Skip to main content

Do YOU Need Some Incubation?

Ever wanted to start your own food business? Can Campbell’s get you into the soup? 
A new opportunity poked its shiny beak into the food industry last month when Campbell Soup Company (www.campbellsoupcompany.com ) in conjunction with Foodworks of Brooklyn ( www.thefoodworks.com) – a food start-up for entrepreneurs, held the Real Food Innovation Challenge. The Challenge gave three food biz beginners the chance to secure funding to help their food fantasies come true.
Seven finalists were chosen from nearly forty competitors in a preliminary pitch session, who then peddled their ideas to Campbell’s panel of judges and a live audience. 
In the final phase of the competition, held July 25th, winners had to demonstrate that their product used known and favored ingredients, had foundational business and marketing plans, outstanding palatability, and answered consumer need. They were judged by a panel that included Carlos Abrams-Rivera, President of Pepperidge Farm, Bethmara Kessler, Senior Vice President of Campbell’s Shared Services Organization, Mike Paul, Vice President, Marketing & Innovation at Campbell, Susan Westmoreland, Food Director of Good Housekeeping, and Maxine Builder, Associate Editor of Extra Crispy,
Three food innovators won the judges favor: Red Velvet NYC won top prize of $10,000 toward their Foodworks membership, while Watermelon Road and Better Almond Butter took second place garnering $5000 in membership credits. In addition, finalists received the promise of future mentoring by Campbell advisors on key aspects of product development, branding, and marketing.
So what does it take to break out in the world of NYC food entrepreneurship?
Red Velvet NYC (https://redvelvetnyc.com/) is a sweet, subscription-based, bake-it-yourself gourmet recipe home delivery service featuring such favorites as: Red Velvet Cake, Tiramisu, and Panna Cotta. Two boxes of seasonally selected recipes and ingredients arrive each month for your baking pleasure. The venture belongs to two sisters, Agatha and Arielle Assouline-Lichten, who decided that ‘Ovens are more often filled with sweaters than desserts!’ And ‘knew there had to be a better way.’
Watermelon Road (www.watermelonroad.com – coming soon!)  was founded by Jamie Meltzer on the idea that people on special diets need great snacks too. Products include fruit and vegetable jerky with surprising flavors such as pineapple mojito and smoky balsamic eggplant. 
Jordyn Gatti’s Better Almond Butter (https://jordyn-gatti.squarespace.com/) uses a unique technique of sprouting unpasteurized Marcona almonds from Spain in order to blend them into a butter that is safer, healthier and more easily digestible. Gatti’s product will be appreciated by anyone who knows anything about almonds.
In 2007, the USDA stipulated that all almonds be pasteurized to prevent salmonella due to an outbreak that was traced back to almonds. There are two options for this process: steaming, and a quicker and easier fumigation with propylene oxide gas (POP). POP is a known genotoxin and carcinogen. So obtaining organic unpasteurized almonds is, in and of itself, a laudable feat. Pasteurizing almonds renders them unsuitable for sprouting. 
Not only does using non-pasteurized almonds increase the health value of Better Almond Butter by the absence of bad ingredients, but the sprouting process also ups nutritional value by neutralizing phytic acid that is naturally present in all nuts, seeds, grains and legumes and acts as a chelator, or binder to other nutrients. When phytic acid is not neutralized, it depletes your body of key nutrients like zinc, iron and calcium. Soaking the almonds for sprouting also increases natural enzymes that aid digestion.
(If you are looking for a pure almond source you can try Terrasoul Superfoods (https://terrasoul.com/)  a company whose mission is to “independently test each imported ingredient at our laboratory for heavy metals, organic purity and biological contamination.” Terrasoul received the Safe Quality Foods Program certification in 2017). 
But if you’re bemoaning the missed chance to gain mentorship and recognition for your start-up food company, weep no more…  IKEA is getting into the food industry. Yup, you heard right, one of the world’s leading home furnishing purveyors has just announced a food incubator opportunity which will provide selected companies with $22,400 in free housing, access to IKEA’s prototype and test labs in Sweden, along with expert food science consultation.
This new IKEA endeavor is looking to assist food entrepreneurs that have a focus on urban farming, invention of new ingredients, virtual reality food tasting, sustainable sourcing, conservation efforts, and healthy eating.
Take a peek at the IKEA Bootcamp website under Food Innovation for more information: (https://ikeabootcamp.rainmaking.io/)
And if you haven’t started your food start-up yet, here is a fabulous, comprehensive source on local urban incubator programs to get your entrepreneurial food-ball rolling: MUNICIPAL ACTION GUIDE Food-Based Business Incubator Programs (http://www.nlc.org/sites/default/files/2017-02/Food-Based_Business_Incubator_Programs.pdf)

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Backyard Guacamole

                                                            There is guacamole and then there is guacamole. There is the kind you get in the supermarket in round, plastic tubs. This is plastic guacamole that has the slippery feel and taste of the container it comes in. It is a little too pea green, face-foundation pureed, and useful only for a first rate Mexican food emergency. No guacamole should ever represent such panicked urgency. Then there is kitchen-made guacamole. You hope the avocado is ripe enough. The knife neatly slashes the pit and is ejected into a bowl for puncture with toothpicks, water emersion and sprouting later on in the dark of the cabinet below the kitchen sink. It is masticated by a fork and doused with a shot of salsa. In the end, it will work on tostadas, or as the final dollop on a taco....
Post a Comment
Read more

Stabbing At Steak Cuisine

Serving up steak is not for amateurs  – Sous Vide, Brasserie-Style . . . There is no shortage of methods to prepare steak in the culinary universe, and no scarcity of chefs to create them. Chef Tesar of Dallas’ restaurant  Knife , has developed a seering technique using canola or grapeseed oil, that he features in his new book,  Knife: Texas Steakhouse Meals at Home .  His method relies on a a cast iron, or carbon steel pan. It is also dependent on removing as much liquid from the meat as possible before cooking. Three to four days in the refrigerator unwrapped, lying on a regularly refreshed swath of paper towel, will do the trick. Tesar’s method is supposed to yield up the most succulent steak ever tasted. This method honestly reminds me of cooking tofu – the steak alternative, which also relies on liquid removal with paper towels before cooking. But steak is not tofu and tofu is not steak. More on tofu later… If you are looking for the ultimat...
Post a Comment
Read more