FRESNO, CA – Culinary Competitions International (CCI) is paving its way into China with the opening of four new offices.
With new locations in Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou, and Hong Kong, this agricultural marketing company is confident it can continue meeting the export or import demands of its client-base.
Peter DeYoung, CEO of CCI, said he was very excited about this international expansion, noting that having offices in these specific regions can act as a “home base” for the company’s clients in their main target markets.
“We now have a greater presence in these target export markets, which opens doors often closed to U.S. exporters,” said DeYoung. “Our team in China is comprised of agriculture marketing experts and highly trained PR specialists.”
CCI’s target focus is helping its clients increasing overall exports and delivering key messages in-market with international marketing promotions. While culinary competitions comprise only one area of specialty, marketing strategies include but are not limited to foodservice promotions, coordinating trade relations, recipe contests, culinary and baking competitions, and the planning and execution of high profile marketing and PR events, according to a press release.
“Expanding internationally has made a big difference in helping us grow with our clients,” said Marilyn Cowley, Vice President of Marketing. “We are very excited for the future. We plan on opening more offices around the world to meet similar client needs.”
CCI is confident that with China being one of the lead export markets for U.S. agriculture, this expansion will serve as a huge benefit to its clients.
YUMA, AZ - Google Maps has made life a lot easier for everything from travel plans to dining choices, but for selecting planting grounds?
That is what seed producers in Yuma, Arizona, are saying, according to a KJZZ report.
“We were spending a lot of time just going back and forth trying to pin isolations on [a] board,” Jose Solorzano, Research Manager for vegetable and flower seed company Takii, told KJZZ.
Isolation is key for this aspect of the industry in order to maintain the purity of the seeds, Yuma County Extension Director Dr. Kurt Nolte explained.
“Cross pollination is vital within a field, but purity of the seed is at risk when bees move pollen to other fields," Dr. Nolte said, according to the report. "So if we have a white onion field right next to a red onion field, the possibility of getting a pink onion is very high.”
And of course, he added, nobody wants a pink onion.
Now these growers have “plugged in” so-to-speak, having a shared Google map that has moved the pins of isolated areas from a board in Yuma’s extension office, where everyone had to meet annually to sort out crops and areas, to one easily accessible forum online.
“As long as we have an Internet connection, we can do it anywhere in the world,” Solorzano told KJZZ.
While the workers of this aspect of the Arizona produce industry, which the USDA reports brings in more than $4.5 million, can’t control the bees, they now have a bit more control over how they compensate for them.
Though Google Maps does have many options for different mapping needs, including satellite, topography, transit and the like, it does not yet have a mapping option specifically geared toward agriculture. Perhaps with a few more stories like the seed producers of Yuma, Arizona, Google will provide the industry with one.
LAS VEGAS, NV - Two firsts were set last night when American Ninja Warrior, the NBC hit show, crowned a victor for the first time in its seven seasons.
Dahlia Reinkopf, POM Wonderful® Senior Director of Marketing, shook the hand of champion Isaac Caldiero, winner of a million dollars and the American Ninja Warrior title, celebrating a season-long partnership between the program and POM Wonderful® 100% Pomegranate Juice that ended in victory.
“Isaac’s spectacular performance throughout the competition and in conquering Mt. Midoriyama brought to life what it means to be ‘crazy healthy,’” Reinkopf said, according to a press release. “We are thrilled that we were a part of this historic season of American Ninja Warrior. It was an exceptional fit for POM 100% Pomegranate Juice.”
For those who have not seen the show, Caldiero conquered a four-stage, grueling and challenging obstacle course in Las Vegas before hitting the final buzzer that meant he had done what no one has yet to do.
POM Wonderful sponsored this seventh season of the popular show as an extension of its “Crazy Healthy” campaign, according to the company, integrated into each episode with spots such as the “POM Crazy Healthy Run of the Night” and the exclusive “POM Warm Up Zone” that held weekly interviews.
POM Wonderful’s sponsorship also included:
- Digital exclusives
- A consumer-focused digital sweepstakes
- An in-store partnership promotion
The historic season finale aired on NBC on Monday night, Sept. 14th.
