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Your appetizers were amazing! They arrived fresh and ready for my freezer and heated up in oven exactly as the instructions said they would. They were the hit of the party...
Exactly 100 New Jersey companies displayed their wares at the show, which sprawled over three floors of the cavernous Jacob Javits Center and brought in more than 25,000 attendees for the three-day event. New Jersey exhibitors ranged from label makers to coffee roasters and pasta importers.
Adding zest to the Garden State offerings was a first-of-its-kind New Jersey pavilion that showed numerous state products in a single location. It marked a unique collaboration between the Rutgers Food Innovation Center, the New Jersey Department of Agriculture and the New Jersey Commerce, Economic Growth and Tourism Commission.
“The interesting aspect of the specialty foods market in New Jersey is that it features home-grown agricultural products that have created new businesses based on value-added agricultural products,” says Virginia Bauer, secretary of the Commerce, Economic Growth and Tourism Commission.
Bauer says big shows like last week’s provide a platform for New Jersey businesses to market to global customers. This “ultimately creates and retains jobs in the Garden State,” she says.
New Jersey has the second-largest membership in NASFT, with about 300 companies. The state trails only California, which has 420 members. NASFT defines specialty food as high-quality products that are made in limited quantity.
Carl Wolf, an investor in Appetizerstogo.com in East Rutherford, says his company launched its new line of upscale-handmade appetizers at last week’s show. The new products include frozen seasoned sea scallops and bacon; mission fig, Stilton blue cheese and prosciutto wrapped in phyllo dough; and artichoke and Parmesan cheese phyllo bundles.
“The average consumer is trading upscale—you see that with gourmet supermarkets,” says Wolf, who formerly owned Alpine Lace, a deli meat and cheese company formerly in Maplewood before being sold to Land O’Lakes in 1998. “Everyone is now aware of food. Today’s trend is to eat well.”
Wolf says half of Appetizerstogo.com’s new business is generated at the New York Fancy Food Show and two others held in San Francisco and Chicago. “You make a lead and follow up,” says Wolf. “The show generates the opportunity, then the key is the follow-up.”
Follow-up includes making sure prospective buyers have catalogs and information, says Royce Keller, president of Keller’s Confections in Wyckoff, which produces marzipan and panoramic Easter eggs—decorative sugar eggs with a small scene inside. “If they don’t buy here and now, they’ll get a catalog and order,” he says.
Natural food stores are the fastest growing retailer of specialty foods, according to NASFT, which says such stores recorded a 33.1% jump in sales last year. Items available include organic wheat-free pastas, loose grains like barley and wild rices, and organic meats. In all, U.S. retail sales of specialty foods totaled $34.77 billion in 2005, up 15% from the previous year.
“There’s a lot of crossover between the Fancy Food Show and the natural food industry,” says Nancy Waterhouse of Nancy’s Fancy Foods, a gourmet food consultant in Waldwick.
Five years ago, she says, the hot trends in specialty products were standbys such as salsa and biscotti. Today they are chocolates, teas and cheeses.
Much of the impetus for such changes comes from western states, particularly California. “Food migrates east,” says Waterhouse. “Fashion migrates west from Europe.”
At Wegmans Food Markets, a 71-store upscale chain with headquarters in Rochester, N.Y. and seven New Jersey supermarkets, organic foods are the fastest-growing category in the produce department.
Wegmans’ specialty items include organic yogurts and Terra Chip-brand snacks that come in varieties made with root vegetables as well as potatoes. In keeping with this trend, Wegmans this year introduced its own line of organic milk.
“If we had five or 10 [organic] products available to us [10 years ago] it was a lot,” says Jo Natale, a spokeswoman for Wegmans. These days, “we’ve seen an explosion of products available to us.”
