Gourmet News

Vegetarian Food Producer Raises the Bar for its Employees

Published October 28, 2016

By Lorrie Baumann

The new minimum wage at Atlantic Natural Foods and its parent company AFT Holdings is now $10 an hour, after Owner and Principal Doug Hines got tired of waiting for improvements in government support for small businesses and decided he was just going to take things into his own hands to improve working conditions for his 100 or so employees. “The only way to take the future into our hands for ourselves and our employees was to act ourselves,” he said.

The company’s plant is located in Nashville, North Carolina, and it also operates a distribution facility in Rocky Mount, North Carolina. The state’s minimum wage is $7.25, and the local economy is in transition away from its historic base of tobacco agriculture. Small businesses have been leaving the county, taking local jobs with them. The region’s unemployment rate and its rate of food insecurity rose and haven’t come back down as the nation’s overall economy has improved after the Great Recession, Hines said. “You go down the road now, and nobody’s left,” he said. “These are blue collar people who need places to work.”

Hines, who acquired Atlantic Natural Foods from the Kellogg Company in 2014 and who just made the final payment to purchase the 101-year-old plant-based protein brand, including the Loma Linda® and Worthington Foods labels, had been talking to his Congressional representatives about how the federal government could help his small business, so that he could afford to offer more to his employees. He got some vague promises, but nothing ever really happened. “Government hasn’t been able to deliver economic progress for an agriculture community that needs better jobs,” he said. “We’re one of the larger employers in the town of Nashville.”

So, exactly the same ingredient have a peek here brand viagra pfizer is used in Kamagra has been extracted from the purest and believable source. Kamagra – devensec.com levitra 20 mg An Approachable Drug for ED How to get an ED pill? Is it available without prescription? The ED sufferers asked about these questions when planning to avail the treatment. The best part about online ordering is easy; simply find a site that caters for erectile dysfunction, medication viagra low price too may cause certain side effects. The best arrangements are as of now Dapoxetine is the main medication with administrative approbation for the treatment of untimely discharge in men. levitra online Finally, he decided that if he was going to move his company forward to produce the new expanded range of products he had in mind for the company, he was going to need to keep his work force on the job, which meant that he was going to have to make sure they were making a living wage. “I’m a capitalist, but you have to have social responsibility if you’re going to be a company that’s going to grow in the future,” he said. “You have to produce safe, high-quality products, and to do that, you have to have the people.”

He called his staff together on September 17 to make the announcement that the company’s minimum wage would henceforth be $10 an hour. Workers who’d gotten promotions over the years that took their paychecks above the previous minimum wage also got raises to keep them ahead of this new wage. In addition, Atlantic Natural Foods will retain a complete benefit program, including comprehensive health insurance, paid vacation and holidays and a 401k retirement plan that’s available to all employees. In all, about 75 percent of his work force ended up getting raises, and Hines is hoping that will keep them on the job as he moves the company towards developing new product lines within the company’s range of shelf-stable plant protein-based meal solutions. “It’s a value alternative. It’s shelf-stable,” he said. “We’re looking to create products that are microwaveable and don’t have to be sold from the freezer case.”

The new line, to be announced in 2017 will offer vegetarian meal options for consumers who want healthy products without genetically modified ingredients that deliver flavors similar to beef, pork, chicken or tuna that will help them live long and healthy lives. “We felt that it’s critical that we have an associate base that will be able to participate in developing these products,” Hines said. “We’re going to be able to put this protein into a heat-and-eat meal that you’ll be able to take to work with you.”

“Small business doesn’t get a lot of attention out here, but we want to deliver the message that it’s good for all of us,” he added.
Since 2014, AFT Holdings subsidiary Atlantic Natural Foods has successfully managed the Loma Linda and Worthington shelf stable business along with Kaffree Roma™, a coffee alternative, and neat®, a gluten and soy-free nut-based protein meat alternative and the neat line of vegan egg substitutes, integrating the business into a diverse portfolio that includes a tuna fleet in the western Pacific, a tuna vessel support service group, a specialty food processor in Maine and other businesses across the globe.

Maple Hill Creamery Debuts New Grass-fed Dairy Products

Published October 28, 2016

A stampede of new flavors is coming out of Maple Hill Creamery’s award-winning 100 percent grass-fed organic dairy milk shed. The new products unveiled at Natural Products Expo East included Maple Whole Milk Kefir, Strawberry Banana and Apple Cinnamon Cream on Top Yogurt and Coffee, Strawberry and Mango Peach Whole Milk Drinkable Yogurt as well as the new Fiore Di Latte Whole Milk Fresh Mozzarella crafted by the artisans at Antonio Mozzarella with Maple Hill Creamery’s 100 percent grass-fed milk. This whole milk fresh mozzarella tastes more complex than most brands, solely due to the unique flavor characteristics of the grass-fed milk.

