• A child praying
• A bow
• A heart

Looking for some new and exciting dairy products? We carry a full line of delicious and creamy Cabot products. Cabot, a Cooperative made up of over 1,200 dairy farmers in the Vermont and the Upstate NY region is owned and operated by farmers and families. Well known for their rich and flavorful hard cheeses, Cabot also produces other great products such as cottage cheese, whipped cream, butter, yogurt, Greek yogurt, spreadable cheddar cheese, and cheddar powder.

At a recent food show, Quandt’s had the opportunity to sample Cabot’s Greek Yogurt & Tzatziki Sauce. Tzatziki, a cucumber based yogurt sauce common in Greek cuisine, was a delicious and surprisingly refreshing pairing for any number of dippers as seen in the image from this year’s food show.

Interested in bringing this sauce to your next summer BBQ? Click here for a link to the recipe! While you’re at it, there are hundreds of other great recipes to dress up your Cabot products. Go ahead, give ‘em a try!

Click here to learn more about Cabot, their history, and product lines!

We luckily have a wide selection of Hot Chocolate at Quandts. We have no-sugar added, regular, white chocolate, plenty of different brands, and lots of other hot delicious beverages as well (coffee, cappuccino, tea, etc). I especially love our Paul DeLima White Hot Chocolate  It is the perfect mix of sugar, cream, and chocolaty goodness; add some whipped cream and you have heaven on a snowy day.

A few weeks ago, Richie from Rich’s stopped by to give us some samples of their gluten free pizza crusts.  Now, for the unenlightened, you may be thinking- Hey! Where’s the flour?!  But the truth of this product is in a story Richie told us. There is a pizzeria that uses UPS every week to ship this product to his restaurant. The reason being- his business has doubled since bringing in and advertising the gluten free option.  I’m not sure which is worse- families that stop at your pizza joint and don’t eat any pizza- or worse, those families who don’t stop at all because of a family member with Celiac. Gluten Free pizza crusts come in 10.5 “personal-pan” size and give everyone the opportunity and enjoyment to eat go out for pizza together. Probably the best feature of this product, is that it comes with a thin tin pan that stays with the pizza from freezer right to the pizza oven. This is key because it means that the crust is not accidentally being tainted by touching any flour-covered surfaces. The 10.5” comes in a 24- 7.75 oz pack. The item # is 16305.

Quandt’s will also be bringing in an 8” size in a few weeks, so keep your eyes peeled.  This is available in a retail pack which is another segment of your business to tap into. People can buy their gluten free crusts from you to make at home on the nights they can’t make it up to the pizzeria.

Bonus product! This pizza crust can also be easily folded in half to make meat & cheese Panini sandwiches. As a girl who loves her flour, these even won me over! They were de-li-cious!

Looking to spice up your appetizer menu? Quandt’s is now stocking 4 new Asian-flair appetizer items from TMI Trading Corp. I don’t know about you- but “potsticker appetizer” are my two favorite words. Item # 15310 is a Chef One Chicken Teriyaki Potsticker, 150 ct to a pack. Frozen to steamer/pan/ fryer- pair these with a cup of Minor’s Sweet N’ Sour sauce (item # 6830) and you have a plate pleasing to the eye and stomach. Quandt’s is also offering a Chef One Spinach Potsticker (Item # 15311) for your vegetable-loving crowds. I would love to have these with a nice Wasabi Aioli (#1559).

Again for perhaps the dieting crowd would be TMI Vegetable Springroll (Quandt’s # 16389) or the TMI cooked Lo Mein Noodle (Quandt’s #16393). The springrolls can be baked or deep fried and the lo mein noodes just need to be defrosted and warmed. Quick and simple. These are lighter options that can be combined with other entrees for a diet meal that doesn’t taste like a diet.

Diners are always looking for appetizer options beyond the usual mozzarella sticks and nachos. Add these to your menus and watch your profits soar!

Until Next Time…

Lauren Hathaway
Assistant Buyer

Hello and Happy Spring! It’s hidden somewhere beneath that snow, I promise!  My name is Lauren Hathaway and I’m an Assistant Buyer for Quandt’s Foodservice Distributors. But on here, you can just think of me as the hostess with the inside scoop on new products. Several times a month, we hold new product demonstrations here at the main office.  Vendors and brokers come in to show us what they’ve got! We get to try out and pick the best products to serve our customers.

Recently, a broker from Tyson and Ken’s Foods showed us some delicious new frozen chicken options as well as specialty salad dressings.  Quandt’s is now offering an 8oz airline bone in chicken breast.  This comes in a 4 (5) lb pack and would be a great addition to a lunch or early-bird smaller portion menu.  If you need some new marinade ideas- read on!

