Tag Archives: food trends

All Cocoas are Not Created Equal

Posted on January 17, 2011 by Pavone Food
Guest Blogger: Amy Preston, PhD, RD
The Hershey Center for Health & Nutrition

By now you’ve likely heard the rumblings about the positive health benefits associated with eating dark chocolate. A number of these studies have shown that eating this “Food of the Gods” is associated with improvements in risk factors for heart disease, including blood flow and blood pressure, cognition and even skin health! What many people fail to recognize is that the “active” ingredient within the chocolate that is likely responsible for many of these health effects is the brown cocoa powder – the same cocoa powder that you’ve had hidden in your pantry for years!

Natural cocoa powder is the end product from a pressing or extraction process that removes a significant portion of the fat or cocoa butter from the cocoa bean itself.  The resulting natural cocoa powder is usually a light brown color. On the flip side, alkalized cocoa powders, sometimes referred to as Dutched, come from cocoa nibs and/or chocolate liquor that have been treated with alkali solutions.  This alkalizing or dutching process is a safe and approved process and is used to change the color, taste, solubility, and functionality of cocoa powder in food products. The catch is that this treatment also reduces the naturally occurring antioxidant power of the cocoa powder.  Read more...

Posted in General | Tagged cocoa, food trends, health | 1 Comment

Talking with Malcolm Halliday

Posted on January 12, 2011 by Pavone Food
Malcolm Halliday, CEC, CFBE

Q:  What is your title?

A:  Business Review Manager and Corporate Chef, Sysco

Q:  What are your primary responsibilities, day-to-day?

A:  I try to make customers as profitable as possible.  I’m on the road most days, visiting with operators at their locations.  I help them with menu engineering.  I help them analyze their menus, improve procedures and profitability.  I show them new products when there’s a need or when that product might offer the operator a solution.

Q:  What are you most proud of?

A:  That we, at Sysco, take care of our customers one at a time.  Each one gets individual attention.  I love that!

Q:  What is the coolest thing you’ve seen lately?

A:  I’ve seen a lot of operators take run-of-the-mill ingredients and jazz them up really effectively.  I’ve seen it especially with comfort food.  Lots of chefs are taking familiar, home-style fare and making it special—more sophisticated.  Those that are doing it well are seeing that customers will spend extra on dishes like this and they’re having a lot of success.  I’m also seeing a lot of sous vide products.  Culinarté has an amazing line—everything from braised short ribs to lamb and pork shanks—that are already vacuum-sealed and ready to go.  These products take cooking time from 20+ hours to 15 or 20 minutes!  Operators just have to drop the sealed package into boiling water and the results are impressive!

 Read more...

Posted in Expert Opinions, General | Tagged chef, corporate chef, food trends, foodservice, Malcolm Halliday | 2 Comments

Best Food Trend Predictions for 2011

Posted on January 3, 2011 by Pavone Food

Over the past two years, Pavone’s food and beverage trend presentations have been seen by hundreds of marketing professionals from dozens of leading food and beverage manufacturers, retailers, as well as producer and trade organizations.

As we finish up digging through piles of published food and beverage predictions and trend lists for 2011, we thought it might be interesting to share our list of the best trends we found – and the worst.  (The worst will be featured in our next post.)

None of these trends are included in Pavone’s 2011 food trend report (in part because we try very hard not to repeat or regurgitate other published trends) but we’d love to hear your opinion on the list we’ve compiled here:  Read more...

Posted in General | Tagged best, food and beverage trends, food trends, worst | 2 Comments

Talking with Danielle Marta

Posted on December 16, 2010 by Pavone Food

Here on the Pavone food blog we take time on a regular basis to chat with some of the people working behind-the-scenes (or very much in the spotlight) of today’s food and beverage marketing industry. For one of our first formal interviews, we spoke with Danielle Marta, who leads strategy and innovation for national accounts in the foodservice division at The Campbell Soup Company. In this Q&A, Danielle offers opinions on social media, food trends and how retailers could learn a thing or two from Wegmans.

Danielle Marta, RD
National Accounts – Strategy & Innovation
The Campbell Soup Company

Q:        What is your primary role?

A:         My primary role at Campbell’s is to create value and indispensable partnerships with innovative solutions and strategies to scale customers in foodservice.

Q:        What do you mean by innovative solutions?

A:         Campbell’s has always been a thought leader in this industry and is constantly looking for ways to deliver innovative solutions to our customers. Campbell’s has core capabilities that lay the foundation for our innovations: Vegetable Nutrition, Maintaining Great Taste, While Reducing Sodium and Whole Grain Goodness.

 Read more...

Posted in Expert Opinions, General | Tagged Campbell's, Danielle Marta, food trends, foodservice, innovation, Research | 2 Comments

Faking It

Posted on September 22, 2010 by Pavone Food

“Fake baking” is on the rise.  More and more consumers are taking credit for something they didn’t make, passing it off as their own homemade specialty.  “Semi-homemade” requires slightly more effort.  Consumers have to add something to the mix themselves to claim that almost-homemade status.  Regardless of how one chooses to define the misrepresentation, it is one that smart manufacturers and marketers are not only enabling but encouraging.

It’s about helping time-starved consumers look like domestic gods and goddesses.  They simply don’t always have time to make the kind of meal they’d like to present to their families or the gourmet cookies they’d like to bring to the bake sale.   Not only have smart manufacturers made their products more convenient, they have actually given consumers permission to claim “homemade” status.  Read more...

  • Alon’s, an Atlanta-based baking company, sells roll of gourmet cookie dough, but they also sell baskets, plates and linens to help pull off the scam.
  • Honey Baked Ham, Holiday Ham and similar companies exist solely because people need a source for delicious food they can claim as their own.
  • Ready-to-Eat Cheesecake Filling from Philadelphia/Kraft is another example.  Anyone can have “homemade” cheesecake in one step; just spoon the filling into a pre-made graham cracker crust!
Posted in General | Tagged baking, fake, food trends, retail | 4 Comments