Oser Communications Group

GOURMET NEWS JUNE 2018 www.gourmetnews.com Supplier News SUPPLIER NEWS 1 4 BRIEFS Ice Cream as Performance Art: Humphry Slocombe BY LORRIE BAUMANN The best ice cream tasted by this year's sofi™ Award judges was Humphry Slo- combe's Black Sesame. It's one of a dizzying array of flavors offered by San Francisco, California, entrepreneurs Jake Godby and Sean Vahey, co-Founders of Humphry Slo- combe. Godby, a pastry chef by training, is also the company's Chef, while Vahey, who has a background in food and beverage manage- ment, also serves as its Marketing Director. The Black Sesame flavor includes toasted black sesame seeds with sesame oil added to amp up the flavor even more. The rest of the current lineup in- cludes flavors like POG Sorbet, which combines passion fruit, orange and guava in a nondairy sor- bet; Matchadoodle, an ice cream made with green tea from Kyoto and snickerdoodle cookies made in-house; Blueberry Boy Bait, which offers brown sugar streusel stirred into a blueberry ice cream and Dirty Chai, a chai ice cream with espresso in it. The adult-oriented flavors were Godby's idea, Vahey says. "We didn't necessarily pigeon- hole it as ice cream for adults," he said. "We just happen to have adult tastes." "I just don't know how to do anything else," Godby adds. "The ice cream that we make is to my taste. I just didn't see the rea- son to duplicate what other people were al- Vivian's Pies Let the Good Times Roll in four hours — anywhere from $500 to $2,000, just from people walking the street and having a sample. People were coming and saying they'd been all over the world and couldn't find anything that tastes like this." This year, working along with Jack Dras- ner, a consumer pack- aged goods consultant and a friend of long standing, she's decided to use that success as the launching pad for Vivian's Pies sales to specialty food mar- kets, starting in Florida and then launching into the national market in 2019. Vivian's Pies are available in four sizes. The smallest, a 4-ounce pie, is sold as a package of six for use as appetizer portions. The package of six retails for $44.99. The single-serving entree-sized pie, 8 ounces, retails for $16.99, while the 12- ounce pie that serves two retails for $21.99. The family-size pie, a 32- ounce pie that serves six, re- tails for $49.99. The pies are sold frozen, and once at home, they go directly from freezer to oven, where both top and bottom crusts brown and the crawfish filling cooks to creamy perfection in an hour. "My pie is special in that I have created the spices that no one else is using in their crawfish pie," Clark says. "It's just all fla- vorful with sherry and cream and butter and crawfish. At least every bite you're going to get a crawfish in it. My pie is a spe- cial pie." For more information, visit www .vivianspies.com. GN ready doing very well. We were very fortu- nate that there was a market for what we were making, but we were going to make what we do either way." The two originally founded their busi- ness in December of 2008 with the thought that what they were starting was going to be just a quirky little ice cream shop in San Francisco's Mission District. "We're just being ourselves. We're lucky that people liked us. This was not test- marketed," Godby says. "We had no clue that it would blow up the way it did. And it did — it blew up hot." It took the business partners two years of wading through bureaucracy and working with contractors to get their doors open, and on their open- ing day, there was still a sawhorse in their lobby, and Vahey was sweeping up sawdust off the floor. "Most ice cream stores are pink and they're soft and they're cute. We are not cute," Vahey says. "There's nothing about Jake or I that's cute or adorable. We're intense and in- your-face, just like the ice cream. When you came into our shop, you had an experience." Vahey and Godby had eight flavors of ice creams in the case in those days, and they were rotating flavors every day. Customers could sample any or all of the flavors before committing to a whole scoop. "Every ice cream had a story, and that wasn't happen- ing anywhere," Vahey says. "We were bringing you into our world." "We couldn't keep up with the demand; the lines were getting longer and longer," Godby adds. One of the proprietors' first surprises was their customer's apparent fondness for strawberries. Their culinary approach to ice cream required fresh ingredients and sea- sonal flavors, and their customers were asking for strawberry ice cream in the dead of winter, when there were no strawberries to be found. Finally, when spring came around and strawberries came onto the market, Godby made the ice cream that so many had been requesting, and he called it Here's Your Damn Strawberry, which is the name by which the flavor is known