Galaxy Desserts Unveils' New Product at Winter Fancy Food Show
January 11, 2008
One of the West Coast's premiere gourmet food events of the year - the 33rd Annual Winter Fancy Food Show, which will run from Jan. 13 to 15 in San Diego - often means months of preparation for participating East Bay food manufacturers.
Paul Levitan, president and CEO of Galaxy Desserts of Richmond, was vacationing last August at Lake Tahoe when he took a call from Jean-Yves Charon, his company's executive chef. He was having trouble perfecting a new product Galaxy planned to debut at the annual show, a product called a Parisian Macaron, consisting of two meringue cookies held together by a variety of fillings, including jam, cream and ganache.
"He told me that, technically, the cookies just weren't quite right," Levitan said. "They were thinner than you would expect and spreading out too much when (Charon) tried to bake them."
At first thoroughly puzzled, Charon called Levitan back when he finally had solved out the culinary mystery.
"He figured out it was because of thirsty chickens," Levitan said. "It was hot at the time, and the eggs we were using for the cookies came from a farm where the chickens were drinking a lot of water because of the heat. So all of that extra water was causing runnier egg whites."
So with cooler heads of fowl prevailing, along with a few adjustments to the recipe, a Parisian Macaron cookie of the right consistency and texture is ready to be unveiled at the annual food industry showcase. Levitan hopes the cookie - a staple of French chefs - will help pad his private company's sales figures, which he estimates will be from $20 million to $25 million for fiscal 2008.
Usually staged at San Francisco's Moscone Center, this year's show in Southern California's second city, sponsored by the National Association for Specialty Food Trade Inc., is expected to attract from 20,000 to 30,000 people from the specialty food, wine, gift, restaurant, supermarket and department store sectors. It returns to San Francisco in 2009.
Having to travel 500 miles rather than making a quick trip across the Bay Bridge hasn't deterred attendance by companies from the greater East Bay. Besides Galaxy, also planning to participate will be Jelly Belly Candy Co. of Fairfield, Ghirardelli Chocolate Co. of San Leandro, Niman Ranch Inc. of Alameda, Scharffen Berger Chocolate Maker Inc. of Berkeley, and several Oakland companies: Peerless Coffee Co., Just Desserts, Nummi Tea Inc. and Sconza Candy Co.
The companies typically unveil new products, new packaging - or both - at the food industry confab.
Sconza, a 69-year-old family-owned company that operates a 70,000-square-foot manufacturing plant near McAfee Coliseum and Oracle Arena in Oakland, will be introducing new packaging for its premium line of chocolate products. They include such products as chocolate-covered cherries and almonds, dark chocolate-covered raisins and walnuts, chocolate toffee pistachios and mocha truffle almonds, among others.
A smaller, gable-topped box taking a bow in San Diego will allow the company to make these products more attractive to gift box companies, according to Greg Cater, Sconza's vice president of sales and marketing.
"It's important for them," Cater said of the gift box creators. "The box allows our premium line to be included in their packages. They have been wanting us to create a stronger package that can stand up and hold its shape in a gift-box configuration."
Long a manufacturer that has made candy products for other companies, Sconza got into premium chocolate items with its own label a decade ago because of the explosion of interest in fine chocolate, Cater said. The company now sells those products in such diverse locations as Raley's and Nob Hill Foods supermarkets, upscale Piedmont Grocery in Oakland, Gene's Fine Foods in Pleasanton and Saratoga, United Markets in Marin County and the tony David M. Brian gift store in Walnut Creek's Broadway Plaza.
Though there was a discussion as to whether to attend this year's more-distant show, Cater said it was a brief one.
"We are really committed to this (Winter Fancy Food) show," said Cater, who would not disclose the private company's annual sales. "It gives us such great exposure to major specialty retailers. We will send a smaller group of people and the price tag will be bigger, with air fares and hotel expenses, but this show is worth it."
And though his company will skip this year's annual Global Food and Style Expo scheduled for April 27 to 29 in Chicago, Cater said Sconza representatives will be sent for the second year to the 54th Annual Summer Fancy Food Show in New York scheduled for June 29 to July 1.
The summer and winter Fancy Food Shows are also a must for Scharffen Berger, the Berkeley manufacturer of premium chocolate for consumers and professional chefs. Tom Cavers, a company spokesman, said the events are not only the perfect showcase for new products, but the ideal place to find out what's happening in the specialty food industry.
Cavers said that among several new products Scharffen Berger is debuting at the winter show this year is a three-ounce milk chocolate bar containing nibs, which are roasted cocoa beans separated from their husks and broken into small, crunchy bits. And a three-ounce sea-salted almond milk chocolate bar with 41 percent cacao content will also make its debut in San Diego. He said both bars will sell for $3.99.
Another product making its debut will be 18 individually wrapped pouches containing five-gram bars of semisweet, bittersweet and unsweetened chocolate bars geared for use by professional bakers that will sell for $5.99 per pouch.