My favorite offerings from the demo were the new specialty dressings offered by Ken’s Foods.  Cucumber Wasabi, Honey Lime (a personal favorite!), Chipotle Ranch Mayo, and Texas Petal Sauce (for all you onion ring lovers out there!!). These will be sold in 4 (1) gallon packages. The dressings are a tasty addition to veggies, chicken tenders, sandwiches, salads, fries, and onion rings. The Cucumber Wasabi goes great with tuna or swordfish and the Honey Lime works well as a marinade for fish or chicken.

According to a recent study, the top 10 flavor combo’s in 2010 will be: garlic, hot/spicy, Italian, Latin/Spanish, Asian, Creole/Cajun, Teriyaki, Citrus, Berry, and Chipotle.  As you can see, we’ve incorporated this outlook into our new product choices.  Many of your restaurants and eateries will be looking to include these flavor pairings as well.

Check back for the latest product demonstrations at Quandt’s!

MISSION FOODS

To fully understand Mission Foods – our products, our business philosophies – it’s important to understand a bit of our history. The company we know as Mission Foods today had its beginnings in 1949 when Don Roberto Gonzalez and his father formed the company GRUMA S.A. in Monterrey, Mexico, and revolutionized the corn flour and tortilla industries.

Prior to that time, corn flour – corn masa – was produced in essentially the same labor-intensive way originated by the Aztecs hundreds of years earlier. Don Roberto Gonzalez envisioned a better way and replaced the old Nixtamal stone grinding process with a radically more efficient hammer milling process. This new process resulted in a superior corn flour – Maseca corn flour with a more controllable, more uniform particle size. It also resulted in higher yield with less labor and waste than the old-fashioned method. Most importantly, it produced superior quality tortillas.

Today, GRUMA S.A. is the world’s largest producer of Maseca corn flour and tortilla products, with production facilities across the Americas, the UK, Holland, Italy and Asia. Its operations and sales extend to the US, Canada, throughout Central America (through Gruma Centro America), and into England, Europe, Asia, Australia and the Middle East. With the backing of Gruma’s global technology and resources, Mission Foods has grown to become the largest producer of tortilla products in the US.

]]> http://www.quandts.com/other/quandts-introduces-mission-foods/feed/ 0 http://www.quandts.com/restaurants/the-5-phenomenon-is-it-working/ http://www.quandts.com/restaurants/the-5-phenomenon-is-it-working/#comments Fri, 31 Oct 2008 14:23:27 +0000 admin http://www.gigabounce.com/quandts/?p=260 By Jamie Hartford In this election year, it seems Abraham Lincoln is getting more play than both of the current presidential candidates combined—at least in the world of fast food.

Last month Boston Market became the latest chain to advertise menu items—11 in all, including rotisserie chicken with sides, a chicken salad, and a chicken pot pie—priced at $5. The offer follows similar efforts by other chains, such as Subway’s $5 Footlong, Quiznos’s $5 Deli Favorites, and Pizza Hut’s (NYSE: YUM) $5 Pizza Mia.

But why has the five spot suddenly become so hot?

“The $5 price point is an important part of the new vernacular in the restaurant industry,” said Judy Cantrell, Boston Market chief brand officer, in a statement when the chain debuted its $5 menu. “It’s become a price point that consumers respond to.”

But Rafi Mohammed, a pricing consultant and author of The Art of Pricing, has a different theory.

“I don’t necessarily think $5 is that significant of a number,” he says. “It’s just the certainty of a number which is very important.”

Disposable income dropped 1.7 percent in July after taking a plunge of 2.6 percent in June, and Mohammed says as a result customers are cutting back on expenditures such as eating out. By advertising menu items at a set value, chains are letting customers know up front how much they can choose to spend inside their restaurants.

“They’re putting the stake in the ground, drawing a line in the sand, and customers are thinking, ‘Now I know I can get out of there for $5 plus tax,’” Mohammed says.

The $5 choices are also meal-sized, whereas lower-priced dollar- and value-menu items are more snack-like. This, Mohammed says, puts purveyors of the $5 options in position to take advantage of trading down from casual dining restaurants, where meals typically run closer to $10 or $12.

“Consumers are willing to pay $5 for a meal as long as they think they are getting a good value,” says Tony Pace, CMO for the Subway Franchisee Advertising Fund Trust (SFAFT).

A Florida Subway franchisee started the $5 Footlong promotion just before Thanksgiving in 2007, and national advertisements began running this past March. Since then, the offering has become a staple of Subway’s menu in many markets.

Pace declined to provide specific sales numbers but says the items have succeeded in both driving traffic and increasing check size. He says competitors would have been satisfied with one-sixth of the success the chain has seen from the $5 Footlongs.

Franchisees, often the first to cry foul when corporate starts promoting discounted items, also seem happy.

“This is the best promotion we’ve ever seen,” says Tom Mulligan, a national board member of the North American Association of Subway Franchisees (NAASF), owner of two units in West Palm Beach, Florida, and board chair for his local SFAFT. “Our customer counts skyrocketed and so did sales.”

