Throughout the show, 4 of our favorite culinary combos seemed to continually reappear, reinventing themselves in mind-blowingly delicious new ways! We couldn’t help but share these NEW twists.
1. Chips & Salsa
NEW has taken grasp of this American party staple and natural food-improved it.
The NEW twist on traditional tortilla chips keeps the handy dandy sauce-holding shape, but mixed up the usual ingredient suspects. We’ve dubbed it the “Torti-nahhh Chip.” Case and point: the world’s most dippable kale chip, SuperEats combines the superfoods kale and chia into a divine tri-tip chip.
Or take a few bites from Fall River Wild Rice and Black Bean chips to become a believer. Traditional ripple chips more your style? Good Boy Organics has you covered with baked potato crisps, “free of the funky junk”.
Dip-ity Do Dah, Dip-ity Day! Here’s the latest scoop on NEW salsas: you really can’t go wrong! I’m in the go hot or go home camp, so El Pinto’s Scorpion Salsa is absolute, mouth-on-fire, ten-fire-alarm perfection. If you err on the sweeter side, Grandma Chonga’s “exotic fruit blend” of Tropical Salsa is right up your alley. White Girl Salsa and Mrs.Renfro’s Salsa are always sure crowd-pleasers.
Or mix Mexican and Mediterranean with Happy Monkey Hummus’ XXX chipotle molé hummus. The possibilities are endless!
2. Tea & Honey
Two for tea and tea for everyone! The NEW tea business and its classic accompaniment are booming in all kinds of unexpected ways. The standouts?
Companies are finding interesting sourcing origins to change the taste of traditional teas. Teatulia grows all their USDA-certified Organic teas in their own garden in Bangladesh. Strict control ensures tea comparable in quality to single-estate wine.
Majani Teas Exquisite Kenyan tea features beautifully, eye-strikingly, gorgeous packaging.
AIYA ventures into the ancient art of Japanese matcha making, bringing the most impeccable green tea and matcha to the US market.
Tea’s not just for dainty cups and pretty pottery anymore – this year, tea’s broken out to be perpetually available everywhere, into your daily workout and post-work happy hour. Blue Buddha 108 teas harness the power of a unique blend of herbs, mixed with tea, to bring wellness and restore balance to each and every drinker. Bhakti Chai’s on-the-go bottled chai packs a punch, with organic ginger and fierce spices in strong black tea.
Natural Force blends herbs, roots, fruit extracts, and superfoods for a powerful pre-workout pump-up. Teas are even popping up at the bar! The Owl’s Brew freshly brews their one-of-a-kind artisan mixers for wonderfully whimsical pairings with your liquor of choice.
Beyond the tea leaves and into the honeycomb, mixed flavors are the latest buzz around NEW apiaries. Nature Nate’s Honey Syrup in blueberry, raspberry, or strawberry prove versatile outside of the cup and straight onto applications across the kitchen – from meat, to pancakes, ice cream, cakes, and beyond, this syrup will turn you into a bee-liever!
Bare Honey transforms already lovely local honey into everyday spreads with scrumptious flavor infusions. Vanilla Bean Spoon Honey is your toast’s new BFF; their smoked chili-infused spread, aptly named Hot Honey is a guaranteed win for your next batch of honey hot wings.
3. Milk & Cookies
Santa’s in for a surprise this year. No more of grannie’s famous Nestle Tollhouse chocolate chip cookies with a big glass of whole milk. Instead, he’ll likely find gluten-free cookies of all shapes and sizes and all kinds of milk alternatives awaiting him on December 24, 2014.
Back down, Girl Scouts, because these up and coming gluten-free cookie game-changers are here to stay! Goodie Girl Tribeca boasts “just the right amount of wrong.” I’d have to agree. Their gluten-free Thin Mint tops your local troops’ any day. Glutenetto brings bites of southern Italy sweets right to you. Tuscan wedding cookie, anyone? If you want to get down and doughy, snag The Half Baked Cookie Company’s all-natural, gluten-free, shelf-stable cookie mix – chocolate chip most highly recommended. And those are just the best beginnings the gluten-free goodies index, undoubtedly measuring longer than Santa’s naughty and nice list.
Moo-ve over! Shelf space is being demanded for everything but regular cow’s milk. Cow Wow Organic is mixing up marketing in kid’s flavored milk categories by offering Cereal Milk in fruit, chocolate, peanut butter, and cinnamon.
Soy, almond, hazelnut, oat, and coconut milk from producers like So Delicious are filing in by the dozen.
Less-traditional alternatives with steeper price points, like Desert Farms camel’s milk, might take a bit more convincing to find shelf space. But the story behind how a camel’s milk gets to your US doorstep beats any other dairy replacement beverage, for sure!
Psssst: Craving that little something extra with your gluten-free goodies? Snag a bag of The Frosting Queen’s all-natural, ready-to-use, mouth-watering frosting – delightful!
4. French Fries & Ketchup
Forget the fast-food french fry war. Put down those greasy, grimey drive-through fries, friends. Because you can do better than that! And I don’t just mean healthier. I mean really, truly, more satisfyingly delicious. If you were to have it really have it your way, this is the way I’d suggest move forward:
Eat Veggie Fries. Carrot, Broccoli, Chickpea & Red Pepper, or Tuscan Bean & Herb – pick whichever flavor pleases your palate most! At least 25% of each fry contains non-potato vegetable and beans; 100% is non-GMO, gluten and wheat-free, perfectly crispy crunchy and bursting full of flavor.
But what’s a fry without the proper ketchup? Nada. So with every nosh, be sure to dip your veggie sticks the right stuff. Red Duck’s Organic sweet and slightly smoky Classic is a sure-fire winner. Or take a waddle on the wild side with their Curry ketchup.
Experience a mind-blowing flavor explosion with Traina’s Sun-Dried Tomato Ketchup – the equivalent of over four pounds of ripe Roma tomatoes are in each case. Once you taste these NEW kinds of ketchup, you’ll never go back to tapping that 57 again.
What’s NEXT?
That’s all for now, folks! We worked our way through as much of Natural Expo West as humanly possible. (Although, admittedly, we didn’t make it the whole way through!)
So now it’s up to you to go out, explore the wonderful world of NEW, and find your favorite eats and drinks. Find something we missed? A must-try culinary creation? Contact us and we’ll get on it, stat.
Want to know more about how Tytanium can help build your brand and grow sales with our secret sauce? Give us a ring, or send over a carrier pigeon with your message and return address. You can also find us speaking about how to grow your business at the Summer Fancy Food Show 2014 or by popping by our CA office.