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GOURMET NEWS JUNE 2018 www.gourmetnews.com RETAILER NEWS 1 3 Giant Food Launches Taste of Inspirations Premium Product Line Giant Food of Landover, Md. is launch- ing Taste of Inspirations, its newest line of deliciously convenient and distinctive premium food products. Including more than 85 exceptional tasting and hand- crafted items, Taste of Inspirations prod- ucts are now available at all 166 Giant stores. The new line joins popular store brands, including Nature's Promise which offers a full range of organic and free-from items, and Etos, affordable-premium personal care products, all offering Giant customers a complete range of quality products. Found throughout most aisles in the store, Taste of Inspirations features pastas, sauces, frozen appetizers, pizzas, desserts, marinades, dressings and more. Consumers will delight in flavorful items such as Three Herb Fettucine, Grilled Pineapple BBQ Sauce, Sweet Bourbon Marinade, White Chocolate Raspberry Gelato, and Choco- late Lava Cake. "We are excited for our shoppers to dis- cover new favorites with the introduction of the Taste of Inspirations line," said Tonya Herring, Senior Vice President of Merchandising at Giant Food. "From shaking up the regular dinner routine with our Grilled Pineapple BBQ Sauce, to treating dinner guests to our Chocolate Lava Cake, this line can be part of the everyday indulgences that bring some- thing extra special to our customers, helping them create memorable dining experiences with ease." GN Albertsons Companies to Double Private Label Products Albertsons Companies is on pace to intro- duce nearly 1,400 new Own Brands prod- ucts to its family of stores in 2018, a more than two-fold increase over 2017 that fur- ther demonstrates the company's confi- dence in developing exclusive products across all categories. Own Brands is Albert- sons Companies' portfolio of exclusive and trusted private label brands, including O Organics ® , Lucerne ® , Open Nature™, and the extensive Signature™ line. "We've got a lot in the pipeline, and we're just getting started," said Geoff White, Pres- ident of Albertsons Companies Own Brands. "With our team's unique insights across the industry, we can react faster than ever to changing consumer trends. The result is a rapid expansion of high-quality products in every department that are exclusive to Al- bertsons Companies. We've never been more excited about our ability to meet every shopper's needs and sprinkle in new and ex- citing surprises across the store. The new product innovation is occurring across the entirety of the company's popular Own Brands portfolio, including Signature brands, Lucerne, O Organics, Open Nature, Waterfront Bistro, Value Corner, Primo Taglio, and debi lilly design. For every prod- uct that bears one of its labels, Own Brands guarantees quality that shoppers can trust. Own Brands has already released nearly 300 new products in 2018. Popular new items introduced this year include Open Nature Scandal-less ice cream, Open Nature bison top sirloin steak, Open Nature gra- nola bars, O Organics spinach and butter lettuce, O Organics sparkling tea, Signature Select cold brew coffee, and Signature Select sparkling french lemonade. GN Target to Launch Same-Day Delivery in Colorado Target Corp. has begun same-day delivery of more than 55,000 groceries, essentials, home, electronics, toys and other products across Colorado. Beginning May 3, Shipt started delivering from Target stores in the Boulder, Colorado Springs, Denver and Fort Collins metro areas. Cumulatively, the new partnership gives nearly 4 million households across Col- orado access to Target products delivered by Shipt in as little as one hour. Through this partnership, Target plans to offer con- venient, same-day delivery of its in-store assortment of groceries, essentials, home, electronics, toys and other products from approximately half of stores by early 2018. The majority of Target stores will offer the service by the 2018 holiday season, and by the end of the year, it will be in nearly 180 markets, reaching 80 million households, or close to 65 percent of U.S. households. By the end of 2019, same-day delivery will include all major product categories at Tar- get. GN CalyRoad Continued from PAGE 1 do, Schick says. "We were laughing and joking about milking the goats, and we got serious." The two of them went to the University of Georgia's Center for Agribusiness and Economic Development and asked them to do a feasibility study. With the university's encouragement, Schick