“Our product development process is a little different than most companies, because we use only the highest-quality organic fruit and real flavor extracts, and don’t add any coloring, artificial flavors, gums, or thickeners. We rely on real ingredients to flavor our products, not ‘natural’ flavors, which we think taste quite artificial, and mask the unique flavor of our 100 percent whole grass-fed milk,” said Pete Meck, Maple Hill Creamery’s Founding Partner and Vice President of Operations and Product Innovation. “Using real food ingredients to subtly flavor our yogurt and kefir products also means that we have more added fruit than most brands do. And, like always, our amount of added cane sure is about half of that for identical flavors of other organic brands.”

The Maple Whole Milk Kefir is packed with belly friendly probiotics, is super creamy, mildly tart and refreshing. This variety is sweetened and flavored using only organic maple syrup and a touch of organic vanilla extract. Maple Hill Creamery also offers Whole Milk Kefir in Plain, Vanilla and Strawberry varieties.
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Maple Hill Creamery is expecting its new Strawberry Banana and Apple Cinnamon Cream on Top Yogurt to inspire consumers who haven’t yet tried this artisanal-style yogurt, also available in Plain, Vanilla, Maple, Orange Crème, Wild Blueberry and Lemon, to give the line a try. The Coffee, Strawberry and Mango Peach Whole Milk Drinkable Yogurt offers a 12-ounce meal in a bottle and joins a line that also offers Plain, Vanilla, Maple, Orange Crème, Wild Blueberry and Lemon varieties.

All the new flavors are available nationally beginning in November, 2016. The Maple Hill Creamery milkshed now numbers over 85 small farms, and is looking to transition at least several dozen more farms to certified 100 percent grass-fed in 2016. Maple Hill Creamery products are available nationwide in more than 6,000 retailers, including many specialty and independent retailers.

2016 Organic Leadership Award Honors Organic Mentor

Published October 28, 2016

Nebraska farmer David Vetter of Grain Place Foods is often described by his friends as quiet and humble—a typical low key and unassuming Midwesterner. But as a mentor to others in the organic industry, he has been an inspiring and tireless giant.

Selected to receive the Organic Trade Association’s 2016 Organic Leadership Award for Growing the Organic Industry, Vetter has unselfishly mentored and shared information about organic to countless numbers of farmers transitioning to organic production, from Canada to Central America, from Europe to Australia.

“It is our honor to recognize David for his significant contributions to growing the organic industry through his collaborative leadership and action,” says Laura Batcha, CEO and Executive Director of the Organic Trade Association (OTA). “We have been recognizing organic leaders who inspire and innovate for 20 years, and David definitely deserves to take his seat among these inspirational honorees.”

Vetter grew up working on his family’s farm in central Nebraska. In the 1950s, his father began questioning the ethics and science behind emerging agricultural practices that were part of the Green Revolution, and the family farm began to adopt organic farming methods. Vetter left the farm and went to college to earn a bachelors degree in agronomy and soil science and a masters degree in divinity. He returned to the farm in 1975 and helped achieve organic certification.

“Taking care of the environment and our natural resources is one of my core values, and something I have always strived to do,” says Vetter. “Organic agriculture is an integral part of that mission, and it’s been especially fulfilling to help other farmers adopt organic and see organic agricultural practices become more common.”

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Today, Grain Place Foods also sources organic grain to supplement what is grown on the Vetter farm because the family business has expanded so much. The company purchases organic grains from 128 organic farm families, including 46 neighboring farms.

Vetter also shares the family’s strong land stewardship ethic through working to develop sound and sustainable farm policy. Grain Place Foods emphasizes fair trade practices in addition to requiring organic when sourcing ingredients that it cannot grow on its farm.

“One of Dave’s greatest strengths is developing and maintaining long-term relationships. He is known for his honesty, information sharing, and the way he honors his commitments. He is a man of deep ethics and faith,” says Kelly Shea of WhiteWave Foods and a member of the Organic Trade Association’s board of directors. “I believe it was the influence of a few men such as Dave Vetter and his father that led to what is now USDA certified organic.”

Vetter was honored at OTA’s 2016 Organic Leadership Awards dinner, along with the farmers of the Texas Organic Cotton Marketing Cooperative who received the Organic Leadership Farmer of the Year Award, and organic hemp entrepreneur Mike Fata of Manitoba Harvest Hemp Foods who received the Organic Rising Star Award.