today at Humphry Slocombe. The pair didn't have any marketing budget, but social media was just getting under way, so they made the most of it with posts that created a sensory experience. "We were going to put our faces and our voices into our mar- keting," Godby says. We were doing tons of image-heavy ice cream and food porn, and that resonated with a lot of people." Today, the packaging for their retail pints reflects that same desire to bring customers into the world of Humphry Slocombe. Packages include a little of Godby and Vahey's story, and there's a quote on every carton. "It's about staying true to ourselves. ...You're still getting that experience. It doesn't get lost in translation," Vahey says. "Of course it's super fun to come into our store, but we want you to have that when you pick up a pint of our ice cream too. At the end of the day, it's about the ice cream. It's a unique high quality ice cream that we want you to remember." GN Pete and Gerry's Organic Eggs Files FDA Petition Pete and Gerry's Organic Eggs have filed a petition with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration calling for the organization to modify its labeling regulations and allow eggs to be labeled as a healthy food. Starting in the 1950s, a phobia of fat and dietary cholesterol emerged and the egg's reputation was much maligned, leaving many today still avoiding eggs. The scare was established by the now famous Framingham Heart Study, which made an unsupported conclusion that ingesting foods high in cholesterol would drive up levels of cholesterol in the blood, which would lead to health problems like heart disease. This assumption proved incorrect. Eggs are now seen as a near-perfect whole food that can help curb cravings and blood sugar levels, both important for weight management and diabetes prevention. One large egg has 13 essential vitamins and minerals, disease-fighting nutrients such as lutein and choline, and six grams of high quality protein — all for only 70 calories. CAULIPOWER Launches Uncured Pepperoni Pizza On Cauliflower Crust CAULIPOWER ® is now launching America's favorite pizza topping: All-Natural Uncured Pepperoni. The new pizza will join CAULIPOWER's line of great-tasting, better-for-you and ready- to-use cauliflower-crust pizzas, alongside Margherita, Three Cheese, Veggie, and Original Plain Crust. Like the rest of the line, the new pizza will be available at retailers nationwide. CAULIPOWER All-Natural Uncured Pepperoni Pizza is made with pepperoni without nitrates or artificial preservatives. Served on the brand's signature cauliflower crust, the pizza is naturally nutrient-rich and gluten-free with the taste of a classic pepperoni pizza. The pizza features less than half the sugar of leading gluten-free pizzas and is an excellent source of Vitamin C. The new pie is also higher in fiber, vitamins, and protein, with 9 grams of protein per serving. Blue Moose Of Boulder Releases New Organic Hummus Flavors Blue Moose of Boulder, which makes better-for- you snacks, launches the newest flavors in its organic hummus line: Lemon Turmeric and Beet Balsamic. Organic Lemon Turmeric Hummus is a creamy and bright citrus hummus that is also speckled with black pepper. Beet Balsamic Hummus incorporate beets and balsamic vinegar ito its organic hummus to bring a well-balanced natural sweetness to the vibrantly pink hummus. J&J Snack Foods Corp. Frozen Novelties Now Non-GMO Project Verified Select J&J Snack Foods Corp. Whole Fruit ® Fruit Bars and Organic Juice Tubes are now Non-GMO Project verified. This trusted logo assures consumers no genetically modified ingredients are used during the making of the deliciously fruity frozen treat. Whole Fruit is proud to offer consumers the same guilt-free formula and great taste, now with the Non- GMO Project verified seal. Whole Fruit Fruit Bars and Organic Juice Tubes are available for frozen novelty lovers nationwide. BY LORRIE BAUMANN Vivian Clark, 76, has been making her crawfish pies for 30 years, and now she's using the secret recipe that earned her pies applause at Florida restaurants, farmers markets as well as her friends' parties to make crawfish pies for retail sale in spe- cialty food markets. Clark first introduced her Cajun-style crawfish pies to friends at a housewarming event. "I was trying to one-up the hostess with her dinner," she admits. "Everyone took the crawfish pie... I've created a pie recipe that nobody else can make. I am the only one with this recipe." Those friends started asking her to make pies for them to buy from her and she did — just friend to friend — until she retired from her career as an accountant for a local nursing home and then got bored. "I found a kitchen, got a license, and started selling to restaurants right away," she says. "Every weekend, I'd go to the market and sell —

• Cover