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NATURALLY HEALTHY www.gourmetnews.com n MARCH 2018 n GOURMET NEWS N H 6 8 Pacific Pickle Works Earns Non-GMO Project Verification Pacific Pickle Works has announced that the company's award-winning line of 11 all-nat- ural pickled vegetables has earned Non GMO Project Verification. Hand-packed within 24 hours of delivery, every batch of bold and spicy "West Coast" pickles features peak-season produce, sourced locally and organic whenever possi- ble. Sporting playful names such as Jal- abeaños, Unbeetables and Brussizzle Sprouts, all of Pacific Pickle Works' Non GMO Project Verified products are also nat- urally gluten free, fat free and kosher, with zero artificial ingredients or refined sugars. For Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Bradley Bennett, maintaining the Non GMO Project Standard aligns seamlessly with the company's enduring commitment to a supe- rior-quality, clean label consumer experi- ence. "As a small business, we may lack the resources to run national ad campaigns," Bennett said. "But the effort that the Non GMO Project has put into building consumer trust and educating consumers on GMOs helps our brand cut through the noise to reach a wider audience." The Non GMO Project's Verification seal indicates that a product has been manufac- tured according to best practices for GMO avoidance, including thorough vetting of the supply chain and ongoing product evalua- tion. New labels bearing the organization's iconic butterfly logo began rolling out online and to stores in January 2018. Label Insight Attains $21 Million in New Venture Capital Funding Label Insight has raised $21 million in a Se- ries C funding round led by Delta-v Capital alongside River Cities Capital Funds. These funds will support the company's mission to help consumers understand what's in the products they use and consume. David Schaller, Managing Partner at Delta-v, will join the Label Insight board of directors. With the use of data science, Label Insight is powering transparency between consumer packaged goods, CPG, brands, retailers and consumers. Label Insight plans to use the new funding to fuel hiring of data science professionals, continue product development and accelerate customer growth. In the past year, the company announced several new customer deals, as well as key partnerships with Nielsen, 1WorldSync and Catalina Mar- keting. "The breadth and versatility of our data powers many different applications across a spectrum of businesses, which sets us apart from any other player in the space," said Paul Schaut, Chief Executive Officer for Label In- sight. "This infusion of capital will enable us to continue to innovate our data science ca- pabilities and deliver new products and fea- tures to our customers, driving new avenues for growth and increased market share." The company's proprietary data science and machine learning capabilities capture product labeling information for more than 400,000 products and create more than 22,000 unique custom attributes per product, unlocking actionable insights about how products meet the varied health, wellness, lifestyle and sustainability concerns of con- sumers. Label Insight customers include more than 25 top CPG companies and 12 leading retailers. "The food industry is undergoing a revo- lution with consumers increasingly inter- ested in understanding food and cosmetic ingredients and information on the sourcing of these ingredients," said Schaller. "Label Insight's unique data-as-a-service capability delivers significant value to the CPG indus- try by helping brands and retailers transform their businesses to be more transparent, while enabling government agencies and ac- ademic institutions to better understand and measure the impact of food products and in- gredients on our population." "Food is critically important to a healthy life and every bite has the ability to impact our biology," said Rob Heimann, Managing Director at River Cities. "Today, Label in- sight is uniquely delivering a comprehen- sive solution to many of the largest manufacturers' and retailers' need to meet consumer demand around transparency into product ingredients. As the market evolves, we think Label's solution will be- come an important foundation to further understanding the link between food ingre- dients and health." Baking Mixes from the Heartland By Lorrie Baumann Montana Grassland Mixes offers a line of salad dressing and baking mixes based on authentic recipes from hunting camps and home kitchens of Montana. The product line includes Garden Gate, a salad dressing and dip mix that was Founder and co-Owner Patsy Tihista's first creation for the commer- cial market; Stone Trapper Frybread Mix; Justice Coulee Biscuit Mix; Porcupine Creek Pancake Mix and Prairie Walker Sweet Ban- nock Bread Mix and Prairie Walker Savory Bannock Bread Mix. Each of these products represents a lifestyle: "When you cook at home in the country," Tihista says. "These things are just the way we cook here.... They're all ex- tremely easy. The fry bread takes a cup of water. The bannock takes a cup of milk, and the others are easy too." She started her product line six years ago at home in her kitchen with a salad dressing that comes from a mix of herbs and spices that she originally just whipped up in a jar with some mayonnaise. Her friends and neighbors loved it, so she started mixing up the dry ingredients and dosing them out into plastic bags that she'd sell at the local farm- ers market. When