Oser Communications Group

BY LORRIE BAUMANN Natural food producers are mo- bilizing to take the lead in the fight to reverse climate change caused by human activity. It's just good business to reduce the po- tential risks of global catastrophe, they say. "Growing food is de- pendent on a climate that's con- ducive to growing food," said Sheila Ongie, Sustainability Spe- cialist for the National Co-Op Grocers Association. "Our entire industry in food is dependent on a stable and predictable climate." "It's important that we bring our philosophical understanding into the heart of commerce," added Gary Hirshberg, Chairman BY LORRIE BAUMANN Texas is known for many things – cheese really isn't one of them. Rich Rogers, the co-Owner and Proprietor of Scardello Artisan Cheese, is out to change that. "Texas has al- ways been known for cattle and really wonderful farms and ranch land," he says. "There are really wonder- ful cheeses made here.... We get the question a lot about whether we make cheese in Texas. We do, and we make great cheese." Rogers opened Scardello in 2008 after a career as a filmmaker Cutting the Cheese at Scardello's Artisan Cheese in the Big D Continued on PAGE 16 Continued on PAGE 8 Continued on PAGE 11 that taught him the value of sto- rytelling, a skill that still stands him in good stead today. "One of the things I like about being a cheesemonger – which is the greatest job in the world – is that you get to tell better stories," he says. "You get to tell stories about how they started, stories about the farm, stories about the process. That's one of the reasons I love to visit producers when I can. I encourage my staff to do the same thing – to have those ex- periences and be able to tell sto- ries first-hand about being there and watching it happen." Even though his first career as- pirations lay elsewhere, Rogers had always loved food and cook- ing, and his love affair with cheese blossomed after he took a class in New York with some of the people who are his cheese he- roes today. He came home from that class and broke the news to his wife that he wanted to open a cheese shop. He was met, he says, with That Look. "Then she came on board. And now she loves it," he says. Scardello Artisan Cheese, named after Rogers' grandfather who gave Rogers a love of cook- ing and the conviction that food is something to share, now oper- ates in two locations in the Dal- las metropolitan area – a 1,600-square foot flagship store in Oak Lawn, one of the wealth- ier of the city's neighborhoods, Key Trends Shaping Future of Grocery Retailing Natural Foods Companies Band Together to Combat Global Warming and former CEO of organic dairy producer Stonyfield Farm. "Until November 8, we thought we were winning. This shows us how frag- ile it is." March 8 marked the official launch of a new Climate Collabo- rative, an association of natural food manufacturers, retailers, dis- tributors and suppliers from the natural foods industry who have banded together to take action on a problem that's already having negative impacts on their partic- ular businesses as well as on the planet in general. "You know that things are happening, and climate is changing," said Katherine De- Matteo, the Executive Director of the Sustainable Food Trade Asso- ciation and a leader in the Cli- mate Collaborative, which announced its initiative in Ana- heim, California, during a confer- ence day leading off the annual Natural Products Expo West. "There's opportunities in there for us to take the initiative.... Our idea is to inspire and ignite." The Climate Collaborative is drawing its leadership from a range of natural products manu- facturers, business and policy consultants and non-profit organ- izations already working on is- sues related to food sustainability BY LORRIE BAUMANN Practical solutions to reverse global warming already exist, and most of them are worthwhile to do even if they weren't tied to- gether with climate change, ac- cording to Paul Hawken, Founder of Project Drawdown and editor of the recently pub- lished "Drawdown: The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Pro- posed to Reverse Global Warm- ing." Hawken reviewed some of these strategies and technologies for addressing climate change during a March 8 address at Nat- Continued on PAGE 6 Global Warming Reversal Tools Already Available ural Products Expo West, held in Anaheim, California. Hawken started Project Draw- down in 2013 after it became ob- vious that global discussions about climate change were gloomy and becoming more alarming all the time, and that their focus was on slowing down climate change rather than re- versing it. He defines "draw- down" as that point in time when greenhouse gases peak and begin to decline on a year-to-year basis. "The rhetoric about climate change is about reduction, about slowing. If you're going down the wrong road, it's still the wrong road, even if you slow down," he said. "You don't want to solve cli- mate change. It's like changing change. You want change. What we can do is reverse global warm- ing. We don't want to fight cli- mate change or do the war on carbon. This black/white duality is the cause of the problem." "If you Google the top solu- tions to climate change, what you get is proverbs," he added. What could be said 20 years ago is even truer today: the U.S. food retailing business has never been more competitive. According to "The Future of Food Retailing: Value Grocery Shopping in the U.S.," a brand new report by mar- ket research firm Packaged Facts, there are a number of trends that are putting pressure on food re- tailers of all stripes, from super- markets whose bread and butter is groceries to supercenters and drugstores for which food is a smaller but still crucial part of the product mix. "Food retail is evolving. The customer is king, and perhaps more than any time in history, the consumers are firmly in control. Competition from multiple chan- nels is unrelenting, and retailers must be creative and innovative in their marketing, products of- ferings, services, and even store designs just to garner even a sem- blance of consumer loyalty," says David Sprinkle, Research Direc- tor, Packaged Facts. In "The Future of Food Retail- ing: Value Grocery Shopping in the U.S.," Packaged Facts identi- fies several trends impacting the food and beverage retail market. Three of the most prominent are VOLUME 82, NUMBER 5 MAY 2017 n $7.00 NEWS & NOTES n Baby Boomers Still Driving the American Economy PAGE 4 RETAILER NEWS n Meijer Fleet Driver Recognized by Michigan Trucking Association PAGE 10 SUPPLIER NEWS n Emmi Roth USA Launches New Roth Organics Cheese Line PAGE 13 (following Sweets & Treats) NATURALLY HEALTHY n Whole Cow Milk Yogurts from Bellwether Farms PAGE 17 HOT PRODUCTS n PAGE 20 News ..............................................4 Ad Index .......................................23 Calendar.......................................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 ® SPECIAL ISSUE INSIDE: Sweets & Treats SEE INSERT (Following Page 12) NEWS & NOTES: Vermont Creamery Acquired SEE PAGE 5 HOT PRODUCTS: Kusha SEE PAGE 20

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