Specialty Food Magazine

WINTER 2018

Specialty Food Magazine is the leading publication for retailers, manufacturers and foodservice professionals in the specialty food trade. It provides news, trends and business-building insights that help readers keep their businesses competitive.

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she says. The ingredient is used in the restaurant's dessert waff les and a beer bread that is made with Patagonia Provisions Long Root Ale, a kernza beer. Experimental Farming and Clean Meat David Ceaser, owner and operator of Green Skies Vertical Farms in West Oakland, Calif., likewise focuses on environmentally beneficial farming practices. Certified organic herbs, microgreens, and salad greens are grown at his vertical farm using a variety of inventive tech- niques. Ceaser also works to recycle unused space, and make farming more cost efficient. "We are developing methods of farming that are done in very small spaces and relatively inexpensively," he says. "Our cities are full of small spaces that are unused and unproductive—rooftops, porch- es, small side yards between buildings, and so many more. Why don't we use those spaces to produce food? I believe that restaurants will be increasingly moving towards producing their own food and some of these techniques will likely be implemented." In 2018, the vertical farmer will incorporate three new growing systems including a vertical tower system for growing baby greens; a hybrid soil/aeroponic system with which he'll experiment growing all crops; and an indoor growing unit for indoor crop experimenta- tion and refinement, he says. "I like to challenge myself and think of ways to do things better. No system is perfect and when you use one system a lot, you see things that could improve or be made more efficient. So, with that mindset I am always experimenting with different ways of growing crops. It keeps my work very interesting, challenges my mind, and the final goal is to produce food in ways that can help our planet going forward." Bruce Friedrich, co-founder and executive director of The Good Food Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based non-profit, is focused on making plant-based and clean meat "as delicious, price- competitive, and convenient as possible," he says. Friedrich's goal is to shift the food system away from factory-farmed animal products and toward so-called clean meat—that is grown from animal cells, but outside an animal—and plant-based meat alternatives. "This system contributes to the greater good by effectively replacing a harmful production system with systems that do not cause harm—in at least four key areas: the environment, food security, animal health, and food protection," he says. "According to the United Nations' scientists, animal agriculture contributes more to climate change than the entire transportation sector combined. Feeding crops to animals and then eating a part of the animal is vastly inefficient, driving up the price of grains and legumes and entrenching global poverty." Friedrich is hopeful that supermarket meat cases will undergo a transformation, much like that of today's dairy cases where plant- based milk has grown to represent more than 10 percent of the milk market, he says. "We are convinced that meat cases in five years will [comprise] a mix of animal- and plant-based meat." The trend will be driven by food giants who are interested in diversifying their offerings to provide high-quality protein in the most profitable man- ner. "More and more this will be plant-based meat, and then very soon also clean meat," he says. New Uses for Recycled Plastics Michael Waas, global vice president for brand partnerships for Trenton, N.J.-based TerraCycle, which helps eliminate waste by col- lecting and finding ways to recycle waste that can't be recycled today, is also approaching sustainability in a unique way. The company has partnered with Procter & Gamble to use plastic that has washed up on beaches to create a recyclable Head & Shoulders shampoo bottle. It also works with Colgate to build school playgrounds made with recycled toothbrushes, toothpaste tubes, and floss containers. A technology that reduces the time it takes to test pathogens in food, may also change the game. "We've developed ultra-rapid DNA analysis technology to reduce the time for a food safety pathogen test with 100 percent accuracy from three days to one hour," says David Medin, CEO of Snap DNA in Menlo Park, Calif. "We just proved its viability in a blind test where we analyzed pathogens in environmental sponge swab samples taken from the f loors and drains of a high-volume vegetable processing plant." Empowering Startups The empowerment of specialty food startups is also helping shape the food industry of the future. Daniel Nevers, director of program- ming for the KitchenTown food incubator in Silicon Valley, helps entrepreneurs who care about local, fresh, and batch-made products, get their specialty food businesses off the ground so that they may also affect change. Members of these companies are among a lineup of 15 presenters at the upcoming Excite Talks program, presented at the Winter Fancy Food Show in San Francisco, January 21 – 23, 2018. Excite Talks brings together industry thought leaders and disruptors who, during quick 15-minute presentations, expound on how they are shaping the future of food. Learn more at specialtyfood.com. 96 ❘ SPECIALTY FOOD MAGAZINE specialtyfood.com

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