she started branching out, she asked her Montana family for recipes. Her dad brought the recipe for the bannock bread back from a hunting trip. "They just put that in a frying pan and backed that up to the campfire, and that's how they had bread at the hunting camp," Tihista says. Once she had the recipe in her hands, she developed variations for sweet, which has cinnamon in it, and savory, which offers gar- lic and herbs. Her business has grown out of her home kitchen, but every batch of her mixes is still made by hand by Tihista her- self. Her Stone Trapper Frybread Mix is her best seller. "If we go to shows and cook the fry bread, which we do, we just sell a whole lot of that," she says. The frybread, a traditional favorite across the West, can be cooked in a deep fryer, but a deep skillet with enough high smoke-point oil in it to cover the bread dough will work just as well, according to Tihista. "You run that up there pretty hot," she notes. The bannock bread dough is traditionally cooked in a cast iron skillet over the camp- fire or in the oven, but it'll also cook on a sheet of aluminum foil laid over the barbecue grill, she says. "If you come home at 5:30 and want hot bread at 6:00 for supper, you can have it, because it just takes 20 minutes," she says. "They're not as easy as grabbing a loaf of bread off the shelf, but they're close – and you have hot bread." For more information, call 406.785.2321 or visit www.montanagrasslandmixes.com. Farmhand Organics Cultivates Relationships with Growers By Lorrie Baumann MM Local is rebranding itself as Farmhand Organics to clarify for consumers that the brand of jarred vegetable products stands for, as it always has, the highest quality certified- organic products made with ingredients sourced from family farmers that the con- sumer can identify. Each jar of Farmhand Or- ganics pickled vegetables, apple and pear sauces and its sauerkrauts, kimchis and hot sauces is labeled with a traceability sticker that shows the consumer exactly which farm grew the produce for that specific product. "[The new name] better reflects the mis- sion, which is about building a healthier and more delicious and transparent food system and making the highest quality farm-to-jar products through the direct relationships that we have with the farms," said Chief Execu- tive Officer Jim Mills. The Colorado-based company was started in 2009. "We got started with the basic idea that there are a lot of folks out there who re- ally want to connect with where their food is coming from and to have the type of experi- ence you have when you go to a farmers market," Mills said. "There was a lot of talk about that in the food industry, but, by and large, our industry wasn't really set up to de- liver on that in a meaningful way." Recipes for the products are based on what the company's family farmers can provide from their land – "crunchy cabbage picked at the right time, beets that are naturally sweet and really deliver on the flavor of the product," Mills said. The company's first products were pick- les and fruit products, and with more than 20 products now in the range, the most re- cent are the probiotic line of sauerkrauts and kimchis that have been Farmhand Or- ganics' best sellers for some time. Green Chile Sauerkraut is one of the newest re- leases in that line. "We ferment those chiles and it creates a really smoky, deep, robust chile flavor, almost like they've been roasted," Mills said. Farmhand Organics Zucchini Bread and Butter Pickles are made from a recipe de- veloped after farmers started telling the company that they shared the experience of every home gardener who plants a few zuc- chini seeds in the spring – come summer, they always had a surplus of the fresh zuc- chini that needed to be preserved. "It's a unique and popular product for us," Mills commented. Single-varietal applesauces are another re- cent introduction. "We're making applesauce that is varietal-specific and have found that it really does taste like that apple!" Mills said. In addition to the recognition by con- sumers that they're real people who care about their work, what the farmers get out of this is a pre-season commitment to buy their produce, so they can plant with greater confidence. "What we offer the farms is a commitment to them to buy their produce. We make that commitment well before the produce is ready, so it helps them grow," Mills said. "It can have a sta- bilizing effect on their farm. That commit- ment can mean a lot." What consumers get out of it isn't just the transparency they desire – it's also great fla- vor, he added. "When there's a surplus, it often means that it's something that grew really well, which means that it tastes really good, and we can preserve that bounty," he said "We partner with farms that take a lot of pride and care in growing the most amaz- ing organic fruits and vegetables. It's these relationships with farms that allows us to make the highest quality products for peo- ple." Farmhand Organics products are currently distributed in Rocky Mountain region, in Oregon and Washington and in the Midwest as well as Texas, and the company is ready to grow beyond those regions. "We are ex- cited to grow. Part of our mission – 10 years from now, we would love to be a nationally recognized brand that's helping drive quality and transparency in our food system," Mills said. "At the same time, we want to become a catalyst for growing organic farms across the country."

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