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Gourmet Cashew Brand Benefits Native Producers SPECIAL EDITORIAL FEATURE www.kitchenwarenews.com n FEBRUARY 2018 n KITCHENWARE NEWS & HOUSEWARES REVIEW 1 5 market for the Sunshine Nut Company products, which are now sold in 3,000 stores around the country and on QVC. " We're homeless. We live a very modest life," Larson says. "Our vehicles are over 20 years old, and we couldn't be happier." A Single Origin Stor y Larson's path to Mozambique started with 13 years at The Hershey Company, a company with its own unique history of using business as a means of funding a charitable purpose. Milton Hershey, who founded The Hershey Company, and his wife started the Milton Hershey School in 1909 to house and educate orphaned boys. On his wife's death, Hershey donated his personal fortune to the trust that administers the school, and today, The Hershey Trust Company is the chocolate company's largest shareholder. The school, now coeducational, provides homes, health care and education for more than 2,000 children. At The Hershey Company, Larson gained experience in doing business in Af rica, in global sourcing and in buying and processing cocoa. He also shared the sense of a mission to help others in need. After he left the company in what now seems to him to have been a bit of a mid- Smart Retailers See Value in Courting Muslim Shoppers BY ROBIN MATHER While you weren't looking, Walmart made a shrewd marketing move. There's a lesson there for all of us. Nearly a third of the population of Dearborn, Michigan, is Arab-American, according to the 2000 federal census. They're the descendants of immigrants who came to work in the auto industry in the early 20th century. Walmart has recognized the strength of that potential market and has taken steps to court it. In 2008, Walmart designed its Dearborn store to attract Muslim shoppers. The effort included reorganizing parts of the store to resemble an open-air market and hiring 35 Muslim clerks, whose name tags also note that they speak Arabic. Walmart also hired a Dearborn Arab-American to conduct cultural sensitivity training. "It 's like a farmer's market," said Bill Bartell, the Store Manager, in an Associated Press story. The report described more than 20 produce tables featuring the squash, beans and cucumbers that Bartell's Middle Eastern customers want for their recipes. The section also captivated Bartell's black and Hispanic customers, he said, as quoted in that story. "Because we did all this due diligence prior to moving into this area, we came to realize our clients really kind of liked this atmosphere, and they liked the variety that we can give them." Walmart realized early that one out of five of the average Muslim households has a member with a medical degree or a Ph.D. Gallup has said that the second-most highly educated woman in America is a Muslim. Because the Muslim population tends to be highly educated, disposable income is about 30 percent higher than that of the average American household. Canny retailers and food manufacturers are out to capture some of the $20 billion in food dollars that Muslim demographic has to spend in restaurants and supermarkets, says Adnan Derrani of Saffron Road, which produces snacks and frozen meals for observant Muslims and others who follow halal practices. (More about halal and what it means in a moment.) "Nielsen is saying that the halal market is expected to rise from 11 or 12 percent this year, up f rom 7 percent last year," Derrani said. "Compare that to organic, which is projected to grow by 9 or 10 percent this year. This is a category that retailers need to pay attention to, when it's growing faster than organic Continued on PAGE 16 Continued on PAGE 16 Nocciolata Dairy Free Wins Italian Food Awards Rigoni di Asiago's Nocciolata Dairy Free was presented the Sweets & Confectionary Award as well as a special award for Sustainability in ItalianFood.net's Italian Food Awards USA 2017 competition. This is the first year that the awards, which celebrate the most innovative and best quality Italian food and beverage products for the American market, have been held in the US. The prominent product recognition follows a win as the Best New Product award in the Nut Butter, Seed Butter Category in the Specialty Food Association's 2017 sofi™ Awards competition. Rigoni di Asiago was presented with the Italian Food Awards honors at an awards ceremony on Sunday, June 25, 2017 at the Summer Fancy Food Show. Divided into ten categories and three special prizes (Packaging, Innovation-Creativity, and Sustainability), 191 items f rom 112 companies were voted on by a