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Made By True Finds Success With New Retail Front

By Greg Gonzales

Retailers know that the best way to prove a product is to let customers try it themselves. The people behind Made By True, the craft jerky brand, decided to try that themselves this year. They opened a storefront in their Bay Area office space this year, where the lobby was, so passersby can get a chance to try the product right there. Last year, Made By True launched its biltong snack, and its getting a lot of love.

The idea behind the storefront, explained Partner James Evans, is to let people try the jerky before buying in stores, and to spread the word about their products. Sales are great at the store so far, he said, and it also serves as an education tool. The opening attracted more than 150 people to the store, where they sampled the brand’s craft jerkies, its unique take on trail mix and its newest product, biltong.

“Biltong is ingrained in the culture in South Africa. You can’t really compare it to anything here in the States,” said Evans. “There’s always biltong served ― there’s a joke that babies teethe on biltong there. It’s that important.”

The air-dried meat snack is still relatively unknown in the U.S. It differs from jerky because it air dries in a big, long strip, a cut from the round of the cow. In South Africa, it’s sometimes sold in thicker slices, but Made By True’s New Jersey facility shaves it into smaller pieces, which is how most people eat it. The result is a tender meat that’s easy to chew and bite off.
It comes in three flavors: Cape Town Classic, Little Bit of Spice and A Savory Adventure.

As noted on the back of each package, Made By True biltong contains 16 grams of protein per ounce and a low sodium count at 200 milligrams per serving. That’s because it doesn’t require as much salt to preserve as jerky, and vinegar helps preserve it as well, though the vinegar doesn’t overpower other flavors. These health benefits attract the health-conscious, active crowd that seeks out high-protein snacks.

The Center for Generational Kinetics estimated that 89 percent of Millennials consumed one or more better-for-you snacks in the past week, and Nielsen’s Vice President of Consumer Insights Jorday Rost said meat snacks are a fast-growing category, in large part because Americans are trying to get more protein in their diets in what they perceive as a more natural vehicle than powders and bars. According to Fona International’s September report on meat snacks, 20 percent of women reported eating meat snacks, as brands in this category have begun successfully marketing to women.
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Made By True is one of those companies. Its six flavors of jerky appeal to a wide audience, said Evans, including women ― and older women. “My mom, for instance, this [Blackberry Merlot] is her favorite flavor,” said Evans. “She’s 70, she plays golf three days a week, and she brings our jerky to her women’s golf group and they all love it.”

In addition to Blackberry Merlot, flavors include The Old Fashioned: Honey Bourbon Brisket, The Sinsa: Korean BBQ, The OG: Original Peppered, The Sweet Heat: Thai Chili Mango and The Mountie: Maple Glazed Pepper. Older audiences are likely to enjoy the biltong and The Mountie, as the meat isn’t tough like a lot of jerky.

Along with its jerkies, Made By True offers a mix snack called Trail Remix. It’s a combination of jerky and trail mix, separated by a seal that keeps the meat fresh and peels apart when snackers want to mix them up. It comes in three flavors: All About That Baste turkey jerky mix, Don’t Go Bacon My Heart uncured bacon jerky mix and Carne Diem peppered beef jerky mix.
Made By True’s offerings haven’t always been so extensive, though its three partners decided together that they didn’t want to be just another jerky company, said Evans. The trio ― Evans, who was a mutual fund wholesaler, Jess Thomas, who was a third-generation cattle rancher and Kevin Hix, a former accountant ― quit their jobs in 2015 to start selling the jerky they’d been making together as friends.

They had friends in the Bay Area’s tech industry, and the company got its start selling to companies like Facebook, Twitter and Uber, where employees are provided free snacks – one of those snacks being Made By True jerkies.

Evans said the Trail Remix was the brand’s first step outside of jerky, but biltong was their pet project. “We had heard about biltong ― for like, two, three years, people were telling us about it, they had gone to South Africa,” he said. “But we didn’t know how to make it; nobody was making it here in the States, so what we did is, we took a trip, all three of us, to South Africa last summer. We spent about three weeks there, in Johannesburg, Kimberly ― which is kind of in the middle of the bush, but there were some cattle ranches there we went to ― and then finally Cape Town.”

Introduced by their South African investment partner, 1K1V, they met with 20 different biltong manufacturers, from small mom-and-pop operations to massive manufacturing facilities, in addition to spice blend companies and cattle ranches.
From those beginnings, Made By True has seen success in the U.S. market, now available in 2,500 stores, and as of late January, Sprouts markets. Through the retail shop, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and word of mouth, Evans said he expects the company to go even further this year.

Stew Leonard’s on the Hunt for New York Food Products

Farm fresh food store Stew Leonard’s is launching its first-ever “Stew’s Tank” competition to identify exciting new products that will sell at its stores. New York-based food companies are invited to apply online for Stew’s Tank, which will give vendors the opportunity to present their products directly to Stew Leonard’s buying team this spring. The products chosen will be sold for the month of June at the Stew Leonard’s store in East Meadow, New York, where their sales will be tracked by the store’s buying team. The best-sellers will be judged by a panel of food experts including local chefs and Stew Leonard, Jr., President and Chief Executive Officer of Stew Leonard’s, and the winners will be added to the shelves of all six Stew Leonard’s stores in New York and Connecticut.

“Stew Leonard’s launched rock star brands like Newman’s Own, Bear Naked Granola, Rao’s Marinara Sauce, and Long Island’s Butera’s Meatballs,” said Leonard. “My family and I are excited about Stew’s Tank, and we can’t wait to taste our next best-selling product!”