WASHINGTON, D.C. - Immigration reform is still one of the industry’s biggest issues as we head into the 2016 presidential elections.
Yet, as the debates rage on and the speeches mount, growers are still struggling as they wait for skilled labor to harvest crops.
Last November, President Obama unveiled his immigration reform plans to the country, modifying detention and deportation procedures for illegal immigrants. Though his intentions provide minimal relief for agriculture, meaningful change can only come through congressional action.
At this year’s upcoming United Fresh 2015 Washington Conference, more than 500 produce industry executives will band together to advocate for immigration policies that support an adjustment of status for experienced, but authorized, agricultural workers who reside in the U.S.; call for the reform and replacement of the current agricultural worker program with a new agricultural worker visa program; and ensure that ongoing and future efforts for border security and enforcement continue as long as they are coupled with a solution to provide agriculture with a legal and stable workforce.
United Fresh is asking industry members to join together to shape a better future for the industry this September 28 – 30, 2015 in Washington, D.C.
Registration to attend the Conference is still available. You can sign up by clicking the link below.
Attend the United Fresh 2015 Washington Conference
To hear more about what to expect from this year’s Washington Conference, listen to my interview with Tom Stenzel, President and CEO of United Fresh.
This is your opportunity to meet with Congress members and industry leaders from growers to wholesalers to retailers and foodservice companies and make your voice heard.
Stay tuned to AndNowUKnow for more on the Washington Conference.
ALEXANDRIA, VA - Cabbage butts, chard stems, bread crusts… These are all items you’ll find on the menu at Virginia “food waste restaurant,” Teaism.
Conceived by Chef Alison Swope, Teaism offers a unique “trash or treasure” menu list, using food that might otherwise end up in the garbage to make healthy, flavorful dishes.
Following the recent trend of “ugly produce” and capitalizing on how it can help a company’s bottom line, the new menu items came as part of Teaism's menu reboot earlier this year, Co-Owner Michelle Brown told the Washington Post.
"We had to kind of clean up 20 years of cut and paste and get a little more serious about cross utilization of products," Brown said. The $5 "trash or treasure" items are intended in part to appeal to budget diners, and as soon as diners realize how filling these dishes can be, they’ll really start catching on, she says.
One dish, made primarily out of the tough and particularly non-leafy cabbage butts that chefs normally toss out, has been getting attention from guests since its inception. The tender leaves are just fine raw, but the cabbage butt—the end and first bit of leaves—would be too tough to use in the salad, Brown said. But Swope, being her resourceful self, decided she'd stir-fry them with a house-made gochujang sauce instead of giving up on the leftovers.
Another of Swope’s dishes uses discarded chard stems separated from their leaves. Swope dips them in coconut milk, coats them in panko crumbs, and fries them to give them new life as a tasty side. Swope even gives cut-off bread crusts a new home in her "trash or treasure" dishes. Like a panzanella salad, she mixes tomatoes, cucumbers, herbs, vinaigrette, and bread crusts from the focaccia that Teaism bakes for its burgers.
Will revamping wasted produce be the next big trend for top restaurants? Stay tuned to AndNowUKnow for more.
MONTEREY, CA - Tanimura & Antle, a premier sponsor for the 2015 Tour de Fresh, is gearing up for the rapidly approaching 4-day ride.
The 250 mile push to benefit “Let’s Move Salad Bars to Schools,” a campaign to install salad bars in schools across the country, requires each rider to raise $3,000 (the cost of a single salad bar per school). To get ready, riders and T&A employees Aaron Torres, Helena Beckett and Christa Schuck are also participating in Team Tanimura & Antle and The Wharf Marketplace’s first annual Cornhole Tournament to benefit Tour de Fresh and its mission.
“Our 1st Annual Cornhole Tournament is a fun event held at an awesome place that benefits an even greater cause,” Torres, who is also the Sales and Marketing Manager for T&A, said in a press release. “Our goal is to stick with it until salad bars are in every school cafeteria in our country.”
