Success Is Sweet for Food Business

Employees of a Van Nuys specialty firm know how to eat their cake and have it too.

“We have very little employee turnover,” laughed Kathy Schreiber, co-owner with Peter Seeger of Ambassador Fine Foods, an importer and nationwide distributor of ingredients from around the world used in pastries and other desserts.

“Chefs are constantly bringing us samples of their work.”

The company, which distributes sweets ranging from Belgian chocolate to German marzipan, has tripled its revenues since moving four years ago into the former Marquardt Co. headquarters building adjacent to Van Nuys Airport.

“Food is getting better in the United States as we get more awareness of the advantages of using natural ingredients,” said Seeger, who launched the company with his partner in 1986.

He attributes the company’s rapid growth in the last few years to a mushrooming demand by Americans for healthier foods--even in candies and desserts--as well as a growing penchant for more creative concoctions and diversified flavors.

“I’m not saying that steak and potatoes are out the window, but more people are choosing Italian, French and Thai foods,” Seeger said. “Our suppliers cater to the market.”

The company’s customers--hotel chains, cruise ship lines, even airlines, as well as bakeries--have noted the demand and are competing to please America’s sweet tooth with more creative desserts, Seeger and Schreiber said.

The trend is toward lighter, tastier pastries and desserts, enhanced with natural flavors, particularly fruits, and embellished with intricate decorations and flair. Gum paste flowers, for instance, handmade in Indonesia for shipment to Van Nuys and so delicate as to rival Mother Nature, are in great demand. The floral sprays not only are beautifully realistic, but freezer- and refrigerator-proof, Schreiber said.

“We eat sweeter here in the United States than in Europe,” Schreiber said, adding that Mexico and the Middle East still favor heavy sweets, like Americans. “Europeans stay away from sugar. Now, we are getting there, here too. Chocolate will always be popular, but the fruit flavors are really coming on.”

That trend has created a tremendous demand among American pastry chefs for new and different flavorings and ingredients, Schreiber said. Often, many of the ingredients and supplies are found only in far-flung areas of the world, or are only just emerging from domestic industries.

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A Napa Valley manufacturer of frozen fruit puree is rapidly adding to its choices of more than 40 different flavors. The latest offerings? “Positively Pomegranate,” “Sir William Pear,” “Persimmon in Pursuit” and “Crazy Coconut.”

The demand for the new and unusual has created pressures on importers to anticipate trends and seek out suppliers. Ambassador offers more than 1,000 different products, more than half shipped in from Europe.

Rather than measuring in teaspoons and cupfuls, the company buys pastry and dessert ingredients by the tons and ships products throughout the nation from warehouses on both coasts, in Van Nuys and New Jersey.

Couverture chocolate--semisweet and high in cocoa butter--arrives in 11-pound blocks, five blocks to a case, more than 2 1/2 tons of chocolate to a pallet. Fruit glazes, in more than 40 flavors, are packed frozen in 27 1/2-pound plastic tubs.

Nonperishables are transported by sea, in 40-foot-long containers holding 20 tons each. The freight trip takes four weeks from Europe to the U.S. West Coast via the Panama Canal, and plenty of advance planning in anticipating demand.

Delicate items such as pralines and truffles from Switzerland are flown in by air, with some items arriving every other day and others every two weeks.

“We try to have a good inventory, with the warehouses fully stocked at all times,” Schreiber said. Frantic calls from pastry chefs scrambling to serve a large, last-minute gathering are everyday occurrences, she said.

Rush orders are shipped overnight, or sometimes the distributor and buyer rendezvous along the route, transferring the cargo, say, at the halfway point.

“We do whatever it takes to get it there. Service is very important,” Schreiber added.

So is organization, with heavy dependence on computerized ordering and shipping.

The 25,000-square-foot Van Nuys warehouse includes three separate climate-controlled rooms where chocolate, bread mixes and other perishables are stored, plus a giant freezer sectioned off for purees and other frozen items.

Rows and rows of shelving, similar to those in a Home Depot, neatly store crates of common and not-so-common ingredients.

There’s the delicate, fluted round chocolate shells fashioned by a North Carolina enterprise, modeled after those created by a competitor in Holland. Vast tubs of cookies, cases of Grand Marnier flavored extract, even Ambassador’s own private label--Matisse--offers bakery jams, glazes and marmalades from Belgium.

The aroma of chocolate permeates the building. Chocolate blocks, chocolate shavings, chocolate decorations, chocolate mousses.

The company operates with a nationwide staff of 34 employees. The sales workers, five on each coast, are all pastry chefs expert in creating new recipes and in training other chefs to utilize unusual ingredients. One recently spent 10 days in Anchorage teaching the chefs of a luxury cruise line to expand their culinary skills.

An airline just added to its first-class menu a small pastry which Seeger describes as “relatively unique, made with natural ingredients and good tasting.” The dessert costs just 23 cents, “and sure beats a bag of peanuts,” Seeger said. “Maybe soon, we hope, they’ll be offering them in coach.”

Executives from Ambassador, like those of its half a dozen or so competitors, visit food shows in Europe and elsewhere to keep up on the newest developments. They also take part in eight to 10 shows yearly across the United States, demonstrating creative uses of their products.

“People stop by the booth, with all of the freshly made pastries and desserts displayed, and say, ‘Oooooo, where can I buy that?’ ” Schreiber said. “We tell them, ‘You can’t. You have to make it.’ ”

For those wishing to sample the end results of Ambassador’s efforts, pastries made with their ingredients can be found, among other outlets, at Pastries by Edie in Canoga Park, or at Hansen’s Cakes, which has a showroom in Tarzana.

“They just have a really good quality product,” said Cindy Franco, general manager of Hansen’s. “I use their European flavorings. They have the new colors and they are always getting in new [gum] flowers.”