RoJo's Gourmet Foods Brings You New Items From the Fancy Food Show

January is the month that hosts the Winter Fancy Food Show. This years show was hosted in San Diego. Usually held in San Francisco, a scheduling conflict pushed the show south. RoJo's Gourmet Foods made a journey south to visit the several thousand exhibitors and bring back only the most special products available. One of those product is a line of tapenades and spreads from Hand to Mouth Edibles.

Aaron Baum is the owner and creator of these great products and his story goes like this:

Have you ever made a delicious gourmet dish and then have someone say, "Hey, this tastes great! You could sell that...people would love to buy your food!" Well, that's pretty much how Hand To Mouth Edibles Gourmet Foods was founded. In 1995 Aaron Baum, a Communications Consultant and a self described "guy who loves to cook" listened to the suggestions of friends and family and, as a result, changed careers to start his own gourmet food company.

Initially, Hand To Mouth Edibles was called "Baum's Breads & Spreads" - a company that
baked hand-crafted sourdough breads with fresh spreads to put on top. The 1995 model
for Breads & Spreads was based on the old Los Angeles based Helms Bakery business where warm fresh bread would be delivered right to your home or office once a week.

Customer response to the products was exceptional. However customer buying habits, and the fact that you can only bake so many loaves per night in a regular kitchen oven, precluded the business from fully developing. Aaron soon realized that customers could easily purchase
their favorite breads but the spreads and tapenades were not so easily available. Thus, the idea of repackaging spreads for a much wider customer base was born.

Since 1997, Hand To Mouth Edibles has brought to the national market, eight all-natural gourmet tapenades and spreads. These versatile and delicious products have found wide distribution in specialty and natural food markets; seasonal and corporate gift basket programs; amenity programs and in-room dining at better hotel/resorts; and, catalog and on-line shops throughout North America. Day-by-day, one mouth at a time, we're going Beyond the Cracker
to spread the word about good food!

Keep a lookout as we introduce the other awesome new products that we found at this years show. Hand to Mouth Edibles tapenades & spreads can be found at http://www.rojosgourmet.com/category_s/51.htm.

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Specialty food market continuing to thrive despite bad economic times

By Jennifer Davies

UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER

January 16, 2008

Specialty foods such as fine cheeses, exotic teas and expensive chocolates are no longer only for the discerning food snob. Increasingly, these gourmet items are being gobbled up by the masses as well.

At Colorado gourmet tea maker Two Leaves and a Bud, sales are growing at a triple-digit rate. Richard Rosenfeld, founder of the three-year-old company, said people are willing to pay for quality when it comes to food and beverages.

“You can spend $8 for a box of our tea or $6 for a box of ordinary tea,” Rosenfeld said. “The one thing about specialty food is that it's a very affordable luxury.”

While overall food sales increased 4 percent over the past two years, the specialty foods sector has grown 17 percent, according to the National Association for the Specialty Food Trade. In 2006, specialty food sales were $38.5 billion – double the level five years earlier.

The growing variety of specialty foods was on display this week at the 33rd Winter Fancy Food Show at the San Diego Convention Center. The show attracted about 1,100 exhibitors from around the world promoting everything from Indian-and Thai-spiced baby food to soy jerky and raw Sicilian almonds.

Ron Tanner, vice president for the National Association for the Specialty Food Trade, said the event is one of the biggest it has had – covering about 250,000 square feet of exhibit space.

Still, while the event keeps growing, some exhibitors said they were concerned that the sluggish economy might slow demand for their pricey, gourmet products.

Read the full article

Scorpion Bay Gourmet Hot Sauce sizzles at the San Diego Fancy Food Show.

(PRLEAP.COM) January 11, 2008 – To a gourmet hot sauce company, an opportunity like this is the key ingredient to gaining worldwide exposure. Such is the case for Scorpion Bay Hot Sauce. Scorpion Bay will be a featured exhibitor for the first time at the 2008 Winter Fancy Food Show, held at the San Diego Convention Center on January 13th—15th. The show, now in its thirty-third year, features more than 1,100 exhibitors from around the globe, and offers over 100,000 individual food items to sample.

“It’s a spectacular opportunity to put us on the “taste radar” of a much wider audience,” says Scorpion Bay’s founder and Encinitas resident Rob Burns. Burns, whose love of surfing and extensive travels throughout coastal Mexico first attracted him to the flavors of the region, began experimenting with thicker, Baja-inspired sauces from his kitchen. When his friends’ demand for these homemade sauces exceeded his ability to produce them, he realized that he had something special, and Scorpion Bay Hot Sauce was launched.

It’s been quite a ride as of late for this enthusiastic purveyor of hot sauce. Since his company’s humble inception, Burns is thrilled to add that he’s doubled sales every quarter, a remarkable feat in such a competitive marketplace. And his success hasn’t gone unnoticed. Just last year Scorpion Bay teamed up with the Southern California based retailer/distributor Hot Licks. In no time at all, customers were buying up Scorpion Bay’s unique flavors, and sales went skyward. So when Hot Licks decided to exhibit at this year’s Fancy Food Show, inviting its featured vendor was a natural choice.

At the show you’ll have an opportunity to get a taste of Scorpion Bay Hot Sauce served up on an iconic Baja offering—fish tacos. Attendees will get to sample from the company’s three eclectic flavors: HotAcado Avocado, De Arbol and Chocopotle Chipotle Hot Sauce. What makes all of these sauces stand apart is their consistency, which is noticeably thicker than traditional commercial hot sauces. Scorpion Bay’s motto, “Do what you love—do it well and you will never go wrong,” is found on the side of every bottle.

Full story Here