Specialty Food Show Grows With Its Market : A Range of Products Designed for Gourmet Tastes or Health-Conscious Diets

It was more than an affair to expose and release gummy bears, tarantulas and dinosaurs. The three-day activity was also a dynamic show-and-tell opportunity for an enterprising entrepreneur who swears by his mother’s cookie recipe, or an Italian aunt’s pasta secret, Grandma’s jam . . . a unique mushroom or escargot farm.

The marketplace was at the Anaheim Convention Center, which held the 12th Winter International Fancy Food and Confection Show last week. Sponsored by the National Assn. for the Specialty Food Trade Inc., the largest West Coast trade show brought goods from about 14 countries. The show covered 112,410 square feet and had about 1,100 booths for close to 20,000 buyers and retailers.

The growth in many of the businesses that started as cottage industries was an encouragement for gourmet shop owners. Tremendous mail-order catalogue response and an increase in specialty markets selling many high-quality items not found in supermarkets have also provided incentives to many producers.

Forty colorful booths from the new California Gourmet Group presented California-grown products such as wild rice, escargots, olives, and kiwi, tomato, berry and goat cheese derivatives. Craig Makela, president of Santa Barbara Olive Co., who founded the group, said that the association was able to get state and federal funding for export trade fairs as well as reduce retail cost through lower shipping costs.

Enthusiastic about the birth of the organization and wanting to see education expanded, Makela added: “Consumers are getting pinched by high price of specialty foods. . . . By getting together we ultimately managed to do consolidated shipment into the Eastern seaboard. For instance, Cook’s Classic (dressings), Just Delicious (soups, sauces), Sweet Adelaide (vinegars, oils), Deer Creek Wild Rice and Moonshine Trading (nut butters, varietal honeys), all combine shipment, saving 18% to 20% in retail price, a direct shelf reduction.”

Makela, a former wine maker, added nine products to the Santa Barbara Olive Co. line, such as dill-style, Cajun-style, onion-stuffed and mushroom-stuffed olives. Jalapeno-stuffed, hickory-smoked, sun-dried and anchovy-stuffed olives are some of his most popular and interesting products.

Balance of Foods

The show revealed not just ultimate cakes, chocolate confections and pastries, but, almost on the extreme end, plenty of low-calorie, low-salt or nutrient-filled food items. There was a balance of rich foods for the upscale entertainer and nutrient-wise goods for the health conscious. Convenience was, of course, a major goal, but the wholesome, homemade quality was also obvious in many of the specialty food items.

“The thing that’s in is whatever’s healthy and tasty,” said Dan Cohen, vice president of sales of Clearbrook Farms in Ohio. Belonging to this category is the company’s line of reduced-calorie fruit spreads, which have about 16 calories per teaspoon. The sweetness comes from the fresh fruit since there is no cane sugar, artificial flavors, colors or preservatives. Wonderfully fresh and filled with whole fruit, I particularly enjoyed Clearbrook Farm’s wild Maine blueberry and Michigan red cherry flavors.

With the widening clamor for salt-free, preservative-free products, there could be no better timing for the Miss Scarlett brand of salt- and preservative-free marinated miniature artichokes, asparagus and corn from Burlingame, Calif. What started as a hot pepper jelly business for owner Peggy Luper has now grown to an award-winning line of beautifully packed olives and vegetables. We also sampled Luper’s new dilled green beans, vermouth-laden “Drunken” stuffed giant olives and onions, marinated mushrooms.

Another salt-free product came from Chalif Inc. from Wyndmoor, Pa., in the form of Champagne mustard, adding it to its salt-free line of mayonnaise, and three types of mustards: hot and sweet, sassy and honey.

Quinoa souffle . . . quinoa cheesecake, anyone? If there was one food item that attracted interest without the sneaky lure of ice cream or chocolate, it was a tiny ivory seed from the Andes mountain ranges called quinoa (pronounced keen-wa). Quinoa Corp. from Colorado calls its Ancient Harvest brand quinoa the supergrain of the future. Similar to millet in appearance, quinoa is getting raves for its high-quality protein, a complete protein containing a balance of essential amino acids equal to the protein of whole dried milk. Quinoa is starting to get attention from chefs, and once in the hands of culinary geniuses, this old grain could well be included in a restaurant menu in no time.

Ever heard of “jerk” cooking? Developed by the Jamaican Indians centuries ago as a way of preserving and preparing meats for the grill, the art of “jerking” meat and poultry now comes to the United States in a bottled jar labeled Uncle Bum’s Hot Jamaican Cooking Marinade. Uncle Bum is William J. Downs, a former merchant marine member, who got the marinade recipe from the island. He recommends adding a little rum to the mixture for an extra flavor. A first-timer at the show, Downs revealed that his jerk formula consists mainly of hot peppers, lime juice, onion, soy sauce and garlic. The spices, he said, are a secret.

