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GOURMET NEWS www.gourmetnews.com

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VOLUME 87 • NUMBER 11 NOVEMBER 2022 • $7.00 • Functionally Charged Proteins Clean Up Labels in Meat Alternatives PAGE 5

• At Last – Just Ice Tea Starts Hitting Shelves PAGE 6

• Schuman Racks Up Wins at 2022 Cheese Competitions PAGE 8

• Drink Up: Taking a Look at New Beverages PAGE 10 & 11

• No Oven, No Problem: Cooking Potatoes Just Got Easier PAGE 12

• Taylor Farms Takes Fresh Vegetable Production Facility Off the Grid PAGE 14

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Straight to the Source: GoodSam Cultivates Relationship With Colombian Farmers BY A.J. FLICK

Colombia has a reputation for its soil, considered some of the most fertile in the world. Straddling the equator on its southern tip, Colombia’s temperatures remain steady throughout the seasons, the only difference being the amount of rain. The abundance of rainfall and sunshine allows farmers to grow diverse crops all year long, a natural form of regenerative agriculture that appealed to Heather K. Terry when she co-founded the healthy snack food brand GoodSam Foods with Sam Stroot. Terry can’t stress the importance of sustainability enough.

“Literally, the future of humanity depends on it,” she said. “I see a lot of food entrepreneurs who, all they are doing is greenwashing,” said Terry, GoodSam’s CEO. “Why are you starting a food business if you’re just pillaging the land? At a certain point, there will be nothing left.” Starting out, Terry wouldn’t settle for anything less than traveling to Colombia to meet the indigenous people who work the small farms to source the company’s ingredients. She headed for rural regions, where the crops she wanted to see grew and where white women are not a common sight.

“I was an odd bird,” she said, drawing the attention of the skeptical locals. “There I was, in the middle of Colombia for the first time,” Terry recalled. “The first time I showed up it was, ‘OK, we’ll see what she does.’ But then I kept showing up and those farmers are my family. They’re more than people who grow our crops. They fuel the heart and soul of our brand.”

• Do Good Chicken Saves 10M Pounds of Food From Landfills PAGE 15

• Featured Products PAGE 19

• Advertiser Index PAGE 22

a new report by Morning Consult, “What Sustainability Means to Consumers.” The report also found that consumers grade themselves higher than others in their community, corporations and the governments when it comes to sustainability. The report, authored by Joanna Piacenza, Amy He and Nicki Zink, set

BY A.J. FLICK

out to learn what consumers know about what it means to be sustainable, how consumers adopt sustainability in their lives and what consumers know about the sustainable initiatives and claims that corporations make. “U.S. adults are broadly familiar with common sustainability concepts like ‘energy conservation’ and ‘renewable resources,’ but a gap exists between familiarity and being able to demonstrate understanding of certain topics,

Oryx Desert Salt, an organic, natural gourmet salt ethically and sustainably harvested from the Kalahari Desert, arose out of its founder’s desire to create an earthfriendly product that rewards the people who work the hardest collecting it. Samantha Skyring, based in Cape Town, South Africa, was working in production management in the fashion industry when two things happened. On a seven-day walk in 2000 through the Namib Desert to the Skeleton Coast, “I had a close encounter with an Oryx gazella,” she said, an endangered member of the antelope family also known as gemsbok. Later research showed that oryxes can go their entire lives without water, but must lick salt every two months or so to survive desert conditions. Then, on a photo shoot in the desert, “I had an epiphany. The model had the most perfect, drop dead perfect body, but we had pins in the back of the shirt so it fell perfectly in the photo. It was for a catalog that some woman in the Netherlands would look at it and say, ‘Ooh, I would look good in that.’ No, no you wouldn’t. It’s

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It’s All Good GoodSam was founded on the principles of making foods that are “good for you, good for farmers Continued on PAGE 18

Sustainability Survey Shows Consumer Confusion There’s a big gap between consumers knowing common sustainability concepts and understanding them, according to

Oryx Inspires Gourmet Desert Salt

Drake's Organic Spirits Has a Lot of Good News to Toast About BY A.J. FLICK

What do you get when you take two North Dakota natives living in Minnesota and add the Cauca Valley of Colombia? In addition to a lot of air miles, a first-of-itskind product: organic spirits. Mark and Kristen Anderson, co-founders of Drake’s Organic Spirits, started off with the idea of producing non-GMO sugar cane, Mark Anderson said. Demand from large ingredients companies was surging by 2008. Several years later, flavor extract companies began asking for organic, non-GMO alcohol. “We decided to start producing

organic alcohol when we discovered nobody else was doing it,” Mark said. “There was obviously a large demand for it.” By 2016, they were producing organic, non-GMO vegan alcohol. Two years later, the couple launched Drake’s Organic Spirits, the only organic and sustainable spirit producer on the market that is certified USDA Organic, gluten free, Non-GMO Project Verified, vegan, keto and kosher. This summer, Drake’s made its first appearance on the prestigious Inc. 5000 ranking for the nation’s fastest-growing private companies, landing within the

top 10 percent of all companies, as the eighth largest ranked company in Minnesota and the 13th in food & beverage. “It has been a big year for us already as we’ve both benefited from and made significant investments,” Kristen Anderson said at the time, “as well as began B2B sales of our organic cane alcohol. We are the only producer to be certified USDA Organic, non-GMO project verified, kosher, vegan, gluten-free, and keto. With an annual capacity of 12 million proof gallons, we are positioned to become the leading global supplier of sus-

tainable alcohol.” Drake’s also earned its first Growth Brand award this year, for rapid acceleration. Kristen said they “are gratified that our mission to create beverage alcohol that is ‘better for you, better for the planet’ is such a strong business proposition. We look forward to the partnerships this year will bring.” The Colombian sugar cane appealed to the Andersons for sourcing because the crop grows so well in the Andes Mountains – producing two crops a year before Continued on PAGE 15