Stay Hungry: Drake's opening, Coffee Buzz carnival food truck and more in this week's Tri-State food news - Evansville Courier & Press |
- Stay Hungry: Drake's opening, Coffee Buzz carnival food truck and more in this week's Tri-State food news - Evansville Courier & Press
- Local restaurants serve out iconic dishes for ‘Downtown Norfolk Holiday Movie Food & Drink Week’ - WAVY.com
- Growing natural food companies keep Boulder on the map - Boulder Daily Camera
- 10 great food books of 2020 | Food and drink books - The Guardian
- 13 tips for eating well on the cheap | Food & Cooking | wahoo-ashland-waverly.com - Wahoo Newspaper
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Posted: 06 Dec 2020 04:03 AM PST [unable to retrieve full-text content]Stay Hungry: Drake's opening, Coffee Buzz carnival food truck and more in this week's Tri-State food news Evansville Courier & Press
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Posted: 06 Dec 2020 11:53 AM PST  PORTSMOUTH, Va. (WAVY) -- Blessed Hands sent a virtual 'thank you' to WAVY-TV 10 viewers for their support and donations allowing the team to sponsor every child submitted to the Secret Santa program. For years, Shirley Janney has been handing out free donated items to people in her community, helping hundreds of people each month.  |
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Growing natural food companies keep Boulder on the map - Boulder Daily Camera Posted: 06 Dec 2020 11:02 AM PST Boulder brands have a path paved for them by the "natural food mecca" legacy. But they face thicker competition than their predecessors while grappling with new consumer trends accelerated by the Covid-19 pandemic. Natural food brands share a desire for sustainability and healthy ingredients fuels a healthy competition in Boulder's natural-food scene. The city is already is nationally recognized as a launching pad for widely known natural food, beverage and products companies that were acquired and have customers beyond Boulder borders. Celestial Seasonings, a subsidiary of The Hain Celestial Group Inc.; Danone subsidiaries Horizon Organic and WhiteWave Foods Co.; and Izze Beverage Co., a subsidiary of PepsiCo Inc., are among the brands that shaped Boulder's natural-food history. But still-autonomous brands including Bobo's, trade name for Simply Delicious Inc.; 1908 Brands Inc.'s Boulder Clean and kombucha-maker Rowdy Mermaid Inc. are defending Boulder's reputation as a natural-food mecca. 
Around nine years ago, Jamba Dunn, CEO of Boulder-based Rowdy Mermaid, was home-brewing beers during his free time in his garage when his young daughter asked if he could make something she could drink. He started making kombucha. She also enjoyed the fruits and flowers from their home garden and asked for those flavors to be incorporated into the beverage. Dunn founded Rowdy Mermaid in 2013 with the goal of putting a plant-based kombucha with less sugar and without a vinegary taste on the market. Today, Rowdy Mermaid is sold in more than 2,000 stores in 47 states and the District of Columbia. Its retail partners include Whole Foods, King Soopers, Natural Grocers, The Fresh Market and Sprouts Farmers Market. Rowdy Mermaid also strives for sustainability and cans its kombucha rather than bottling it in plastic containers. Dunn said that comradery comes before competition amid the Boulder natural food industry. Most companies share the same ethos of prioritizing sustainability and healthy ingredients, he said. "On the one hand, you would assume that companies, specifically companies that are competing for the same category, would really be at odds with one another. But I think that there's something different both in the natural foods industry, and also here in Boulder, where we're all here for the same purpose," Dunn said. "The goals that we're trying to achieve are bigger than any of our individual companies." Rowdy Mermaid was named the breakout brand of 2020 by Naturally Boulder, an economic-development group that encourages networking and connects executives from different brands. In an early draft of an economic impact study on natural foods and beverages by Naturally Boulder, Boulder counts more than 1,000 companies and 69,000 employees in the natural food industry ecosystem. The study includes manufacturing packaging brand agencies and other support companies in the industry, said Arron Mansika, executive director of Naturally Boulder. Mansika said that Boulder continues to be a natural-brand mecca because not only are companies founded in the city but others relocate to the area. "There is something about place-based branding, and Boulder just has that halo effect if you will. It has a reputation. It's almost like an endorsement if it can thrive and survive in the Boulder ecosystem," he said. "I've heard of brands that wanted to relocate at least some of their company into this community to have that 8030-zip code." 