and her sister developed a business plan and then did some internships at local farms before heading off to the Ver- mont Institute for Artisan Cheese to learn how to make cheese. When they were ready, they found a goat dairy where they could launch their cheesemaking busi- ness with a 35-gallon cheese vat and a recipe for chevre while the farmer took care of the animal hus- bandry. "We quickly realized that there was no way we could learn both sides of this and do it well, so we concentrated on the cheese- making," Schick said. As time went on, the farmer de- cided to retire from farming, the goat herd was adopted by another dairy, and Schick needed to find a new home for her cheesemaking operation. She decided to leave the farmstead concept behind in favor of a location closer to Atlanta's urban market. CalyRoad Creamery found its new home in a small building about 60 or 70 years old on a side street in Sandy Springs, about 15 minutes north of down- town Atlanta. With 900 square feet of production space, 100 square feet of retail shop space and herself as the cheese- maker, Schick was back in business. "We had a very nice following in nine farmers markets and a nice following with whole- sale into some of the white tablecloth restaurants in Atlanta," she said. "We quickly realized that with a 35-gallon vat, we were never going to produce enough to make a living." That realization would be enough to knock the wind out of most women, and Schick was no ex- ception. Then she had what she calls a "Little Epiphany," which is now the name of one of her cheeses, a high- moisture, soft- ripened cow milk cheese with delicate floral notes that she'd just figured out how to make when she was at her most discouraged about the future of her business. She'd just moved into the new produc- tion facility, and she was making cheese she loved, but with her tiny vat, she just wasn't making money, she told her mom. Her mom asked her if she was actually losing money. Schick said no, she was covering her bills — she just wasn't making a profit. "Then what's the problem?" her mother asked. "Why are you measuring by money rather than by your experience that making your cheese makes you happy?" "It was Christmas time, and I thought they were so right," Schick said. "It was my epiphany that it didn't matter. ... That cheese is near and dear to my heart." When the two retail suites next to her small shop became available, she had to decide whether to expand or quit, and she decided to expand. She sold her 35-gallon vat and bought a 350-gallon cheese vat and a 700- gallon bulk tank for milk. She built a couple of new aging rooms into the additional space so she can make more cheese varieties. With a total of three aging rooms now, one is dedicated to hard cheese, one to blue cheeses and the third to white mold cheeses. While in the 35-gallon vat days she was making chevre, a Camembert-style cheese called WayPoint, a feta, and a blue cow milk cheese called Bit O' Blue, now she's doing cheddar cheese curds and a tomme- style cheese called Hilderbrand that's aged a minimum of six weeks, with some of her Hilderbrand inventory now at eight or nine months as she builds her stock for a big order from Delta Airlines. She has WayPoint and several aged goat cheeses flavored with various spices in her white mold room along with Big Bloomy, a plain aged goat cheese and Black Rock, a pepper bloomy rind that was a 2018 finalist in the Flavor of Georgia Food Product Contest, which, according to the Georgia Department of Agricul- ture, is "the state's pre- mier proving ground for small, upstart food com- panies as well as time- tested products." Her cheeses also in- clude Red Top, a fla- vored goat cheese rubbed with smoked Spanish paprika that's named after Red Top Mountain, where iron ore was once mined and which is now a state park. Named, like most of Schick's goat cheeses, for another famous Georgia landmark, Little Stone Mountain is an ash-rind goat cheese that's a customer favorite. David Rospond has joined CalyRoad's creamery as Cheesemaker, Cheese Oracle Tim Gaddis is teaching a couple of classes a month on cheese pairing and cheese board selection in CalyRoad's shop and Schick is busy dreaming of new cheeses that Rospond will help her make. "I taught him all that I knew, and now we're both working together to learn more and more," she said of Rospond. "He has just been a joy to work with. He fell right into it. ... He knew how to read the recipes, and he knew in- tuitively what to do, which is great." GN

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