SHELF TALK

Mochi Bros ticks all the trend boxes with ice cream sandwiches

By Tanwen Dawn-Hiscox

Two popular desserts come together as one in newly-founded Mochi Bros’ vegan Gelato Sandwiches, hoping to appeal to consumers by combining the fashionable foods.

The ve products in the range of vegan ice cream encased in mochi – Japanese sweetened glutinous rice balls - are low-sugar, low-calorie, contain just a handful of ingredients and exclude both additives and preservatives.

The Baklawa sandwich is made with pistachios, cinnamon and orange blossom; the Lemonana, with Sicilian lemon and mint; the Roseberry avour contains sweet strawberry and rose. The Kahwa is a Colombian co ee sandwich, and the Shai Nana is avoured with Moroccan mint tea.

The wholesale price per unit is £1.65 + VAT, with an RRP between £3 and £3.50.

mochibros.co.uk

WHAT’S NEW

Alcohol-free distilled drinks provider Bax Botanics is entering the luxury canned drinks market with two flavours : Smooth Sea Buckthorn & Tonic, and Zingy Lemon Verbena & Tonic. The drinks, which contain organic herbs, berries, roots and botanicals are available wholesale through Master of Malt, with an RRP of £2.40 per can.

baxbotanics.com

Swedish distillery Mackmyra has released a limited edition single-malt whisky called Destination. The blend mixes a third of whisky aged in port wine casks with another third aged in traditional American oak casks, 25% in ex-Bourbon casks, and the remaining 9% in Spanish Oloroso wine casks. RRP £69.

mackmyra.co.uk

K’s Wors has added two new boerewors-style sausages to its range, Chakalaka chipolatas and cocktail sausages. The South-African style chipolatas, which come in 340g packs of 12, are available now, while 24 packs of the coriander & thyme cocktail sausages will be on sale from November. RRP £3.79.

kswors.co.uk

Natural Selection Foods has released a range of naturally fortified nut butters under a new brand called Nutri Butter. The peanutbased selection features the ‘Defence’ butter, containing maca, açai berry and cinnamon; the ‘Gut Friendly’ one, which has live cultures, turmeric and ginger in it, and the ‘Energise’ jar, which contains chia seeds and baobab.

The range was created alongside the company’s Knotty brand, which comes in three ranges: the classic ‘Peanut’, either Smooth or Crunchy, the ‘Indulgence’ butters, with added popping candy, crispy rice or banana, or the Core range of Pistachio, Cashew or Almond.

The Nutri Butter range is given an RRP of £3.99 per 180g, and £2.99 for a 280g jar of Knotty’s.

evolutionfoods.co.uk

Paley Photography

Counter points Salmon, cold- & hot-smoked

Food writer and former deli owner Glynn Christian offers up some category-specific conversation starters to sharpen your sales technique.

• Atlantic salmon are found naturally in the rivers and cool seawaters of all Northern

Hemisphere countries.

Canadian or Pacific salmon live in the rivers and cooler

Pacific waters of North

America.

• Atlantic salmon is considered to have the finest flesh and best flavour.

• Both types are farmed in saltwater sea pens as wild salmon do not feed when they return to fresh water to breed and quickly lose condition.

• Traditional salting, followed by cold-smoking were developed to reduce moisture and allow for longer storage. • Old-style smoked salmon has a very firm, slightly salty flesh and a noticeable smokey flavour.

• In London, processors used milder salt and smoke levels, the London cure, because consumption was localised.

• Most modern smoked salmon uses even less salt in curing and lighter smoke, giving a softer texture and less flavour, but greater weight for sale.

• Hot-smoked salmon is cooked and smoked at the same time; it is rarely saltcured.

MEET THE PRODUCER

Kate and Denis Dempsey left their jobs in Dublin and moved to the coastal town of Kinsale, Co. Cork, where they set up the first new meadery in Ireland for 200 years.

How did Kinsale Mead Co. come to be?

We started in 2017. We ended up on the hill of Tara, the megalithic capital of Ireland, and realised we were standing on the footprint of the great mead hall, where all the high kings would summon the tribes at Samhain festival (Halloween).

