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GOURMET NEWS JULY 2017 www.gourmetnews.com NEWS & NOTES 6 Meet the Prize-Winning Innovators in the 2017 sofi New Product Category BY ROBIN MATHER International flavors and new twists on old favorites characterize the 2017 sofi award winners for new products at the Specialty Food Association's Summer Fancy Foods Show. Several products which won for new product also won top honors in their cate- gories. This is a new category for the sofi awards. Here are the winners in each category. Baked good: Sharp Cheddar Biscuits, by Callie's Charleston Biscuits LLC of North Charleston, South Carolina. 843.577.1198 Baking mix or ingredient: Gluten-free Crust Mix by renowned chef Thomas Mediterranean Seawater by Seawater Food & Beverage Inc, Dallas, Texas 214.537.5070 Condiment: Tomato Nduja by City Saucery, Brooklyn, New York 718.753.4006 Confection: Strawberry Mango Gummy Pandas by Bissinger's Handcrafted Choco- latier, Saint Louis, Missouri. 314.615.2438 (See the related story in the Holiday Sup- plement of this issue.) Cookie: Chocolate Chip Tiny Cookies by Tate's Bake Shop, Southampton, New York. 631.780.6511 Keller's Cup4Cup of Napa, California. 707.754.4263 Barbecue sauce: Dr. Foo's Kitchen Bali BBQ Sauce by Fischer & Weiser Specialty Foods, Fredericksburg, Texas. 830.997.7194 Cow's milk cheese: St. Albans Cheese, by Vermont Creamery, Web- sterville, Vermont. 802.479.9371 Non-cow milk cheese: Daphne's Creamery Chèvre by Zoe's Meats, Santa Rosa, California. 707.545.9637 Chocolate candy: Almond Gold Bar by Fran's Chocolates LTD, Seattle, Wash- ington 206.322.0233 Chocolate, dark: Cheeky Cheeky Churro Chocolate by Chuao Chocolatier, Carlsbad, California. 740.476.0197 Chocolate, milk and white: Moka Fleck Chocolate by Lake Champlain Chocolates, Burling- ton, Vermont. 802.864.1808 Cold beverage drink and cocktail mix: Top Note Indian Tonic Water by La Pavia Bever- ages Inc, Milwaukee, Wisconsin. 414.208.9677 (See the related story on page 12 in this issue.) Cold beverage RTD: Gazpacho with Organic Farm Continued from PAGE 1 maintenance to take care of as well as mar- keting trips to New York to find new cus- tomers for next year's crops. "There's always work to be done," he says. "It's just different work." Stroll got where he is today by way of a path that led him through a long career as a chef, including working as the banquet chef for New York's Waldorf Astoria Hotel. Stroll then founded Food Gems, a specialty wholesale bakery that continues through this day, and that calls on the skills he prac- ticed while he cooked and baked for a liv- ing from the time he and Cathy graduated from the Culinary Institute of America. When his kids had finished college, he and his wife were ready to add to his cooking life, and eight years ago, they decided to follow the dream he had growing up. "I love growing stuff," he says. "I always grew stuff in my back yard." He went looking for a piece of land he could farm. The 56-acre parcel he found had been lying fallow for years, which meant that no chemicals had been applied to it for enough years to make it possible to obtain organic certification without the usual three-year transition time. "I bought a rundown farm and rebuilt it," Stroll says. "We started from scratch." His most immediate challenge was find- ing his farming staff to get a crop started. "You have to nurture everyone who works for you," he says. Finding customers for those crops and the products they make from them came next. Stroll's long career as a chef had al- ready taught him that white-tablecloth chefs, accustomed to ordering their vegeta- bles without thinking much about how they were grown or where they were com- ing from, weren't always willing to accom- modate the realities of New York's growing season and its hiatus for winter. "Their de- livery schedule isn't your delivery sched- ule," Stroll says. His new prospective customers also didn't appreciate that Stroll's vegetables had to cost more because the weeds and insects that attacked the plants had been kept under control through human labor rather than with applications of chem- icals. "The reason organic costs more is not because it's snooty," Stroll says. "It's because it's expensive to grow. That's what makes organic expensive – it's all hand labor." Stroll had to visit those chefs in person to explain those realities to them face to face before he could win their business. "If it wasn't hard, then everybody would be doing it," he says. "There'd be no reward." After several years of selling to New York chefs, Stroll has the answers they need, which includes assurances that their previ- ous produce suppliers would still be happy to have their business every winter – that if they bought local certified organic pro- duce from him, they wouldn't be burning