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Monthly Archives: March 2013

Fresh Origins March Tours: Connecting with the Crowd

By | Edible Flowers, Events, Herb & Flower Crystals™, MicroGreens | 782 Comments

Our 4-week trade show tour through New York, Anaheim, and Las Vegas was a complete success. At each show, we exhibited our new Microgreens and Edible Flowers in our booth, and demonstrated our newest varieties of Herb Crystals™ and Flower Crystals™ with new Fresh Origins recipes. We connected with our new and current customers, and got to be part of the biggest, most entertaining food conventions we’ve ever seen.

“What’s the latest new Fresh Origin product?” our booth visitors asked. This year our Basil, Fennel, Rose, and Mint Herb Crystals™ & Flower Crystals™ took center stage as our featured items. And we had a brand new flavor to show off: Lime crystals. These were a big hit at the Nightclub and Bar Show especially.

Any drink is better with fresh Microgreens & Edible flowers!

The Nightclub and Bar Show, held in Las Vegas, was designed to feel like a popular nightclub: loud music, club lighting, exotic dancers, and ice sculptures with liquor pouring through. Talk about entertaining!

We received great reactions from­ mixologists and bar owners. Many of them had never seen cocktail glasses rimmed with anything like our fresh Herb and Flower Crystals. We caught everyone’s attention with the bright colors of our rimming crystals and drinks garnished with fresh Flowers and Microgreens. 

Kelly Sasuga with our Booth Display

Mixologists are always looking for new cocktail ideas, and ways to reinvent their old ones. Our booth visitors were immediately drawn to the Herb & Flower Crystal’s crunchy texture, their pure, intense flavors and naturally vibrant colors. We enjoyed demonstrating our lime crystals for the first time. These tangy bright green crystals were a hit with bartenders & mixologists — they’re perfect for margaritas!

We brought extra Herb & Flower Crystals to share with other people demonstrating their own products. It was great to see people adding the crystals to their own drink samples – and it gave more people a taste of our bright flavors.

Microgreens and Edible Flowers are a hit with Natural Food Retailers

We brought our fresh Microgreens and Edible Flowers to the Natural Products Show for the first time. The show was the total opposite of the Nightclub and Bar Show, with its emphasis on health and wellness. It was also amazing to see the huge Anaheim Convention Center jam-packed, inside and out – at least 60,000 people attended the expo.

This year, we’re committed to getting our Microgreens, Edible Flowers and Herb and Flower Crystals to the retail customer, so it was great to meet retail distributors and buyers for specialty food stores. People who already knew us were surprised to see us attending this show, and excited to view and sample our new products. We also introduced our new retail organic line of Microgreens and Edible Flowers!

We’re used to mingling with restaurant owners and chefs, so we were excited to speak to a different crowd. Most of the people walking around were very health-conscious. They’re interested in discovering what the latest new healthy foods are, and luckily they found us in the “New Hot Products” area.

Pulmuone USA Booth using our products

We talked with some sponsored athletes – bodybuilders and triathletes – who asked us questions like, “What are the health benefits and the nutritional advantage microgreens have that regular veggies don’t?” Many people, of course, claim that microgreens contain more vitamins and antioxidants than their mature counterparts – but we personally don’t know for sure. What we do know is that microgreens taste terrific and are very healthy.

Each conversation gave us priceless feedback, and we would like to thank everyone who visited our booth. There’s nothing like making new contacts and friendly connections!

 

Fresh Origins Hits the Road: New York, Anaheim & Las Vegas (2X)!

By | Edible Flowers, Events, Herb & Flower Crystals™, MicroGreens, PetiteGreens | 779 Comments

March is finally here! This month, we’ll be attending 4 trade shows, back-to-back. Every event caters to a unique group of food professionals. We’ll be showing our Microgreens, Edible Flowers, Herb & Flower Crystals™ and other specialty items to chefs, restaurant owners, caterers, mixologists, foodservice distributors & retailers.