One of the brands Mansika referred to as a place-maker is nut butter company Justin's LLC, founded in 2004. Founder Justin Gold was waiting tables when he first started to make nut butters that he labeled "Justin's" to ward off his hungry roommates from eating them. He started selling at the Boulder Farmers Market and reading about business at the William M. White Business Library, in the University of Colorado Boulder Leeds School of Business. While he was growing his business, he was mentored by founders and high-level executives of Boulder-founded companies including Celestial Seasonings; White Wave; Boulder Natural Foods Inc., known as Boulder Canyon Potato Chips; and Alfalfa's Market Inc. The Boulder-headquartered nut butter brand became a subsidiary of Hormel Foods Corp. (NYSE: HRL) in 2016 for $286 million. Gold doesn't think that Justin's would have grown into the company it is today without Boulder's natural-food community. "I think that by being in Boulder you can help and be inspired by the creativity and the magic of Boulder," Gold said. Gold is paying it forward by mentoring and advising Rowdy Mermaid founder Dunn. 
COVID-19: A minor bump in the road for Boulder brands, a booster for someThe COVID-19 pandemic slowed down Rowdy Mermaid's fast-paced growth in March and April, but the company is still growing. Dunn said that its year-to-date revenue is 57% above last year but is significantly less than projected for 2020. The company sped up plans to release a direct-to-consumers sales channel in response to the pandemic. He said that the down time in March and April allowed the company to launch the sales platform in September. Boulder Clean, a brand housed under 1908 Brands Inc., has seen exponential growth during the pandemic, said Steve Savage, CEO and founder of 1908 Brands, which develops and invests in early-stage naturally driven household items and food and beverage products. Though 1908 Brands launched in 2010 with Boulder Clean — it was previously a concept under Eco-Products Inc., another company that Savage founded — sales skyrocketed since March. This year's revenue to date is about 10 times higher than 2019, Savage said, allowing the company to more than double its staff, now totalling 25 employees. The cleaning-product line has been driving sales for the parent company. 1908 Brands hibernated three of its brands over the course of the pandemic: juice company Bump Brands LLC, paleo snack brand Thrive Tribe and Three Bear Oats, while operating Boulder Clean, Pasta Jay's jarred sauce line and Schultz's Gourmet, a cooking sauce and seasoning brand. Savage said that 1908 Brands wants to focus its time, energy and money into Boulder Clean and support its growth, noting it and ingredient-based food companies like Pasta Jay's and Schultz's take less maintenance than snack brands. While the pandemic has presented challenges for natural-product companies across the board, certain categories have performed better than others, said Tom Spier, founder and managing partner of Boulder Food Group or BFG Partners, a venture-capital firm that invests in organic, sustainable and natural products. Companies that rely on impulse consumers and on-the-go convenience sales have struggled more than products focused on in-home consumption, he said. Spier said that Boulder Food Group will consider the shifting environment in future investments. Companies that pivoted to online and ecommerce channels will be the ones that attract attention from firms like his, he said. "There is going to be a lasting, lingering effect, and this trend toward more digital-everything is not going away," Spier said. "And so while we're certainly not walking away from the idea that a lot of volume is going to continue to be sourced in conventional channels, you just can't deny how much volume and market share is shifting toward digital channels." The firm added Boulder-based oat bar company Bobo's, trade name for Simply Delicious Inc., to its portfolio when it led a $5.5 million Series B1 round in 2019. The company was founded in 2004 based on the oat snacks that founder Beryl Stafford baked at home with her daughter, who she nicknamed Bobo. Though there was a slowdown in the spring for the snack brand, Bobo's sales returned, said Bobo's CEO T.J. McIntyre. The projected annual financial performance for 2020 will be an increase of $10 million from last year. Its Oatmeal Bites, a smaller portion of its Oat Bars, are driving sales. Manufacturing needs an immediate 50% capacity increase to bake the bites, he said. Bobo's direct-to-consumer ecommerce is the company's top performing channel, he said, which, along with Amazon.com Inc., makes up 95% of online sales. "As the consumer has shifted to online buying, we've really shined as a company," McIntyre said. Though Bobo's has taken on capital partners, it is still autonomous and operates out of Boulder with around 250 employees. McIntyre said that Bobos could possibly be acquired in the future, but it would only sell to a company that shares its values: classic homemade comfort that outlasts food trends. "We're building a business that is going to be multi-generational. We're building a business that is positioned on taste, and on satiation and comfort, the type of benefits that my grandchildren will seek when they're buying food products," he said. "In saying that, what I mean is that we're not a flash in the pan." 