Unique and eye-catching in its Southwest motif, the El Paso Chile Co. booth offered Cactus Salsa as its latest entree in its line of Southwest condiments and chips. Bottled in jars capped with cloth and string-tie, the medium-hot green salsa blends two kinds of green chiles and diced prickly pear cactus with cilantro and tomatillos.

Doing a bang-up business through mail order, Wolferman’s muffins makes all other English muffins look like midgets. The Kansas City-based company offered tastings of its popular muffins and reintroduced its newer purplish blueberry muffins to West Coast buyers. Weighing four ounces and measuring two inches high, Wolferman’s regular muffin line includes cinnamon raisin, Cheddar cheese and light wheat.

Closing one’s eyes to the sinful call of Aphrodite’s Black Forest truffles and the loveliest pastel-glazed “eggs,” Kahlua cakes from Ambassador Brands, Ben and Jerry’s ice cream and Kopper’s new chocolate covered gummy bears, calories still beckoned from pates, pates, everywhere. Taste after taste of rabbit, wild boar, partridge, pheasant pates and almost every imaginable meat or fish there is could be described as more than just a heavy dinner load.

Memorable Pates

Particularly memorable were the delicious pates from Marcel et Henri. Among the newer tastes were turkey with hazelnut, duck and lamb pates. The charcuterie’s venison pate, a coarse-textured and more reddish pate laced with Burgundy and juniper berries, should not be missed.

On the lighter, leaner side, layered vegetable pates were rampant as well. Some came en croute, others wrapped in seaweed. Former biochemist Kenneth Blanchette of Michel’s Magnifique in New York offered light textured cauliflower-herb, spinach-broccoli, carrot-dill pates that contained about 200 calories for a four-ounce serving.

More exquisite taste offerings in the dairy line came from the moist domestic goat blue cheese from Anso Foods Corp. in Fairfield, N.J., and the smooth, fresh and creamy Canadian Brie from French Quebec. According to Mark Finocchio, an Anso sales representative, “Our direct trucking facilities make it possible to obtain the Brie in one day, while others sit in custom for days.”

Canned soups are going upscale, too, judging by the influx of imported and domestic soups on display. A hot sip of Dominique’s U.S. Senate Bean Soup revealed freshness that matches the quality of the original soup. Sodium reduced, Snapper Turtle, Watercress-Mushroom, Sausage-Lentil and Salmon-Lobster Bisque are just some of the soups added since Dominique d’Ermo translated the U.S. Senate dining room recipe in the kitchen of his French restaurant, Dominique, a few years ago.

It didn’t take long for anyone at the show to be enticed by the aroma of Jewish Mother’s Chicken Soup With Noodles. As she dished out cups of her creation, Ruth Feinberg said, “It’s as homemade as it can be, with six ounces of chicken (in chunks), noodles, washed, unpeeled carrots, leaves of celery, onion and low in sodium.”

Business has also doubled for entrepreneurs in the fashionable caviar industry. Through pasteurization, caviar like those from Reese’s and Romanoff’s has become more affordable. Educating consumers in various ways of serving caviar was also stressed for retailers during the convention.

Could there be good fortune in fortune cookies, a cookie business that originated and perpetuated, not in the Orient but in America? Several companies are banking on it, introducing new flavors, glazes, as well as new packaging of fortune cookies. Umeya Rice Cake Company is targeting a market for youngsters, coming out with a box of Fortune Cookies for Kids. A message sampling reads, “Take a bubble bath and watch your troubles go down the drain.”

Wish Biscuits from the Fortune 44 Co. has gone beyond the realm of a plain fortune cookie with its attractive packaging design of Renaissance angels, assorted cookie flavors and “wishes” that include a famous quote and an interpretation of the quote in the form of a wish or fortune. Would you believe these upscale fortune cookies come in amaretto, chocolate mint, orange and ginger flavors? All come drizzled with dark or white chocolate or caramel icing.

My final dessert piece at the show was a miniature “bottle” of Winter’s banana-flavored chocolate shake for kids. Designed after the adult version of Winter’s liqueur-filled (and strong at that!) Belgian chocolate bottle, the child-oriented shakes are filled with banana, strawberry, chocolate and sour grape juice.

The shake was followed by a rewarding cup of Jablum coffee, a brand of Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee. According to Frank Milner of Jamaica Coffee Traders in San Diego, only 1 million pounds are grown each year in the Blue Mountain, and 80% of this is bought by the Japanese. The aromatic coffee has a perfect balance of sweetness and acidity, with less caffeine. Said to be the Dom Perignon of coffees, the roast sells at about $20 a pound. “That’s a little less than 50 cents a cup,” Milner said.