Oser Communications Group

4 SNACKINGNEWS Sneak Peek Spice Blends Bring the Fun to Yellow Door Creamery BY LORRIE BAUMANN Yellow Door Creamery, a brand of Schu- man Cheese, is innovating to make spe- cialty cheeses more accessible for consumers who are just learning to appre- ciate full-flavored cheeses. Flavors like harissa, classic Italian herbs and spices and habanero and lime blend with the mild flavor of classic fontina to make cheeses that appeal to consumers' adven- turous palates and also add some fun to the cheese case, says Ilana Fischer, Vice President of Innovation and Strategy for Schuman Cheese. Schuman Cheese launched the Yellow Door Creamery brand in 2016 in celebra- tion of the 70th anniversary of the com- pany best known for its imports of classic Italian hard cheeses. Fischer joined the company two and a half years ago as part of an effort to diversify the product line. "Innovation is something that our owner and CEO, Neal Schuman, is really pas- sionate about," she said. "We felt like there are a lot of really wonderful Italian cheese companies. We thought that there was a lit- tle bit of a gap in terms of fun." The average cheese case in the grocery store contains a lot of cheeses that, to the inexperienced eye, look a lot alike, and that can make it hard for the consumer to know which to choose, she pointed out. "It's very, very hard to differentiate be- tween cheeses," she said. "People are get- ting really excited about trying really good cheeses, but it's not made easy for them. It is an intimidating process." Communicating with consumers about cheese can be difficult. Flavors are hard to describe to people who don't have a shared experience of the flavors described by the terms that cheese professionals use to talk about the products, she added. "We thought about, 'What do we have to do to make the step toward specialty cheese more accessible?'" she said. Yellow Door Creamery started with its fontina, a cheese whose flavor is mild but not bland. "We decided to rub it with a va- riety of different spice blends – make it pop out of the wall of white and add cre- ative and exciting flavors that are new to cheese but not completely foreign," Fis- cher said. The habanero and lime blend that's hand-rubbed onto one of the three cheeses that currently comprise the brand's fontina collection is an example. "It's an interest- ing combination, but not a completely for- eign combination," Fischer said. "We want to make it a little bit easier for them to make a confident decision." Harissa and Tuscan are the other two flavors that Yel- low Door Creamery is offering, although Fischer says that quite a few more are in development. "Yellow Door has won quite a few awards for the rubbed fontinas. One of the nice things about winning awards is that it gives people who are excited to try cheese a note of approval from experts," she added. "It takes away some of the intimi- dation. I think that awards can do that for cheese really nicely." The hand-rubbed fontinas from Yellow Door Creamery also fit neatly into another recent emphasis at Schuman Cheese – cheese products that appeal to the 96 per- cent of Americans who snack between meals. The Habanero & Lime Fontina pairs nicely with chips and guacamole, and the Tuscan Fontina is good with hummus. "All of these cheeses do really well served cold, and they bring quite a bit of flavor," Fischer said. Schuman is also the company behind Cello Whisps, shelf-stable cheese crisps made entirely from cheese that launched in June 2015 and have been flying off gro- cers' snack food shelves ever since. "It took us a few years to figure out how to bake them in a way that would enhance the flavor of the cheese," Fischer said. "We spent a lot of time figuring out exactly how to do that." While the original Whisps were made of the company's own parmesan cheese, Cello is now offering a Cheddar Whisps made of a cheddar cheese developed by Master Cheesemaker Christophe Megevand especially for this product. "It's got all the craveability of a snack cracker, but without all the fillers. The only ingre- dient is cheese, all made by us," Fischer said. "All of the things that make cheese so great are what big food companies have been trying to mimic with chemicals for decades." She noted that cheese is a great snack for consumers who are looking for a hearty snack that's also healthy. Research from market research firm Canadean indi- cates that while hunger is an obvious mo- tivation for snacking, consumers also snack to boost their energy levels, to re- lieve boredom or stress or as a time-saving alternative to a main meal. Their snacks often come with a side of guilt, though, and American consumers are looking for healthier choices to minimize that. Cheese fills that need, Fischer noted. "Cheese has a lot of oomph," she said. "You can throw a bag of Whisps in a backpack and take them on a hike with you." n CHEVOO: Convenience and Flavor in a Cube BY LORRIE BAUMANN Cheese has always been a very convenient, very versatile food, but CHEVOO is up- ping the convenience factor with a product that offers both trendy flavors and enough versatility to make it an attractive option through the entire day. CHEVOO is cubed fresh goat cheese marinated in an infused olive oil and packed in a 7.1-ounce glass jar. Service as a snack can be as easy as dipping into the jar and spearing out a cube of the cheese, but CHEVOO is also useful as a conven- ient ingredient to toss over a salad or into an omelet pan, said Gerard Tuck, who founded CHEVOO together with his wife Susan. CHEVOO is offered in three varieties: Aleppo-Urfa Chili & Lemon, California Dill Pollen & Garlic and Smoked Sea Salt & Rosemary. The product is made by blending the flavoring ingredients through goat curd sourced from northern California goat dairies, then it's packed in olive oil infused with a botanical that's crushed and steeped into the olive oil over four to eight weeks. "It's a very slow and natural process to get the flavor into the olive oil," Gerard said. "Our most popular blend has smoked sea salt and cracked pepper blended through the goat curd. We then pair that with a rose- mary-infused olive oil. It works nicely in that you get one flavor that pops out from the goat curd and one that pops out from the oil." The product retails for $9.99 for the 7.1-ounce jar. For more information, visit www.chevoo.com. n Little Red Dot Kitchen Expands Production Facility Little Red Dot Kitchen's move to a larger headquarters and production facil- ity in the San Francisco Bay area is now complete following a successful USDA inspection of its production and co-pack- ing facility. The new facility also houses an FDA inspected commercial kitchen that began operation earlier this year, said Ching Lee, CEO. The production facility in- cludes fully automated, high-capacity equipment that can accommodate pro- duction of a range of meat snacks and sticks, steak bites, jerky and sausages from mixing and grinding through pack- aging. Equipment includes a commercial oven that can cook from 500 to 700 pounds per cycle, capability for both slicing and emulsion extrusion, and an automatic bagging system. Little Red Dot Kitchen began transition- ing operations from San Jose, California, into the new facility in Hayward, Califor- nia, in January to accommodate rising de- mand for its Bak Kwa meat snacks and to position the company for future growth. Bak Kwa is like a sweet and savory jerky infused with Asian spices and inspired by a traditional grilled Singapore and Malaysian street food. Little Red Dot Kitchen's Bak Kwa meat snacks come from U.S. family farms dedicated to raising animals hu- manely and without antibiotics or hor- mones. They are minimally processed with most ingredients having Non-GMO verification and also are free from artifi- cial ingredients, wheat, dairy and eggs. The meat snacks are available in reseal- able 1- to 3-ounce packages with a sug- gested retail price of $6.99 to $7.99. Cases include 12 of the 2.5- to 3-ounce bags and 18 of the 1-ounce bags. The Bak Kwa is available in five flavors, in- cluding the 2016 sofi Award-winning Hickory Smoked Spicy Candied Bacon, which has no nitrates or nitrites; Spicy Chipotle Beef Bak Kwa; Pork Bak Kwa; free-range Turkey Bak Kwa and Lemon- grass Beef Bak Kwa. For more information, visit www .reddotkitchen.com. n

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