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RING BY LORRIE BAUMANN Marilyn Johnson received her commercial food producer li- cense from the state of California at the end of August. With that in hand, she was ready to move the production of her Spread the Love jams and jellies out of her house and into KitchenTown, a processing kitchen incubator in San Mateo, California. It's a big step for the woman who only started taking seriously the pos- sibility that making high-quality fruit preserves could actually be a career in 2013. She'd found herself in a posi- tion where she needed another source of income, and she'd asked a local psychic if he could tell her where that might come BY RICHARD THOMPSON Consumers are getting more comfortable about purchasing groceries online, and retailers who sell groceries both online and in-store are reaping the ben- efits. Across all demographics, consumer perceptions over in- creased costs and perishable product risks have declined, and as more retailers offer online services, more consumers are taking advantage of them, ac- cording to the recent A.T. Kear- ney report, "Capturing the Online Grocery Opportunity." Retailers who have adopted omnichannel messaging – engag- Hunting and Gathering in the New Millennium Continued on PAGE 8 Continued on PAGE 13 SEE INSERT Continued on PAGE 12 ing customers both in-store and on electronic devices – have seen more customers order groceries online for delivery or pick-up, says Michelle Cote, Vice President of Data & Insights at MyWebGro- cer, a digital solutions provider that offers the most technologi- cally advanced grocery solutions to brands and retailers. "Today's omnichannel experi- ence [for consumers] is the 21st century version of catalog shop- ping," says Cote. Combining in- store advertising with online services, omnichannel solutions take shape as digital marketplaces that bring small-batch stores into the consumer limelight, provide apps like Allrecipes.com on mo- bile devices to let consumers shop on their own time and create vir- tual landscapes that compliment traditional brick and mortar expe- riences. "Grocery is one of the last ver- ticals to go omnichannel, but growing consumer adoption is oc- curring because online services are becoming more widely avail- able and, as a result, consumers are using it more reliably," says Cote. She notes that consumer adoption of online services has grown by double digits (15 to 20 percent) in the last three or four years. As the entire e-commerce mar- ket develops, grocery shoppers have grown past the need to show up in person to pinch the produce with many preferring to shop on their smartphones. "Consumers are ready to use shopping alterna- tives that are habitual and work for them." says Cote, "As retailers offer flexible options like click and collect, delivery and email alerts – and become more digi- tally active – people are becom- ing trained in using grocery retailers online." Olive Oil Industry Fights Label Fraud Incubating Greatness in Shared Kitchen Spaces from. He said he saw jars in her future. She thought about that for a minute, and then she asked, "Does that mean that I'm going to have a jelly business?" I don't know, he said. I see a lot of little jars. Johnson went back to her house in Half Moon Bay, Califor- nia, made a few more batches of jam and thought about that. She was already making her Spread the Love jams in a small way with a cottage food permit, but it was less a business than a hobby that paid for itself with sales to a cou- ple of local restaurants. "I've been making jam most of my life. From the time I was a kid, my mother would tell me to go pick blackber- ries with your brother, and then we'd make blackberry jelly," she says. Despite a small but growing fan base, Spread the Love didn't bring in enough money for John- son to quit any of the patchwork of part-time jobs she'd put to- gether to support herself through the recession, and the cottage food permit put serious restric- tions on her production and sales capacity. Grocery stores wouldn't buy her products without a com- mercial license behind them, and even some farmers markets wouldn't let her sell without a commercial license. Those obsta- cles held her back, but they couldn't stop her. But then, BY LORRIE BAUMANN Olive oil industry experts are en- listing retailers to improve the quality of the olive oil assortment on their shelves and to educate consumers that the low-price olive oil they can buy on some re- tailers' shelves isn't a quality extra-virgin olive oil, regardless of what it says on the label. While it's not necessarily easy for the av- erage consumer to know if the olive oil they're buying is truly a high-quality oil, it is very easy to identify a very cheap oil as a fraud, says David Neuman, CEO of Gaea North America, a sub- sidiary of Greek olive oil maker Gaea. "When you're selling as a re- tailer a liter of extra-virgin olive oil for $7, that's not possible. Or- ganic extra-virgin olive oil being sold for $5.99 a liter. It isn't pos- sible. You can't make it for that," he said. "You could ask, how do they do it? How do they sell an EV for $4.99?" adds Alexandra De- varenne, Co Founder of Extra Vir- gin Alliance, a nonprofit trade association representing produc- ers of extra virgin olive oil from around the world. "It's not really an extra virgin olive oil," she said. VOLUME 80, NUMBER 12 DECEMBER 2015 n $7.00 RETAILER NEWS n A Taste of History PAGE14 SUPPLIER BUSINESS n Taiwanese Tradition's Tantalizing Tasty Treats PAGE 16 NATURALLY HEALTHY n Navigating Your Customers Through the Fish Case PAGE18 BUYERS GUIDE n Publishers Picks PAGE 20 News ..............................................4 Ad Index .......................................23 Smorgasbord ................................23 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 ® Let us guide you into 2016, with products and contacts in several specialty food categories, including gluten-free and vegetarian. new year with new products 2016BUYERSGUIDE in the BY RICHARD THOMPSON "We were cleaning our aprons when he just comes in to have coffee. We were planning the din- ner and he just walks in. Really, it was like he floated in," recalls Lidia Bastianich, award-winning chef of Felidia and meal curator for the Pope. Bastianich gets giddy and, in her sweet Italian accent, recounts the time that the People's Pope walked into her kitchen and took a coffee break with her and her staff. "He talked to us about fam- ily – in Italian of course – for Continued on PAGE 6 Holy See Food, Lidia Cooks! nearly 15 minutes. It was extraor- dinary, but beautiful because he addressed each one of us and asked us to pray for him." she says. For Bastianich, who is a devout Catholic, the pope's surprise visit to her kitchen resonated on a per- sonal and professional level. "He makes people feel important in his life. From somebody of his magnitude...it's big," Bastianich says. For anyone wondering if the Pope likes cream or sugar in his coffee, he doesn't. "For me, cook- ing for the Pope is special be- cause...I am proud to give back through what is most dear to me on this Earth: food and my fam- ily," she says. Bastianich worked alongside