FMI Connect Has What Your Shoppers Want for Dinner

By: Margaret Core, Vice President, Industry Events, Food Marketing Institute

When shoppers prowl your store’s periphery looking for answers to the question, “What’s for dinner?” they want a few things: They’re looking for something that’s easy to make, healthy for their families, tastes good and puts them right at the center of whatever the latest food trend is. Here are some of the choices you can give them that are yours to investigate at FMI Connect:

• Since 1956, Ferrarini (Booth 638) has been creating polyphosphate-free, gluten-free cured meats from the Brianza region of Italy, constantly assuring the quality of its raw materials and its production process.
• Yosef Abrams ditched his career as an attorney in 1999 and soon after tossed the first 47^th Street Pizza (Booth 3011) into the air, quickly becoming a Chicago hit that now offers artisan pizzas, penne dinners and home-style mac n’ cheese in groceries everywhere.
• A legend was born in the early 1980s when a Houston couple moved their gourmet lard-free tamale business from a street-side cart to their “The Mexican Deli” restaurant and now into your grocery aisles as the Texas Tamale Company (Booth 516).
• San Bernardo Ice Cream (Booth 723) began life as a dairy farm in Cuba more than 100 years ago. Eventually exported to America in the 1950s to offer a taste of the “old flavors of home” to homesick Cubans, the company’s product are now available all over the world.
• Whether it’s red beans and rice, black eyed peas or sweet potato pie – among many others - Grandma Maud’s (Booth 708) products strike just the right balance between old world authenticity and today’s demands for great-tasting, easy-to-prepare Southern-style meals.
• Madrat Bevco’s Elixir (Booth 308) energy drink is sweetened with the natural stevia leaf, making it diabetic-friendly and loaded with antioxidants, glucosamine and herbs, all with the intention of aiding metabolism, reducing cravings and focusing on health.
• Genevieve Vang’s culinary journey began as a little girl in Laos, wound its way through Southeast Asia to Thailand and eventually to her Dearborn, Mich., Bangkok 96 restaurant, where Thai Feast’s (Booth 4018) line of frozen gluten-free, natural Thai frozen dinners was born.
• In case you were wondering, the very first hummus chip was made back in 2004 by Plocky’s Snacks (Booth 714), with real hummus and olive oil. Today, those chips lead a snack product lineup that includes tortilla chips, organic dip strips and crunchy Mediterranean treats.
• Angelo Oricchio, Paramount Coffee Roasters’ (Booth 3708) CEO and director of coffee, can trace his roots to the Brazilian coffee-growing region, and takes responsibility for confirming that the company’s line of fair trade and organic coffees is among the best in the world.
• At the family-owned Pacific Coral Seafood (Booth 2121), quality and safety are the utmost concern as it harvests and processes millions of pounds each year of everything from shrimp and fin fish to shellfish and ethnic treats like yuca, maduros and tostones.

New this year at FMI Connect is a whole host of authentic Italian cuisine suppliers. Take a look at what Italy has to offer.

These are just a few of the choices you have available at FMI Connect as you look for the products that are sure to find their way into your shoppers’ grocery carts.  Here is a quick link to searching for the FMI Connect exhibitors.