We have finally recuperated from the seemingly endless grazing at the NASFT Fancy Food Show this past Sunday at the Jacob Javits Center. Phew! Although it was humanly impossible to check out all of the 1800 domestic exhibits and 500 international ones, we had a great time randomly strolling about seeing what new and interesting gluten-free foods we could find. It was our first time attending this business event where buyers meet vendors in order to sample their goods and exchange contact information. Lots of yummy products were looking for new store shelves to call their home. New or foreign food manufacturers were looking for their chance to break into the American food market. Entrepreneurial excitement was in the air.
Interestingly, we noticed that the show was mostly dominated by olives, chocolate and flavored bottled water. There were some familiar gf brands there such as Glutano, Lara Bar, Cherrybrook Kitchen and Mary's Gone Crackers. We were treated to buffalo and sheep cheese, smoked salmon jerky, chocolate covered rice cakes from Italy and very healthy and tasty Hint brand flavored waters. I love Hint's slogan, "drink water, not sugar". Oh, and by the way, freeze dried fruits and veggies are the new hot thing. We'll write more in depth about each product after we get additional information from our contacts.
A surprising thing happened while our noses were buried into the endless map of vendors, contemplating which "country" we'd browse next. A cute couple approached us, after spotting our name tags, and knew who we were! Turns out it was Ronnie & Drew Staffenberg of the DeLiteful Foods store in Lawrenceville, NJ and they wanted to let us know about their cool store and upcoming grand opening party. We'll keep you posted. It's such a cowinkidink that we found each other amongst the huge crowd!
The other very promising connection we made was at the Hale & Hearty soup booth. Here's the back story: One of our readers, Benjamin, recently emailed us about a secret gf list of Hale & Hearty soups. He charmed the staff at his local H&H store and then the H&H president into showing him the list. For various reasons, the owner at this point is hesitant about officially sharing the list with the general public. Back to the H&H booth: We approached The Man That Looked In Charge (TMTLIC), introduced ourselves, and told him the Benjamin story. TMTLIC gave us this very promising reply: "My mother has celiac disease and I know how hard it is for her to dine out. I'm the wholesale sales manager, and here is my card. Contact me after the show and we'll talk."
We are on the case and will keep you posted. [cue Dragnet theme]
