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GOURMET NEWS MARCH 2017 www.gourmetnews.com NEWS & NOTES 7 Ana's Apron Continued from PAGE 1 company's profits are dedicated to chil- dren's charities around the world. "'Ana' means 'mother' in Turkish, and I founded this company with tremendous support from my mother. We are using her artisanal old recipe in our Manti pasta, and she now lives permanently with us. We wanted to name our Manti brand after her to show our gratitude to what she has done for us. You can almost always find my mother at home with her apron on cooking amazing Anatolian dishes for lunch and dinner," said Ucar. The Manti are little filled dumplings about the size of a marble and the shape of a tiny purse, and they're available from Ana's Apron in four varieties: Spinach & Feta & Olive, Five Cheese, Beef & Onion and Chicken & Thyme. They're similar to Italian tortellini, but they're based on recipes that Ucar and her family have been making for seven generations. "We sell it the way we eat it in our own family. Some of our most frequent customers are families with young children. Our Manti pasta is a small bite size, so even a three-year-old can eat it without any parental help at the table. Kids love our pasta!" Ertas said. Ana's Apron packages the Manti for sale in 10-ounce pouches that serve two and sell for about $6.99 from the grocer's freezer case. The product is also available in 3-pound pouches for food service and in a family pack. They're prepared by dropping the frozen dumplings into boiling water for two min- utes and then traditionally served topped with plain yogurt and then tomato sauce on top of that. For customers who are buying their tomato sauce in a jar instead of mak- ing it themselves, a simple marinara would be an appropriate choice, Ucar confirmed. The Beef & Onion variety provides 36 percent of a daily value of protein per serv- ing, and the Spinach & Feta & Olive vari- ety is also rich in protein as well as iron, Ucar said. Shelf life in the grocer's freezer case is nine months, and Ana's Apron is currently distributing the products in the Bay Area, with production capacity ready for expanded distribution beyond that. "We've been working on it for the last eight months, and we're ready to take on bigger orders," Ucar said. For more information, visit www .anasapron.com. GN Better For You Beverages from Talking Rain Beverage Co. BY LORRIE BAUMANN Talking Rain Beverage Company will be coming to Natural Products Expo West with a new product line designed to appeal to consumers who are looking for a health- ier alternative to sugary sodas and a vote of confidence from across the pond. Talking Rain's Sparkling Ice ® flavored sparkling waters were recently recognized as a Prod- uct of the Year in the "No Added Sugar Drinks" category by the United Kingdom's largest consumer-driven award for product innovation. The Sparkling Ice brand, a line of low-calorie beverages, has been around since the early 1990s, but the brand and the beverage company's orga- nizational structure were both refreshed in 2010. "What we finally did in 2010 was define what Sparkling Ice was, from flavor profile to labeling," says Talking Rain CEO Kevin Klock. Today, he characterizes Sparkling Ice as a line of full flavored beverages with no added sugar. "It's really a nice, light re- freshing beverage with full flavor to it. It doesn't have the heaviness of a soda." The refreshing fruit flavors taste like the fruit names that are on the label, so they don't have to be explained to consumers. Sparkling Ice, the parent of the line, is a zero-calorie vitamin-fortified beverage sweetened with sucralose. There are now 13 flavors, including Black Raspberry, Cherry Limeade, Strawberry Watermelon and Black Cherry, to name a few. "The or- ange mango – the bottle looks refreshing, the color looks right, you know by the sound that it's carbonated, and when you drink it you taste both the orange and the mango," Klock says. "It's a beverage that hits on all the senses." The Sparkling Ice line also includes two flavors of Sparkling Ice Lemonades, which launched in 2013, and four Sparkling Ice Teas launched in 2015. The newest exten- sion to the line, launching this year at Nat- ural Products Expo West, is called Sparkling Ice Essence Of. "The Sparkling Ice Essence Of line contains no color, no preservatives, no sweeteners," Klock says. "That's actually the product that the com- pany was originally founded on, only under a different brand name. So we've been doing that for 30 years." Altogether, there are now more than 20 different flavors across the Sparkling Ice range. "Normally you wouldn't have that many, and we anticipated that we'd have limited SKUs, but every time we add a new one, we find that they're really incremental," Klock says. "You'll find some consumers out there who are