The tournament’s first official day was Thursday, September 3rd, according to T&A, with more than six teams participating at the event and featuring tastings from local Monterey brewery Mad Otter Ale. The second event was held at noon on Sunday, September 13th, and there is still another to go for Thursday, September 17th!
The first team winners, brothers John and Brian Louie, took home two bottles of local Monterey County wine, The Wharf Marketplace gear, and became the first qualifiers for the championship round on September 27th.
Tournament entry is $20 per participant, with all donations going to the Tour de Fresh cause.
Those who want to take an active part in this year’s goal of financing 100+ new salad bars to a variety of schools across the U.S. can still sign up for the 5 p.m. event this Thursday for a chance to be, or to see, who will be crowned champion at noon on the 27th of this month.
The Tour de Fresh rides from Hickory, NC to the 2015 Produce Marketing Association Fresh Summit Convention in Atlanta, GA, a 250 mile stretch over a 4-day span. To find out more about the cause or how to help promote produce for the next generation, go to tourdefresh.com/riders.
MINNEAPOLIS, MN - It looks like Target stores will be the next to partner with grocery delivery giant Instacart, giving its customers the option to get fresh produce in as little as one hour.
“Our goal is to make grocery shopping easier and more convenient,” says Jason Goldberger, President of Target.com and Mobile. “Our team is constantly listening to guests’ needs and looking for new ways to help them shop Target wherever, whenever and however they want. Instacart is a leading player in this space and we look forward to seeing how guests in the Minneapolis area respond to the service.”
Target’s new partnership with Instacart will adds considerably to Instacart’s inventory of health and beauty items as well as baby products, Bloomberg reports. Target customers can already get free delivery within five days on a $25 minimum order, but the Instacart deal adds perishable foods such as produce, milk, and eggs to online order options and faster delivery.
While the delivery area will initially only include select Minneapolis neighborhoods, both Target and Instacart are exploring plans to expand into additional areas and markets.
“There is a lot going on at Instacart – new cities, new partnerships, new types of products – but most important, we are excited to be reaching so many new customers and giving them a way to shop that meets their needs and fits their busy lifestyles,” says Apoorva Mehta, Founder & CEO at Instacart.
Target’s same-day delivery push comes at the same time the company revamps its grocery department by adding fresh produce and meats. Customers often had issues about the quality and freshness of the products during its first few years, but as of last year, sales in grocery hit $18 billion, accounting for more than 20 percent of revenue.
LOS ANGELES, CA - Berry Fresh is ramping up production for blueberries, blackberries, and raspberries from Argentina, Chile, and Mexico to gear up for a highly promotable season.
Over the next eight to nine months, Berry Fresh says it also plans on increasing berry volume from both its Los Angeles, California and Gloucester, New Jersey distribution facilities for all of its retail partners, according to a press release. Focusing on these two areas will help maintain the company’s presence on the west coast, as well as strengthening its presence on the east.
With the recent start of the Argentine harvest season and the upcoming blackberry and raspberry seasons in Mexico, Berry Fresh’s Evan Pence, North American Procurement Manager, says that the future looks “fantastically bright.”
“Right now, our excitement over our new Mexican raspberry project in Jalisco and our new Argentine and Chilean blueberry plantings has us eager to get this winter season underway,” said Pence. “We are interested in seeing where the raspberry program can go, how far it can take us. Our traditional strength is in blueberries, but the obvious future is in providing the complete berry category. That is our unwavering focus.”
Berry Fresh, through its parent company Agroberries of South America and its sister company Expoberries of Mexico, as well as its own domestic spring and summer production, maintains a stable annual supply of all berries.
Stay tuned to AndNowUKnow as we continue to track the season.
NOGALES, AZ - Facing an evolving and increasingly competitive market, the Fresh Produce Association of the Americas is helping industry members to succeed with its newly developed a series of seminars that will address emerging and ongoing industry issues.
“We are actively seeking ways to improve the well-being of our business members, we want to make sure to provide high-quality material according to the needs an interest expressed by them,” said Lance Jungmeyer, President of the FPAA. “We are certain that these seminars will positively affect the everyday operations as well as the industry as a whole.”