There would be up to 1,000 people in that mead hall, drinking mead, and we were like: ‘It’s been done before, so how hard can it be?’

What were you doing before? What made you choose to quit your jobs to make mead?

I was working in IT, and Denis, my husband was an engineer.

We did a lot of research, we talked to a lot of meaderies around the world, because mead is a very close community. If you’ve got any questions there’s always somebody who’s done it before and can talk to you about very technical things, like floor drains and yeast.

Then we took the big leap. We moved down from Dublin to Kinsale, right on the south coast of Cork. We bought the meadery and the equipment that we’d done a little research on finding, and we sourced some fantastic honey.

What obstacles and challenges did you face along the way?

The biggest challenge is that people either don’t know what mead is at all or assume it’s going to be sweet and cloying.

Getting people to taste it is the way to get people to want to buy it.

It’s all down to the quality of the ingredients, and that’s reflected in the price. It’s definitely a ‘treat’ or a ‘nice gift’ price.

Mead is like a wine that is made from honey, so the better the honey, the better the mead. We were very concerned about it being pure, raw honey. If you heat up honey higher than hive temperature, which is about blood temperature, you lose the delicate flavours and you lose the stuff in honey that is good for you.

Our aim is to find the honey that has a beautiful flavour that will get through fermentation, rather than have honey that just tastes like adulterated food products.

For example, although the Atlantic Dry is made from orange blossom honey, you can’t tell the bees not to go anywhere else, so there’s always a little something else in there. The batch that we have at the moment, the bees have been going near some clover so it’s a little bit more herbal. It’s a matter of getting the mead to taste similar to the previous batch, if not better, as we improve our technique. We do have limited edition meads, but they are restricted to Ireland – so your readers will have to come on holiday to Kinsale and and do a tour of the meadery.

Are you hoping for some good sales at Christmas?

We ended up on It’s a great gift: the Wild Red Mead is the one that the hill of Tara, the sells the most at Christmas because it goes with megalithic capital flavours like mince pies and of Ireland Christmas pudding. You can mull it as well, which is really lovely when it gets cold, rainy and dark. We also have a gift set of three 50ml miniature bottles. They’ll fly out at Christmas in the shops.

Are you looking for new distributors or to establish a presence in different places?

We would really like a distributor who works with artisan drinks. There’s no use being with somebody who sells a thousand lines; they don’t have enough time to promote every drink that’s on their list. We need some partnerships with people who will understand the mead and support it, and will know the right places where people are going to be looking for that kind of artisan product.

kinsalemead.co.uk

What does the future hold? Do you have any new products or projects in the pipeline?

We’re always improving the recipe of our three main meads. Because honey is a natural product, it’s slightly different every batch of honey that we get.

WHAT’S NEW

Artisanal snack maker Popcorn Kitchen has added another cocoa-based item to its dessertinspired range: vegan Chocolate Brownie popcorn. Marketed as both decadent and light, the 30g portions come in at 130 calories. RRP per bag, £1.39.

popcornkitchen.co.uk

Entering the pre-mixed cocktail market, Elephant Gin is now selling a bottled Red Negroni consisting of equal parts Elephant Aged Gin, vermouth and bitters, rounded out by six months of ageing in oak barrels. For each 700ml bottle of Oak Aged Negroni sold (RRP £35.90), 15% of profits will go to the Elephant Gin Foundation, the company’s £1 million and counting fundraiser supporting projects to protect the African elephant.

elephant-gin.com

Chocolate entrepreneurs Steve Russell and Giles Atwell behind the

Russell & Atwell

brand have released a Christmas set of their chilled chocolate truffles made with fresh cream, butter, honey and very little sugar. The trio features the classic Creamy Milk, Scrumptious Salted Caramel and a limited-edition zesty Seville Orange flavour. Also available in refillable glass jars, the gift set has an RRP of £21.

russellandatwell.com

As the colder months draw closer, Opies has introduced a Forest Fruits with Cassis preserve for retailers looking to boost their gift selection.The jar of blackcurrants, raspberries, redcurrants and blackberries steeped in syrup and infused with blackcurrant liqueur has an RRP of £6.50 per 460g.