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Interested vendors should upload their best sales pitch video to the Stew’s Tank website by Sunday, May 5, 2019, and include information about the product’s background, why it’s unique, and why Stew Leonard’s shoppers will go crazy for it. Selected vendors who advance to the next round will meet with Stew Leonard’s buying team for a sales presentation. A select few will then be chosen to demonstrate and to sell their products at Stew Leonard’s East Meadow location throughout June. The top sellers will be evaluated by the judges, and the winners will be rewarded with space on the shelves of all six Stew Leonard’s stores as of July.

Cheese Cave Brings Cheese to Light in Claremont

By Lorrie Baumann

Cheese Cave in Claremont, California, may not have been born in Finland, but it was certainly conceived there. Co-Owner Marnie Clarke and her sister and fellow co-Owner, Lydia Clarke, were in Finland visiting their brother Noah Clarke, a professional hockey player, when the two started discussing Marnie’s reservations about her job as a cheesemaker for Winchester Cheese Company.

It wasn’t that she didn’t like making the cheese – Marnie grew up in a dairy family, representing the dairy started by her grandfather Harold Stueve at natural food shows and helping out with the chores around the farm. When she’d landed the job as a cheesemaker, she’d thought she’d found her own career within that world. “I totally thought that was the route I was going to go down,” she said. But then she’d found that she didn’t like the early mornings, and she didn’t like the loneliness. She wanted more connections with people, she started telling her older sister in 2007 or so. “My sister and I have always been very close,” Marnie said. “We knew that at some point in our lives, we were going to do something together.”

While the two were in Finland visiting their brother, who was there after he’d been traded from his Swiss team, Marnie confided her uncertainties about the direction of her career, and they talked about how Marnie was living in southern California, while her sister was way up in Napa. “I wanted her to come back down to southern California,” Marnie said. By the end of the trip, Marnie and Lydia had figured out a solution that made them both happy – a cheese shop that they’d run together. “Our original business plan was that we were going to be two sisters running the shop by ourselves, and we’d become little old ladies doing the same thing,” Marnie said.

In 2010, they opened Cheese Cave in Claremont, a clean little 13 square-mile community between San Bernardino and Los Angeles, California, with a population of 36,000 people living in half-million dollar houses under enough trees to make the city a perennial winner of the National Arbor Day Association’s Tree City USA award and 21 city-owned parks, of which 2,378 acres are wilderness. “It’s a very cute community, we knew we wanted to be in Claremont from the start,” Marnie said.

The plan to be two sisters running their 1,100 square-foot cheese shop forever and ever lasted a matter of weeks. The community embraced them and their shop, and Marnie and Lydia needed another employee within the first couple of months after opening their doors. Then they needed a few more. The customers started asking them about accouterments for their cheese plates and then for the tinned fish, the pasta, the olive oil that they needed to round out their meal plans. “People really came to us when they needed or wanted something,” Marnie said. “We’ve become the go-to purveyors for people who are interested in food.”

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Today, Herrick and Lydia Clarke manage DTLA Cheese + Kitchen. He runs the tiny kitchen turning out sandwich orders, while Lydia manages the retail business. Dragojlovich gave up his career in information technology and project management to become a Cheesemonger and administrator at Cheese Cave. “We really rope everybody in. Our mom picks up bread and makes sandwiches every day,” Marnie said. “The whole family makes baskets for Christmas. We’re very intertwined.”

The DTLA store inside Grand Central Market, a food hall that brings together the cultures and cuisines of southern California under the roof of the longest continuously running public market in Los Angeles, is about 420 square feet with a tall cheese case, a small retail shelf with crackers and a few special chocolates, a countertop with five seats and a pass-through window to the minuscule kitchen where Herrick makes grilled cheese sandwiches and salads to order. “Reed really loves seasonal produce,” Marnie said. “He also loves to pickle things, so there’s always some sort of fun project that’s happening on the menu.”

At Cheese Cave in Claremont, there’s also a classroom space where the community comes in to learn about cheese or just to drop in to taste some of the Cheese Cave’s selection of organic and biodynamic wines along with some cheeses that they might not ordinarily be adventurous enough to try. On the first Saturday of each month, Cheese Cave hosts an afternoon in which they pour natural wine and offer cheese plates for anyone who wants to drop in. “We have a really quirky wine lineup so it’s a great way for people to try new wines without having to take a leap of faith on whether they’ll like it,” Marnie said. “People find new things that they didn’t know they’d love.”

The cheese case with its 120 or so cheeses cut to order is the star of the show with its balanced mix of imported and domestic cheeses and a particular emphasis on local products. “We try to support them [California’s artisan cheesemakers] as much as possible and have a lot of California cheeses,” Marnie said. “We try to work with smaller producers and have a different selection that we really love…. Throughout the week, we keep getting things in. All of our awesome staff of cheesemongers love to tell the stories of the cheeses and have that interaction with the customers, which they really love too.”

She gets asked all the time about her favorite cheese, and like most devoted cheesemongers, she’s hard-pressed to answer it. She’s very fond of Monte Enebro, a soft goat cheese from Avila, Spain, that’s made by a father-daughter team, she said. That’s officially a blue cheese, but it’s inoculated on its exterior for an insistent flavor near the rind that has overtones of black walnut and a salty, lactic core. “But right now, the Kenne [from Tomales Farmstead Creamery] is at its perfect ripeness,” she said with a sigh. Comte is always a favorite, and she loves it so much that she frequently has more than one in the case. Jacobs & Brichford‘s Ameribella is so interesting. And then, there’s Grafton Village Cheese Bear Hill…. “All of our cheesemongers feel the same way,” she said. “We really have an incredible team at both shops. When we’re working together, we’re always talking about what we’re going to take home. We feel passionate about the condition of all of the cheeses in our case. It’s easy to sell because we’re so excited about so many of them.”