Fresh Foods

By: Rick Stein, Vice President, Fresh Foods, Food Marketing Institute

Retail and wholesale executives know that health-minded consumers continue to look for more than the standard fresh items in their supermarket— no longer just satisfied to go home with a rotisserie chicken in their shopping bags – and they are sending their teams to FMI Connect to find the next growth machine for their stores.

You’ll find dozens and dozens of companies with new products available in the fresh sector at FMI Connect throughout the exhibit hall. Here are some excellent examples of the fresh suppliers you’ll find:

• Bauli (Booth 814), the bakery products company founded in 1922 in Verona, Italy, will make its introduction to the U.S. with the croissants, panettone and pandoro that are already popular in 70 other countries around the world.
• The family-owned Paris Brothers Specialty Foods (Booth 3910) has a full lineup of products for your customers’ shopping carts, everything from BelGioioso and Beemster cheeses to Mother Earth Coffee and Margaritas Amigos.
• The Thousand Hills Cattle Company’s (Booth 4132) meats have come from its herd of free-range cattle ever since owner Todd Churchill, a lifelong rancher, discovered he could have a personal impact on the American diet by changing the way he raised his cattle.
• Korean Taekyung Nongsan’s (Booth 3735) motto is “When nature remains unchanged, the taste remains intact.” As American consumers become more familiar with Korean cuisines, Taekyung Nongsan hot sauces could be the ones that go home with shoppers.
• Shoppers interested in their health have been eating peas, lentils and chickpeas for 11,000 years. The Northern Pulse Growers Assn. (Booth 2340) will be there to show retailers and wholesalers what the pulse farmers of North Dakota and Montana can offer your shoppers.
• The Dakota Dunes, S.D.-based Beef Products Inc. (Booth 1214) has been delivering high-quality lean beef to supermarkets for more than 30 years. Just as important to consumers, the company has won almost every award for food safety innovation you can win.
• The New Hampshire-based Rustic Crust (Booth 2409) creates all the ingredients families need to make their own healthy pizza at home – nutritious crusts, ciabatta flatbread and organic sauces – and even gives shoppers the recipes they’ll want to put them together.
• Since 1944, in the region of Lithuania known as the “Region of Cucumbers,” Kedainiu Konservu Fabrikas (Booth 2240) has taken the vegetables harvested in the area and turned them into a wide variety of marinated vegetables, sauces, mayonnaises, salads and soups.
• The Alvarado Street Bakery (Booth 4137) creates whole grain breads in the heart of the Sonoma wine country. Because of the healthy whole grains the sprouted breads are made with, the products freeze well and can be delivered all over the United States and Canada.
• From the flagship Sylvia’s Restaurant (Booth 2542) in Harlem, the “Queen of Soul Food” delivers to your store a number of ingredients families interested in home cooking can use. Think canned collard greens, peach cobbler mix and fried chicken recipe mix.
• The “King of Chowder,” Tony’s World Champion Clam Chowder (Booth 2543), was named winner of the Great Chowder Cook-off three years in a row before the recipe was retired to the Chowder Hall of Fame, but shoppers can still get the delicious canned soup in your store.
• In the 1880s, Chris Link brought his prized sausage recipe with him when he immigrated to Wisconsin. Three generations later, his great-grandson, Jack Link, got the idea while hunting to turn it into jerky – thereby creating today’s Jack Links Beef Jerky (Booth 2851).
• Ready Pac Foods (CBX Suite 8) provides the bagged salads, triple-washed lettuces and salad kits your customers have come to look for when creating a quick meal – but do they know they’re manufactured in plants run by more than 50-percent solar power?
• Sushi With Gusto’s (Booth 2540) owner, the Ukrainian fisherman Nick Spiak, is improbably partnered with its sushi chef, Hisamichi Fujimora, in his South Carolina wholesale sushi business. “Gusto,” by the way, is short for “Great Ukrainian Seafood Trucking Outfit.” G.U.S.T.O.
• For 70 years, Teys (Booth 4421) has been feeding the highest quality grass- and grain-finished beef – including Angus beef – to its native Australia. Only two years ago did it begin delivering those same healthy beef products to American dinner tables.
• Epta America (Booth 2038) is now the only U.S. source of a bakery product that many American tourists bring home with them as gifts from Greece: the famous 7 Days croissants, cake bars and peanut butter & jelly-filled pastries.

These are just a few of the many fresh suppliers at FMI Connect. Don’t miss out on the excitement, education, networking and conversations around FRESH. Visit www.fmiconnect.net to plan you visit and learn more.