Issue link: http://osercommunicationsgroup.uberflip.com/i/981116
8 SNACKING NEWS June 2018 SNACKING NEWS wellness, and some of them are coming from concern for the animals," Fikes said. "When over half of your shoppers are coming with these questions, if you're going to establish trust, if you're going to expect loyalty from them, you need to meet them at the point of shared values." Understanding this and acting on it is key to establishing customer loyalty, ac- cording to Fikes. FMI has concluded, in a 2017 report on "U.S. Grocery Shopper Trends" co-authored by the Institute and the Hartman Group, experts on demand- side trends in the food and beverage in- dustry, that retailers who communicate with shoppers about safety, health and wellness and ethics are well positioned to build trust and loyalty. Shoppers want retailers to do more than just make them feel informed – they want to shop at a store that seems open and honest and that shares their values. They believe that the foods they eat influence their health and wellness, and today's shoppers "increasingly see being more closely connected to their food as an anti- dote to the ills caused by a food system that seems out of balance," according to FMI. They know they can shop wherever they want, and they believe that their de- cisions about where and how to spend their money are meaningful. "There's re- search out that is pointing at the point that consumers feel they have more power in how they spend their money than in how they vote," Fikes said. "That's why we urge our grocers to be clear and to com- municate about their values, about where they stand on these issues, so that when consumers are doing their research, they can espouse what the company values are." Retailers can demonstrate that they're open, honest and trustworthy by helping customers find out what's in a product and where it came from. They can show that they impose strict food safety standards on suppliers, follow Fair Trade practices and earn their reputation for selling high-qual- ity goods. Shoppers also like product guar- antees and reasonable return policies, and they expect to know about it from their grocer when a food safety issue results in a recall, according to the FMI research. Shoppers don't necessarily want all this information about their grocer's values force-fed to them, but they want their gro- cers to be open in their answers to these questions as they're asked, according to Fikes. "Transparency is not simply a busi- ness negotiation; it is also about relation- ship building," he said. "You are sharing openly and honestly and, this is key, you are answering the questions they have, that they are able to find answers they want. That doesn't mean telling them everything you want them to know. It means paying attention to what they want to know and answering those questions." Shoppers also expect their grocers to be proactive and accountable. Those qualities can be demonstrated by quick action when there's a product recall and accepting re- sponsibility for making it right when there's a problem with a product. Con- sumers also want to see fair treatment for employees up and down the supply chain, according to Fikes. "There's a great halo of accountability and loyalty that can be had if your store has the reputation of treating employees fairly," he said. "They [shoppers] sense whether or not an em- ployee enjoys working there and whether they're being treated fairly." It's still uncertain whether online retail- ers are being held to these same standards, and FMI has research that will be coming out in the Institute's 2018 trends report that will be delving into that question, Fikes said. While we wait for that, he has some advice for all grocery retailers: "In the age of skepticism, where people are skeptical of big business and their mo- tives, we have to break that down and let people know that our business is com- prised of people who share the values that they share," he said. "The only people that folks seem to trust are family and friends and people who share their values. You've got to lead with the shared values to estab- lish the rapport." n Shared Values Continued from Page 1 submitted by Perry's Ice Cream Company, Inc. were named the most innovative ice cream products at the competition. The competition, held each year during IDFA's Ice Cream Technology Conference, show- cases the creativity of U.S. ice cream makers and flavor- ings suppliers and captures upcoming flavor trends in the ice cream and frozen dessert industry. "Fruit was the name of the game in this year's contest, and contestants showed off their ex- pert ability to pair fresh, tropical fruits with almost anything, including spices, vegetables and