategy for continued growth, both with existing product lines and with future plant-based snack innovations. Mini Babybel Awards $50,000 Scholarship Eight-year-old Gabriella Campanario and her father Agostinho Campanario of Issaquah, Washington, have been selected as the grand- prize winners in Babybel's Big Dreamers Contest. The family will be awarded a $50,000 scholarship to help Gabriella achieve her big dream of becoming a professional artist. Mini Babybel also will donate a total of $50,000 to further inspire and support big dreams for kids and teens, with $25,000 going to Boys & Girls Club of America (BCGA) and $25,000 going to the Campanarios' local Boys & Girls Club of Bellevue in Bellevue, Washington. Boar's Head Hummus Earns Non-GMO Project Verification Boar's Head Brand ® announces its line of gluten free hummus flavors are now Non-GMO Project Verified. The Non-GMO Project is North America's only independent verification for products made according to best practices for GMO avoidance. The Non-GMO Project Verification Seal will be displayed on Boar's Head Hummus packaging and serves to reinforce the steadfast commitment to higher standards that Boar's Head has upheld for 110 years. Beginning in July 2016, Stonyfield, a New Hampshire-based organic yogurt maker, will offer six months of paid maternity leave to mothers or the primary caregiver in the case of same-sex couples. "At Stonyfield, our mission is healthy food, healthy people and a healthy planet. This is the epitome of healthy people, supporting our employees so they can focus on raising healthy chil- dren from the start," stated Sue Melvin, Stonyfield's Vice President of Human Re- sources. Stonyfield employs more than 300 people at its New Hampshire facility and remotely. Of these employees, 36 percent are women. The Working Parent Support Coalition was conceived by leaders at Danone's U.S.- based companies and the founding mem- bers are U.S.-based divisions and sub- sidiaries of Barclays, Danone, Ernst & Young, KKR and Nestle. Leaders from each joined together to announce the Coalition, which is the first of its kind, and is commit- ted to supporting workplace wellness im- provements for parents and newborns and inspiring other companies to join in the movement. GN Stonyfield Organics Offers Leave to New Parents A Bethlehem, Pennsylvania convenience store is pilot testing a new dinner kit that allows time- starved customers to quickly prepare nourish- ing family meals in less than 30 minutes. The all-in-one kits provide healthy options to con- sumers and eliminate three significant down- sides to many popular meal-delivery kits: cost, packaging waste and the need to plan a day or more in advance to order them. Square One Markets is selling The Six O'- Clock Scramble Fresh & Fast Family Dinner Kits™, developed by The Six O'Clock Scram- ble, a company dedicated to sharing fresh and fast family dinner solutions. The dinner kits provide all-in-one meal ingredients and recipe cards that contain everything time-stressed families need to prepare a fast, fresh meal. They sell for around $20 and are designed to feed a family of four. At $5 per person, the dinner kits are less than half the price of meal- delivery services — and without the packag- ing waste and carbon footprint from shipping. The kits also will feature some locally grown and produced ingredients from the Bethlehem area. The September 30 launch at the Square One Markets store in Bethlehem included cooking demonstrations and recipe sampling featuring the creator of the dinner kits, renowned cookbook author and The Six O'- Clock Scramble CEO Aviva Goldfarb. Square One Markets and The Six O'Clock Scramble worked with the Project on Nutri- tion & Wellness (PNW) and the National As- sociation of Convenience Stores (NACS) to develop the family dinner kits. Square One Markets, with nine stores in the area, is con- ducting a 10-week pilot test of the concept with a different dinner offered each week. "The evening hours are when families stress about dinner preparation plans. It also is the most popular time to buy gasoline. This is a great way to combine two trips into one," said Square One Markets CEO Lisa Dell'Alba. Only 50 percent of families today have din- ner together at least five nights a week, and one in three American children is obese. "The family meal kits provide a convenient and af- fordable solution for busy families, and gets them on their way quickly to a healthy family meal," said Goldfarb. Families that want to cook more meals to- gether but can't say that the main reasons are busy schedules (43 percent) and they are too tired after school or work (31 percent), ac- cording consumer data from NACS. This din- ner kit addresses both obstacles. Meanwhile, demand for meal kits is there. More than three in four consumers (77 per- cent) say that they would be interested in pur- chasing an all-in-one meal kit from a store. Convenience store customers are especially receptive: 85 percent of weekly convenience store customers would purchase a dinner meal kit, according to survey data. Square One Markets Inc. is a convenience, food and gasoline retail chain with nine stores operating across five counties in Pennsylvania. The chain is headquartered in Bethlehem. GN Pennsylvania Convenience Stores Pilot Test Dinner Kits Mars, Incorporated has opened a Global Food Safety Center near Beijing, China. The company calls the center a first-of-its-kind facility for pre-competitive research and training that aims to raise global food safety standards through collaboration. Conven- ing governments, academics, regulators and industry peers, the Mars Global Food Safety Center is intended to drive global focus on addressing the challenge of food safety, lead- ing to better access, availability and nutri- tion, as well as reduced food waste and an increase in overall quality of life. Building on decades of research, the Mars Global Food Safety Center is a $15 million in- vestment in Mars' ongoing commitment to working with world-leading experts to ensure the safety and security of food for generations of families. In 2014, Mars and the University of California-Davis jointly established the In- novation Institute for Food & Health, foster- ing a new type of public-private partnership that catalyzes much needed innovation at the intersection of food, agricultural and health. Grant Reid, President and CEO of Mars, Incorporated, stated: "Food safety is a global issue that concerns us all—business, governments, academics and the world's population. Working together across all disciplines is the only way we can truly ad- vance efforts at scale, with the ultimate goal of increasing access to safe nutrition for bil- lions of people around the world." With an emphasis on pre-competitive re- search and collaborative solutions, the Mars Global Food Safety Center will leverage in- sights and expertise from over 60 Mars part- nerships dedicated to innovative, sustainable and responsible food safety prac- tices. The World Food Programme (WFP), the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN), Partnership for Aflatoxin Control in Africa (PACA), and the IBM/Mars Con- sortium for Sequencing the Food Supply Chain are among the many organizations Mars is partnering with to try to solve the challenge of feeding a global population ex- pected to grow to nine billion by 2050. David Crean, Vice President, Corporate Re- search and Development, at Mars Incorpo- rated, commented: "Unlike an R&D or innovation center focused on product devel- opment and improvement, the Mars Global Food Safety Center is a state-of-the-art facility dedicated to advancing food safety research through collaboration and the pre-competi- tive sharing of information. We firmly believe that in order to ensure generations of families have access to safe and nutritious food, we must work together to evolve food safety management programs and create robust, sustainable supply chains." Located just north of Beijing in Huairou, China, the Mars Global Food Safety Center will employ approximately 30 employees working on food safety research and training, plus a variety of sabbatical positions open to academic and regulatory researchers. Mars selected the location not only because of China's significant role in the global market- place, but also to leverage the intensive sci- entific focus the region is bringing to food supply and safety issues today. The facility will house analytical chemistry and microbi- ology laboratories, interactive training labo- ratories and a conference auditorium to enhance knowledge sharing. Through scien- tific forums and media platforms and events, the Mars Global Food Safety Center will pro- mote the findings of its work in order to help advance others' research efforts. GN Mars Opens Global Food Safety Center in China

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