really loyal to a flavor, and that's the only flavor they want.... Soda com- panies have really ignored the sugar-free space because it's hard to make a zero-calorie beverage taste good. There's a variety of rea- sons why we're successful." The breadth of the line appeals to consumers of all ages who are looking for variety, according to Klock. "We've seen this in beer where there all these people are going for differ- ent beers. The big cola companies control the space, so the consumer has never been offered variety," he says. "The consumer in the nonalcoholic space now has variety to go after." For more information, visit www.sparklingice.com. GN Leadership Awards Honor Specialty Food Producers Making a Difference Seven specialty food producers were named winners of the 2017 Leadership Awards by the Specialty Food Association during this year's Winter Fancy Food Show. The Lead- ership Awards honor industry frontrunners who have gone above and beyond in ad- vancing food standards in society – and so- ciety itself – by creating social, economic and environmental impact through innova- tion and vision. Awards were given in three categories: business leadership, citizenship and vision. The winners' achievements range from spearheading the organic milk movement in the U.S. to supporting sustainable rice farming around the globe. Two winners were named in the business leadership and citizenship categories, while the awards in the vision category went to a pair of part- ners and another individual. James Faison of Milton's Local and Mike Brady of Greyston Bakery and Greyston Foundation shared the honors in the busi- ness leadership category. Faison formed Milton's Local, which aggregates pasture- fed, hormone and antibiotic-free meats from small farmers, after attending Har- vard and earning a law degree at the Uni- versity of Virginia. He founded the company in 2012, and today, Milton's Local assures a fair price for their meats to the small farmers with whom the company works. Brady is the President and CEO of the nonprofit Greyston Foundation and its for-profit arm, Greyston Bakery, a Yonkers, New York-based, mission-driven enter- prise that seeks to change the lives of the formerly incarcerated and other hard-to- employ people. Over the years, this non- judgmental practice has created more than 3,500 living wage jobs. In the citizenship category, Mark Tilsen of Native American Natural Foods and Ken Lee of Lotus Foods were recognized. Tilsen co-founded Native American Natu- ral Foods to return the sacred buffalo to South Dakota's Pine Ridge Indian Reserva- tion. The company's Tanka Bar, made from dried bison and fruit, has created employ- ment opportunities for the Oglala Lakota people and helped to improve their diets in an isolated land. Lee and his wife Caryl Levine co-founded Lotus Foods in Califor- nia in 1995. Lotus Foods works with 4,000 small-scale rice producers around the globe and helps to educate them in new ir- rigation methods. During 2015, the prof- itable company saved 528 million gallons of water. Albert Straus of Straus Family Creamery was named a winner in the vision category. Straus, Founder and CEO of the northern California creamery, was a pioneer in the organic milk movement in the U.S. Straus' farm is currently comprised of 500 acres and 300 milking cows, with another 2,500 cows on nine local, organically certified farms contributing to the 16,000 gallons of milk a day for Straus Family Creamery products. Norah Eddy and Laura Johnson of Salty Girl Seafood shared the honors for the sec- ond award in the vision category. Their nearly three-year-old company, Salty Girl Seafood, supports small-scale fishermen and fisheries that harvest sustainably. They guarantee traceable seafood to consumers and promote stewardship of the oceans. "These six individuals are leading exam- ples of specialty food entrepreneurs who are truly making a difference," said Phil Ka- farakis, President of the Specialty Food As- sociation. "In our growing industry, leaders like these are paving the way for other com- panies to succeed and become recognized names. It's our honor to acknowledge their achievements through the Leadership Awards." Nominations for the awards were made by members of the Specialty Food Associa- tion and others in the specialty food indus- try. A panel of judges composed of industry experts and influencers selected the hon- orees from more than 50 nominees across the three categories. The judges included John Raiche, UNFI, Providence, Rhode Island; Meg Escobar, Social Venture Network, San Francisco; Erin Alston, City Harvest, New York City; Cathy Cochran-Lewis, Whole Foods Mar- ket, Austin, Texas; Bill Ward, Boston Uni- versity, Boston; Kimberly Jung, Rumi Spice, Chicago; and Linda Appel Lipsius, Teatulia, Denver. GN

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