decadent deserts," said Cary Frye, IDFA Senior Vice President of Regulatory Affairs. "Ice creams featuring cookie doughs and but- ters, as well as salty nuts, were also highly favored flavors in this year's lineup." The Albertsons Companies entry earned first place in the most innovative ice cream flavor category. It is a sweet-and- sour, super-premium cheesecake ice cream balanced with ribbons of tart guava puree and contains bites of cheesecake crust pieces. Spicy Mango Raspberry Fi- esta Ice Cream was named the most inno- vative prototype flavor. It is a mango and red-pepper ice cream with a sweet swirl of raspberry. Perry's Ice Cream's Sweet Potato Medley Bar took top honors in the most innovative novelty category. It's a frozen dessert bar made with real fruit and vegetable juice. This year's conference set records for Indulgent Ice Creams Continued from Page 1 number of entries in the competition, as well as attendance. More than 160 ice cream industry professionals attended the event, where they tasted, judged and se- lected the winners from a record total of 40 flavor entries. The best ice cream tasted by this year's sofi™ Award judges was Humphry Slo- combe's Black Sesame. It's one of a dizzy- ing array of flavors offered by San Fran- cisco, California, en- trepreneurs Jake Godby and Sean Vahey, co-Founders of Humphry Slocombe. Godby, a pastry chef by training, is also the company's Chef, while Vahey, who has a back- ground in food and beverage management, also serves as its Marketing Director. The packaging for Humphry Slo- combe's retail pints includes 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 transla- tion," 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 re- member." The Black Sesame flavor that won this year's gold sofi Award includes toasted black sesame seeds with sesame oil added to amp up the flavor even more. The rest of the current lineup includes 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 snicker- doodle 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 pigeonhole it as ice cream for adults," he said. "We just hap- pen to have adult tastes." That same combination of adult tastes and training as a pastry chef informs the ice cream sandwiches made by Too Cool Chix. The New York City-based company is led by CEO Sharon Monahan and her co-Founder Michele Elmer, a pastry chef trained by the Culinary Institute of Amer- ica. "She really has pulled from the flavors she discovered being a chef," Monahan said. The Beauty Bar, one of her com- pany's flagship products, is made from a lavender ice cream and lemon cookies. "It's definitely a cus- tomer favorite," Mona- han said. I Dream In Chocolate depends on chocolate from Hispan- iola in an indulgent small-batch chocolate ice cream paired with a dark chocolate cookie. The entire line is built on high-quality ingredi- ents, all natural and lo- cally sourced, with organic ingredients used when possible. The ice cream is made with locally sourced milk, cream and cage free eggs – no gums are added; it's stabilized with egg yolks. The lavender and vanilla are organic, and the cocoa is fair trade. "The clean label thing was there from the beginning," Monahan said. "We took a look at what's in a lot of other ice cream brands and said we'd like to see what we can do with cleaner ingredients. Our sandwiches have one tenth the amount of sugar as some of the other lead- ing brands and one fourth of the sodium, so you really taste the flavors instead of just the sugar." Tea-rrific! Ice Cream, which won the bronze sofi Award in this year's competi- tion, also emphasizes a clean ingredient deck in its super-premium ice creams in- fused with freshly brewed loose leaf and herbal teas. Masala Chai, the flavor that won this year's sofi Award, is made from a freshly brewed blend of Assam black tea, rooibos herbal tea, cardamom, ginger, clove, and several other spices and pepper- corns. The chai is then added to a sweet cream base along with an extra helping of Tea-rrific!'s own mix of spices for good measure and balance. In 2015, the company's Chamomile fla- vor was a finalist in the sofi competition. For this flavor, Tea-Riffic! brews Egyptian chamomile flowers, which offer notes of apple and honey. The floral notes of this caf- feine-free herbal tea, which is known for its soothing effects, combine perfectly with a luscious sweet cream base to cre- ate the flavor that won over the judges. "We are very excited to be once again recognized by the sofi judges," said Souvannee Leite, CEO and co-Founder of Tea-rrific! Ice Cream, "It is truly wonderful when those who see and sample the best of the best on a regular basis choose your product as one that stands out among our many worthy peers." n