Boulder brands that stand out survive the marketSavage, who has been tapped into the Boulder sustainability and natural-living world for most of his career, said that even before the pandemic, competition has thickened and it's harder for startups to take off. "Your product has to be unique. It has to be different to even have a chance," he said. Mansika said that while the market is more crowded than it was a few decades ago, competition is encouraging innovation in sustainable and healthy food ventures. The momentum isn't slowing down anytime soon, he said. "There's constantly this urge to be a better company, not just have the products be better but have the whole company be better," he said. "It's not so much saturated as it is continually striving for higher and higher ideals. That's what makes the natural-products industry unique; it's often the early adopter for positive social change." Spier, a food-venture veteran himself, founded EVOL Foods and was the chief operating officer of granola brand Bear Naked Inc. He said that companies that will succeed in the natural-food and beverage industry will be creative and be able to target a large customer base. One of Boulder Food Group's portfolio companies, Boulder-based startup Emergy Inc., which does business as Meati Foods, is led by two University of Boulder doctoral graduates. It's creating vegan proteins competing against Beyond Meat and Impossible Burger. But rather than just ground meat, it's making whole cuts that resemble chicken and steak and using a fungi base. "The success of Beyond Meat and Impossible [Burger] have shown that consumers want an alternative to animal-based meat, or at least more diversity in their protein supplies, and we thought that was a great place to focus and to create a business around," said Meati Foods CEO and co-founder, Tyler Huggins Meati aims at market testing next year and launching a Colorado rollout in 2022, Huggins said. In September, Meati raised more than $28.2 million in its Series A funding round backed by 44 investors according to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Spier said that when it goes to market, it could reach a large customer base and provide a more environmentally friendly protein. Investors will flock towards brands that cast a wide-net of consumers and are unlike products that are already on grocery shelves, he added. "There are a lot of companies not just in Boulder and Denver and Colorado but all over the country, the world, trying to access consumer wallets. It's hard to stand out. I do think it starts with really understanding your core customer and who you're trying to really deliver value to," Spier said.  |
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10 great food books of 2020 | Food and drink books - The Guardian Posted: 06 Dec 2020 03:00 AM PST The Flavor Equation: The Science of Great Cooking Explained in More Than 100 Essential Recipes  Sharma, a former molecular biologist, turned food writer and photographer, explores the science behind the food we eat. This isn't Heston-esque chemistry, but the hows and whys divided into seven fundamentals: brightness; bitterness; saltiness; sweetness; savoriness; fieriness and richness – with dishes to showcase each. The recipes themselves are a delightful mashup of Indian and American flavours: "I use food as a way to connect my past with my present and future – to weave a thread between my life in India, my life in America, and the people and places I've seen and met along the way," says Sharma. Favourites include a masala cheddar cornbread and a garlic and ginger dal with greens. MT-H The Pie Room  A recipe book for the enthusiast and the obsessive from Calum Franklin, the chef who turned the Holborn Dining Room into a shrine to pies. They are all here: fish pies, pork pies, chicken pies, cheese and onion pies, beef pies, cottage pies, game pies … though the book starts with most every kind of pastry (too exhaustive and long to begin to list) with puddings ranging from tarts, cobbler and clafoutis. It comes into its own with the chapter devoted to "grand party pieces". Here are the two-day, eight-page pie masterpieces such as the ultimate beef wellington and coronation chicken pie, well presented, painstakingly and patiently told. An engaging trip into the mind and kitchen of a cook who found his voice. AJ Ottolenghi Flavour  The third in his vegetarian series with Plenty and Plenty More: 100 new recipes, 45 of which are vegan, and others which can be so with little effort. "How many more ways are there to fry an aubergine?" he asks. "The answer, I am delighted to say, is many." Co-writer/creator Ixta Belfrage has widened the Ottolenghi world. The spices have become spicier, from further afield, the shift a little further from core old-school Ottolenghi, but there is nothing here to frighten the faithful. The recipes read beautifully, the flavour profiles are carefully constructed, the warm voice in the writing reassuring. The wider world it inhabits is made comforting and accessible. In short, another Ottolenghi triumph. AJ The Pastry Chef's Guide: the Secret to Successful Baking Every Time  Gill grew up above a corner shop, and it was there that a love for chocolate raisins, Crunchies and Cadbury's Fruit and Nut began. Gill loves sugary things: "I try to eat something sweet every single day," she says. This book is full of this enthusiasm – and an obsession with perfection. The