jury composed of US retailers, importers, distributors, and brokers. Made with organic ingredients completely f ree of genetically modified organisms, preservatives, colors, additives, or artificial sweeteners, Nocciolata Dairy Free combines hazelnuts, fair trade cocoa and cocoa butter, natural vanilla extract and raw cane sugar for a chocolate-hazelnut spread with undeniably superior flavor. Nocciolata Dairy Free is certified vegan, organic and made with environmentally- responsible cold- pressed sunflower oil. It also contains far less sugar than other brands and is f ree f rom hydrogenated fats. "We are honored that our newest product has been so well-received," says Rigoni di Asiago C.E.O. and President Andrea Rigoni. "We've always strived to have our products be delicious, sustainable and a reflection of our family's traditions and Italian heritage. It is a joy to be recognized among the very best in Italian food products." Rigoni di Asiago products are available in stores nationwide and online. The spreads are all organic, gluten-f ree, and f ree of preservatives, colors, or artificial sweeteners. For more information, visit www.rigonidiasiago-usa.com. KN Continued on PAGE 17 Loving Earth Bean-to-Bar Chocolate BY LORRIE BAUMANN Loving Earth is a brand of bean-to-bar chocolate that's built around the idea that its products should be healthy, sustainable and fair. All of the company's chocolate bars are made in small batches using cacao sourced in indigenous communities who make their homes in the Peruvian headwaters of the Amazon basin. Growing cacao is part of the cultural heritage of communities that have been terrorized by Shining Path, a guerrilla group known for trafficking coca obtained by the forced labor of indigenous communities and ultimately processed into cocaine for sale on the world market. Giving the people of the Ashaninka community a market for cacao will also give them the ability to support themselves without being forced to grow coca, according to Scott Fr y, Loving Earth Managing Director and co-Founder along with his partner, Martha Butler. Loving Earth has helped the Ashaninka establish a certified organic cooperative and has committed to buy all of the enterprise's cacao at a fair trade price that 's significantly higher than they'd been able to get locally in Peru. "They produced 10 tons the first year, second year 40 tons, this year hoping to get 75 tons," Fry said. " We're hoping to get to 200 tons in a few years, and at that point, they'll be self- sufficient and have a financially viable enterprise. They'll be able to have enough cash flow, based on projections we've done. You need a certain level of scale to be able to run an operation like that." Fry and Butler began making bean-to- bar chocolate bars in 2007, working in their home in Melbourne, Australia, making the bars and wrapping them by hand. From the beginning, demand for their bars outstripped supply, and the enterprise quickly outgrew that apartment kitchen. Fry has been sourcing cacao in Peru for the past decade, but four years ago, he became involved with Rainforest Foundation UK, which was involved with helping indigenous communities in Peru establish land rights as a first step towards establishing a local economy that could provide the kind of self-sufficiency that would allow them to make their own decisions about the crops they'd cultivate. "Their funding has run out over the last couple of years, producing new pressure to generate a source of income for the community," Fry said. W ith its funding in jeopardy, the organization was looking for a partner to BY LORRIE BAUMANN The Sunshine Nut Company is a brand of gourmet roast cashews that benefits the Mozambique communities where its products are produced. Don Larson is the company 's Founder and CEO, who reinvests 90 percent of the profits f rom the sale of the nuts back into the company and into The Sunshine Approach, the foundation arm of the business. The Sunshine Approach helps fund Sunshine Houses, homes in which abandoned and orphaned children are raised in a family setting by widows without other means of support. There are currently three Sunshine Homes, each caring for three or four children, with another two in development. Larson and his wife Terri hope that one day there will be hundreds more. Sunshine Nut Company has 50 employees who operate its cashew roaster in Matola, about half an hour outside the capital in the southern tip of Mozambique, to process the cashew crops grown by 50,000 smallholding farmers and shelled by another 1,000 people, all of whom benefit f rom the American

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