the sources they'd still need to depend on when Stroll's soil is frozen for the winter. Then in the summer, they'd have available an abundance of farm-fresh, locally grown organic produce with which to tantalize their guests' taste buds. "When the tomatoes come due, it's all your tomato specials then," Stroll says. "Some guys are easy. They un- derstand. Some don't." Some of those chefs com- plain about the feast or famine nature of seasonal crops. Sometimes they ask why Stroll can't sell them fresh vegetables outside their season, so that they could order eggplants from him in April and jalapeños in June, but that would mean bringing in vegetables from somewhere warmer during New York's winter months. Stroll doesn't do that. "If I don't grow it at Fresh Meadow Farm, I don't sell it to you," he says. "Some take it very well. Others don't." GN Continued on PAGE 22 GFI Shines a Light on Commitment to Sustainability BY LORRIE BAUMANN When Rob Wilson drove up to his office in West Caldwell, New Jersey, on June 8, he took a few minutes to look up at the rooftop of Gourmet Foods International's Northeast Distribution Center and smiled. Then he hustled inside to prepare for the ceremony in which the ribbon would be cut and he'd flip the switch on a brand new solar array. The decision to install solar came from the McCall family, which owns GFI. "As a family company, we have always consid- ered future generations in our decisions. This is no different," says Brewster McCall, adding "Now more than ever, it is critical for national companies to take a strong moral lead on environmental issues. We are looking to expand clean energy technolo- gies in our distribution centers across the country." Once the decision was made to install the new solar panels, it took almost a year to make it happen, starting with a permit- ting process and the engineering to ensure that the building's roof could support the array and even including a check to ensure that the rooftop array wouldn't interfere with the flight path of aircraft using the small Essex County airport that's just about a quarter of a mile down the road. "We ac- tually went to the FAA [Federal Aviation Adminis- tration] to be sure it was okay to put these panels in," Wilson said. "We paid attention to every detail, and rightly so." The solar project will provide benefits for GFI customers as well. By diversifying the com- pany's energy portfolio, the national spe- cialty food supplier will reduce electricity costs a minimum of 30 percent, allowing potential cost savings to be passed on to its customers. More than 500 panels across the distri- bution center's entire roof will power all of the company's operations at its 50,000 square-foot facility with clean, renewable energy. "This is a very big celebration for our company," Wilson said as he was mak- ing final preparations for the big day. "We're so excited and proud of this. We're having the ribbon-cutting, followed by our entire team celebrating over lunch." The moment that the switch was flipped to pull the building's energy from the solar array marked the suc- cess of what is just the company's most re- cent accomplishment in support of GFI's total commitment. "We take social re- sponsibility as a core value of our company. This decision to use solar energy is part of that core value," Wilson said. "The solar project exemplifies the GFI commitment to sustainability, whether it is solar energy, re- cycling, use of biodiesel trucks or support- ing local, eco-friendly artisans that create the great products we are privileged to pro- vide.... It really is a great event for our com- pany and a statement for our industry." The solar array will, in addition to gen- erating energy, produce no greenhouse gas emissions. Over the expected 20-year life span of the array, it will eliminate CO2 emissions that are the equivalent of plant- ing 151,497 trees or reducing driving by more than 13 million car miles. It'll dis- place the carbon dioxide emissions for the annual electricity use of 737 homes, and it'll prevent the burning of more than 6 mil- lion pounds of coal. "This is something we are very proud of as well," Wilson said. "It's clean energy and totally inexhaustible. It's nonpolluting and doesn't emit greenhouse gases." GFI is also proud to be supporting jobs for the American workers who built the solar panels. "Our panels are made in the United States. It was a very important part of the decision process. That's another of our core values – taking care of our team members by supporting the domestic econ- omy as well as the environment," Wilson said. "It's really about giving back. It's about taking care of everyone and every- thing through a sincere commitment to what is just and fitting, and that is the GFI culture". GN

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