perfect chocolate chip cookies were, rightly, a runaway hit during the banana-bread madness of lockdown and her sassy Instagram videos serve as a fitting accompaniment to the title. What makes the book special is that Gill makes patisserie feel easy. From caramel and creme pat to marshmallow, meringue and puff pastry, there's no better guide. MT-H Fäviken: 4015 Days, Beginning to End  There are cooks who can write and, of course, writers who can cook. Often, here, Magnus Nilsson is both. Something of a hybrid, too, the book is a collection of musings, memoir and a completist list of every dish cooked at his decade-defining cult restaurant Faviken, with many Phaidon-era photos. The first piece of writing is already post-Faviken, titled "How to care for an apple tree" (Nilsson now works an orchard in the south of Sweden far from his frozen north). Perhaps the most compelling piece chronicles the breakdown that preceded the decision to close the restaurant after 11 years. Sometimes the book's separate identities sit less easily together and you might wish it was one or the other, although Nilsson excels at both. You leave the book feeling he will likely also make an excellent gardener. AJ Jikoni  The joy is in the subtitle: "Proudly inauthentic recipes from an immigrant kitchen." Born in Kenya to Indian parents (Jikoni, also the name of her smart Marylebone restaurant, means "kitchen" in Swahili), Bhogal came to the UK as a child. There is a playfulness in these pages, an openness backed by rigour, an authentic celebration of diversity, heritage and flavour. It is there to be found in the voice and recipes: an inviting blending of cross-culture favourites, such as oyster pani puri, spicy scrag end pie, or paneer gnudi with saag. A book that wears its influences lightly but with imagination and respect. AJ Chaat  Essential India via the US where chef Chauhan and writer Eddy live. Chaat crisscrosses India by train from north to south, east to west, in search of the country's quintessential snacks. The reader is transported via railway stations, markets and home kitchens. Puris, dosas and pakoras scent the pages from Lucknow, Srinagar, Jaipur, Kolkata and more, with each city's signature street food recipes. In a year when the world has shrunk, this book may go some small way to expand it. More than any other this year, it reignited a deep hunger to travel. AJ The Rangoon Sisters: Authentic Burmese Home Cooking  Bright and beautiful and full of dishes I want to eat: khayan jin thee thoke (tomato and crunchy peanut salad); khayan thee hnat (stuffed baby aubergine curry), and hsi jet khauk swe (garlic oil noodles), now a favourite midweek meal. South London-born sisters Amy and Emily Chung are NHS doctors who began a supper club in 2013 to great success. "Our food isn't fancy; we don't present it in rings or do saucy drizzles or foams. The recipes in this book are all our home-cooked recipes," they say. Many of the dishes come from watching their mother and grandmother cooking. Well-crafted and accompanied by enticing, colourful pictures, this book is a joy. MT-H Dirt  In which the storied founder of Granta, fiction editor of the New Yorker, author of Among the Thugs and Heat, gives up his literary life to decamp to France so he can learn to cook like a French chef. And not for months but for five years with his young family in Lyon, an unlovely town though home to Paul Bocuse and the famed La Mère Brazier restaurant. His kids adapt the quickest. Their father doesn't speak French. Meanwhile Buford cannot get a top chef to take him on so he apprentices to kindly Bob the baker and learns to make bread. He also learns to kill a pig up close. Finally, he studies at L'Institut Paul Bocuse and achieves his dream to work at Brasier where he and a younger female stagiere are bullied. All this, of course, brilliantly written over endless drafts and many more years. We won't see its like again. AJ Cook, Eat, Repeat  First some numbers: 22 years after How To Eat was first published, book number 12, 150 recipes. It can be hard sometimes to separate Nigella the writer from Nigella the cook, or Queen Nigella the personality. And they are all here in this knowing meditation on food and her relationship with it. The mindful mindlessness of peeling a potato, plus stacks of recipes. It is apparent on the contents page: the first chapter titled What is a Recipe?. And others: A Loving Defence of Brown Food, and Much Depends on Dinner. The recipes are reassuring, almost timeless. No need now to be too modern. Deliciousness is all. It is subtitled Ingredients, Recipes and Stories – and for me, it is the story writing that transcends. Like the best Nigel Slater, our other first-name, long-time domestic deity, Cook, Eat, Repeat is a seasoned, luxurious read. My food book of the year. AJ  |
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13 tips for eating well on the cheap | Food & Cooking | wahoo-ashland-waverly.com - Wahoo Newspaper Posted: 06 Dec 2020 08:30 AM PST  "Shoppers who show up at the grocer with a prepared buying list are less likely to make impulsive buys of foods they didn't need," Taub-Dix said. Try planning a week's worth of dishes, make a detailed list of necessary ingredients, and stick to it. "And organize your list in a way that corresponds to the layout of your store so you save time by not needing to backtrack," Taub-Dix said.  |
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