Pitched as a versatile product to enjoy with ice cream or yoghurt, in a savoury sauce, dressing, or even paired with cheese, it is the latest addition to Opies’ Fruits with Alcohol range, which includes Black Cherries with Kirsch; Peaches with Cognac; and Pineapple with Spiced Rum.

opiesfoods. com

Damask Rose Buds & Lemon Verbena Red Amaranth & Lemon Thyme

Kykeon (Traditional) Kykeon (Modern) & Chamomile Mountain Mint & Olive Leaf

Ready for the future of tea?

With consumers becoming ever more discerning about what’s in their cup and how it got there, Nazani Tea explains how it can help you keep your herbal infusion o ering up to date

OVER THE PAST few years, a couple of trends have become very apparent – not just within the tea industry, but further a eld in the press. The secret is out. Major players within the market have reported a slump in sales of black tea and teabags due to traditional tea drinkers being a dying breed. The consumers of tomorrow are taking more of a wholesome approach to tea drinking. Not only that but they are opting for herbal infusions over the standard cuppa.

Being more ethical

In the age of awareness and the ‘conscious consumer’, people’s tea consumption habits are based more and more on the ethical sourcing and transparency of what they buy.

Are suppliers taking care of their teas and the environment? Who picks and processes the teas? When were the teas harvested? Consumers want to be three principles (luxury, integrity and elegance), the company’s ethos is to provide consumers with a truly unique herbal infusion o ering, based on ethical sourcing, health and wellness, and transparency, giving herbal infusions the same love and care usually reserved for the nest co ees and loose-leaf teas.

Herbal infusions’ popularity

Along with the decline of the standard black tea bag, another trend which has not gone unnoticed is the massive growth in herbal infusion sales. In fact, one particular major player owes its recent sales growth entirely to launching a cold brew herbal infusions range. And another household black-tea-only brand has taken the plunge with launching a brand new herbal range.

“The ca eine-free lifestyle is growing year on year, with consumers increasingly becoming functionality driven and looking for health bene ts such as antioxidants, detox/purifying, immune boosting, calming and energising,” says Ouzounian. “Camellia sinensis (tea) cannot provide all these health bene ts alone, and so consumers are splurging on herbal brews.”

Nazani Tea is working to resurrect ancient herbal infusions and with a focus on bringing innovative and new concepts to the market, including a new type of mint, a world- rst herbal infusion (red amaranth), unique cocoa blends and colourchanging wildcra ed brews. Commissioning harvests and working with small farming families across the world ensures freshness and traceability, which inspires consumers and sta alike. Handpicked, altitude-grown and foraged, are all words which appear in Nazani Tea’s vocabulary, and they’re proud of it.

Partner with Nazani Tea, says Ouzounian, and partner with the future.

a part of the journey from seed to cup, and appreciate naturally grown and processed teas and herbals.

‘Wildcra ed’ and ‘biodynamic’ are terms being used more and more within the industry, as consumers demand natural, sustainable and honest speciality teas and herbals.

“Consumers are thinking twice before grabbing their standard ca einated tea bag, simply because it is ‘tea’,” says Nazani Tea’s founder Arleen Ouzounian. “People’s consumption is not a given, it is a conscious decisionmaking process. Convenience and homogeneity are no longer the determining factors for tea buying, which is one of the reasons for the drop in sales. Finally, the tea industry may enjoy the same revolution as co ee once did.”

Nazani Tea aims to provide consumers with an elevated and emotive tea experience. Based on WHAT NAZANI TEA’S CUSTOMERS SAY “Nazani Tea is the perfect 5* tea experience for our 5* spa. Besides the well-being aspects of this tea experience, the aesthetic experience is food for the soul and eyes! Most beautiful teas ever!”

Taffryn Kinsey, spa director, Four Seasons London Park Lane

“Nazani’s Tea Wild Mountain Mint is the best mint I have ever tasted.”

Guillaume Glipa, founder & coowner, Louie Restaurant nazanitea.com