Taking place between the months of September and December, the seminars will cover topics that affect internal aspects of the business’ operation such as temperature control, building strong relationships with clients, and creating a risk assessment plan for packing, storage, distribution, processing and manufacturing.
Attendees can also expect the seminars to cover outside conditions that could represent opportunities or potential threats for the Nogales fresh produce industry, according to a press release. Among these topics are “an inside view of what works and what does not when trying to enter the Canadian market” or “how the tomato supply and demand could be seriously affected by the saturation effect as a result of the proliferation of greenhouses prepared to serve local markets,” the FPAA says.
These seminars conducted by highly trained experts include:
- October 7: Temperature Matters - Keep Produce out of the Kill Zone and Save Money! by Post-Harvest Quality Expert, Dennis Kihlstadius
- The program is ideal for warehouse managers, shippers and those working on quality control.
- October 8: The Saturation Effect - Tomato Market by Roberta Cook of University of California-Davis, a re-eminent Economist in the produce industry
- October 12 to 13: HACCP Training and FSMA Preventative Control Update by Ingrid Peñuelas, an expert in food safety management and quality assurance in manufacturing, agriculture and in facility audits.
- The course is ideal for Managers, Supervisors, HACCP team members and personnel new to HACCP or needing a refresher. This is a prerequisite for taking GFSI level training such as SQF, BRC, Primus GFS, and others.
- November 18: Getting Produce to Market, and Getting Paid in Canada - 2015-16 North American Transportation Preview and PACA-like Trust Update by CH Robinson with participation of Fred Webber of DRC (the Fruit & Vegetable Dispute Resolution Corporation)
- November 12: Making Adjustments In Accordance with the Tomato Suspension Agreement by Kip Martin, Lawyer of Coogan & Martin
- He has been closely connected to the produce international trade for many years and along with his business partner Daniel J. Coogan is one of the few lawyers in the U.S. with knowledge of administrative regulations and procedures under the Perishable Agricultural Commodities Act of 1930.
- December 10: Cuba - Analyzing its Potential in the Winter Vegetable Deal By William Messina
- William is an Agricultural Economist at the University of Florida’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences. He has been tracking the state of the produce industry in Cuba since the 1990s.
- December 16: Into the Great White North - The Road to Sales Success in the Canadian Market by Tom Byttynen
- Byttynen, over the years, purchased thousands of loads of produce from Nogales. Hear the founder of Calgary, Alberta, distributor Thomas Fresh Inc. explain what works – and doesn’t work – in selling to the Canadian market.
To register for any of the seminars, you can contact the FPAA at (520) 287-2707, or email [email protected] for more details.
BELLINGHAM, WA - It’s been a busy year of twists and turns for Haggen, beginning with a large acquisition that increased its stores 10 fold and coming to the end with both a bankruptcy filing and a billion dollar lawsuit.
So many transitions have left a number of speculations in the chain’s wake, including questions about where it will go from here.
Oregon Live reports that documentation from Haggen indicates that it will reorganize around 18 core stores that Alvarez & Marshal, a consulting firm the chain had hired, found to be profitable.
Shortly after these core stores were declared to have a strong brand reputation in their respective areas, the company announced its plan to shutter 27 stores that were not on that list.
For the employees that will lose their positions with these closures, Haggen stated it intends to pay them as quickly as possible through normal payment methods. “Fast pay” laws, however, which usually require payment immediately or within a few days, was declared “unworkable” by the chain, according to Oregon Live.
As to the company’s future plans, the documents indicate that the chain could be planning to sell the core profitable stores as one group after reorganizing around them, according to the report. This is still just speculation, however, as Haggen has not yet revealed anything definitive on closing any more stores.
As we reported previously, it was announced that the company had filed for a Chapter 11 bankruptcy just after having filed a $1 billion lawsuit against Albertsons, as well as the intent to sell nearly 30 stores. The court permitted it to continue with selling those stores, but Oregon Live noted Haggen will most likely be required to get approval on any future store sales from the court as well.
AndNowUKnow will continue to follow the chain’s plans as they unfold, as well as all other relevant retail news within the industry, so stay tuned.