He says his stores alone saw a 50-percent increase in sales when the national advertising debuted, and now, a year later, he’s still in the 30-percent range. Some stores, he says, saw sales rise as much as 75 percent.

Not all franchisees have seen that kind of success, though, says Diane Wehr, board chair for the NAASF.

“We didn’t have the surge that some other markets did,” she says of her seven Birmingham, Alabama, stores. “Nevertheless, we did great.”

But the numbers were not consistent across the board, she says, adding that stores with captive markets, such as those on college campuses or military bases, probably didn’t fare so well.

“There are people in Subway thinking $5 was not the right number,” Mulligan says. “Some say we should have started at $5.99.”

In Mulligan’s hurricane- and recession-battered south Florida market, $5 seems to have been the magic number. While some Subways only offer a few sandwich varieties at the $5 price, Mulligan’s store charges $5 for any footlong, no matter what type. He acknowledges that means some sandwiches, such as the Chicken Bacon Ranch, are discounted more than others but says it’s worth it.

“I’m very happy with it,” he says.

Mohammed says the best way to take advantage of a $5 price point, however, is to incorporate it as part of a menu that’s tiered by price.

“What’s important about Boston Market is that they have choices above $5,” he says. “They can get people to trade up. So you get the price-conscious people, but you also have more options for people to spend more at your [restaurant].

QSR Magazine

New discoveries about the composition of foods are often behind these seeming nutrition flip-flops, said Van Horn, who serves as editor of the Journal of the American Dietetic Association and is charged daily with the task of translating emerging science.

Sometimes new research reveals that certain foods fail to live up to their early hype. Yet, often we learn that foods have hidden qualities not previously recognized.

Even lard doesn’t look quite as bad these days compared to the trans-fat-laden hydrogenated oil that replaced it.

We’ll never get to the fantasy in Woody Allen’s movie “Sleeper” where he wakes up in the future to discover that junk food is actually good for you. However, some demonized foods turn out to be better for you than you think.

Here are five often-vilified foods that deserve a second chance.

White bread

Why the bad rap? Viewed as fattening and devoid of nutrients compared to its whole-grain cousins, white bread got kicked to the curb.

Reasons to reconsider: White breads are far from empty calories. They’re actually enriched with several essential nutrients that many of us lack, including folic acid, iron and B-vitamins. Half our grains should be whole, but the other half can be white-primarily so we don’t miss out on these vital nutrients.

Best ways to enjoy: Choose whole-grain bread for your morning toast and sandwiches, but don’t feel bad eating a sourdough roll, crunchy baguette or crispy flatbread at dinner time.

Frozen and canned vegetables

Why the bad rap? With the emphasis on locally-grown fresh produce, frozen and canned vegetables have gotten a rotten reputation that’s been hard to shake.

Reasons to reconsider: Frozen and canned vegetables are picked and processed at their peak of freshness so nutrients are not lost. Studies have shown that the nutrient level is comparable to fresh produce. Plus, it’s hard to beat the convenience of having vegetables stashed in your freezer or pantry.

Best ways to enjoy: Buy the varieties without sauces and give canned veggies a quick rinse to reduce the sodium content.

Potatoes

Why the bad rap? Spuds became synonymous with starch and were dismissed for their perceived waist-thickening carbs and high glycemic index.

Reasons to reconsider: An average potato is only 100 calories and packs in several key nutrients, including potassium and vitamin C. Recent studies indicate that potatoes contain resistant starch, a type of dietary fiber that “resists” digestion and may help boost your calorie burn and keep you feeling full.

Best ways to enjoy: Keep whole and out of the deep fryer. Watch out for the high-fat toppings that are more to blame than the potato itself. Serving potatoes cold in salads helps to amp up the resistant starch.

Red meat

Why the bad rap? It has become almost fashionable to say you avoid red meat, which has taken a hit due to its saturated fat, especially in well-marbled steaks and juicy hamburgers.

Reasons to reconsider: Beef is an excellent source of protein and vitamin B-12, and is one of the richest suppliers of iron, zinc and selenium-a trio of important minerals. Portion size and cut of beef are what you need to keep in mind. Many lean cuts have less fat than a skinless chicken thigh.

Best ways to enjoy: Choose the leanest cuts with “loin” or “round” in the name, such as tenderloin, sirloin or top round. Rather than a huge slab on your plate, aim for a portion about the size of deck of cards or combine it with vegetables in stir-fries and kebabs.

Cheese

Why the bad rap? There is no denying that many cheeses are high in calories and fat, especially saturated fat.

Reasons to reconsider: Cheese is a good source of calcium and protein. Newer studies indicate that cheese contains conjugated linoleic acid or CLA, a “good” fat that may help reduce the risk of cancer, heart disease and diabetes.

Best ways to enjoy: Go for the real stuff. Nonfat cheeses don’t fully cut it. Try strong-flavored cheeses that require only a sliver for satisfaction.

–
Janet Helm is a registered dietitian and nutrition consultant in Chicago.