FROM THE PUBLISHER
What Matters Most
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A
s an industry, we are a diverse marketplace of people, products, and companies. While
it's important to support our many differences, it's equally important to recognize and
advocate for our shared interests.
Having been a part of the industry for 25 years, I'm still
working to understand my attachment to it. I'm convinced
that we are more than a loose confederation of businesses
that get together a couple of times a year for a trade show.
But what are the unifying principles that hold us to-
gether? What is our common cause?
It's far easier to say what we are in relation to what we're
not. We are decidedly not the mainstream where eating is a
rushed, robotic exercise, but we're more than just "differ-
ent." Consumers tell us that they distinguish specialty food
products by these five elements:
• Uniqueness in their categories
• Use of better ingredients
• Smaller-scale production
• Superior tastes and flavors
• The people behind the product
Chris Crocker
Senior Vice President, Content & Media
ccrocker@specialtyfood.com
Each of your products, in some way, ref lects these five
fundamental dimensions. Our industry's products both
require and command a higher price relative to the main-
stream—and I've often joked that we should advocate for
more people to spend more money on food; it's a reliable
but cynical constant. Our foods have higher prices out of
necessity; we have placed priorities such as quality, ethics,
and environmentalism above volume and price.
Specialty foods require effort to make and intention
to sell. These products reward those who choose them not
just because they taste good. The appeal goes even beyond
ingredients, recipes, and processes. The people who pro-
duce them, the places they're from, and the stories behind
them are all part of the gestalt of specialty food.
I think we can all agree that food should be expe-
rienced in a context, not just eaten. Our common cause
is to help consumers swim against the current to make
conscious, purposeful food choices.
"The people who produce them,
the places they're from, and the
stories behind them are all part
of the gestalt of specialty food."
SPRING 2015 5