International Restaurant & Foodservice Show of NY:
Booth: 1456
Microgreens & Edible Flowers on Center Stage

We’re starting off at the International Restaurant & Foodservice Show: www.internationalrestaurantny.com/Show-Info/ in New York. This show is exciting and fast-paced, attracting a huge crowd of industry professionals including high-end restaurant chefs and those who supply them.

Every kind of food product and restaurant supply you can imagine will be on display at this show – from tablecloths to point-of-sale systems, from stoves to lighting. The show also features many great cooking demonstrations & sampling, chef competitions, food service education sessions, and other breakout sessions that restaurant people love.

Many of our customers attend this show, and they’re eager to see & taste our new products, such as our signature specialty Herb & Flower Crystals™. We enjoy having the chance to catch up with our friends and customers – and win some new ones too.

Natural Products Expo West:
Booth: 5758
A New Market for our Microgreens

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After New York, we’ll be traveling back to the West Coast for Natural Products Expo West: http://www.expowest.com/ew13/public/enter.aspx in Anaheim, California. It’s our first time exhibiting at this trade show, where buyers for retail stores attend to see the latest natural, and health-oriented products.

So why is Fresh Origins going to be there? We’ve seen microgreens for sale in a few retail grocery stores recently – and frankly, the quality is poor. We believe there are two reasons for this: first, we think retail store buyers are unfamiliar with quality standards for microgreens, so they don’t know what to expect – or demand. We have always sold to the nation’s top Chefs who demand great quality. Second, the quality of the microgreens is poor due to growing methods and less than ideal growing climates.

We see Natural Products Expo West as a huge opportunity for us to show retail buyers that we offer the very best, microgreens available, and demonstrate that Fresh Origins microgreens would be a great addition to their produce department.

Catersource:
Booth 2536
Microgreens, Edible Flowers & Herb Crystals™: the perfect finishing touch to Wedding Hors d’ oeuvres

Micro Mix2 copy2

During the second half of March, we’ll be attending not one, but two shows in Las Vegas. We’re old hands at Catersource [http://www.catersource.com/conference-tradeshow/attend], a fantastic show that pulls in at least 7,000 catering professionals from across the country.

Caterers have been especially aware of the benefits of using our Microgreens and Edible Flowers – for them, food has to look as good as it tastes, and taste as good as it looks. Our Microgreens and Edible Flowers are a big draw at Catersource because they are unique and attractive, perfect for special events, especially weddings. Speaking of weddings…our gorgeous Crystallized Flowers are an amazing, all natural addition for cakes & cupcakes.

We also enjoy this show because we see so many of our customers here. It’s very social for us – lively and lots of fun. We also like the fact that we really stand out at Catersource, since we’re offering such unique and beautiful products there.

Nightclub & Bar Convention:
Booth 628
Herb & Flower Crystals™ for Mixologists

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Another first-time event for us, the Nightclub & Bar Trade Show http://www.ncbshow.com/why-attend-0 is where we will introduce a new product line: our Mini Herb Crystals™ & Mini Flower Crystals™. This is a finer-grained version of our popular Fennel, Rose, Basil and Mint Crystals that chefs and caterers use as an exciting & versatile ingredient in all kinds of dishes.

We’ve met several mixologists who love the garden-fresh tastes, new textures and beautiful colors they can introduce into their drinks with our new Mini Herb & Flower Crystals™, fresh Edible Flowers and even our fresh Microgreens.

We designed our new Mini Crystals for rimming cocktail glasses. The smaller granules adhere to the glass rim better than our larger Flower and Herb Crystals™, offering mixologists a way to accent drinks with color while injecting a blast of amazing flavor and exciting crunch.

mini crystals

We’ve researched other sugared products out there, and none compare to our crystals, with their naturally pure vibrant colors, our intense flavors and crunchy texture. That’s right – we add nothing artificial to our crystals. All the color and flavor comes directly from the fresh herb or flower.

If you’re planning to be at any of these shows, we’d love to see you! Please stop by our booth, sample some of our Edible Flowers, Microgreens and our Herb and Flower Crystals. Tell us what you think! We want your feedback, and we love kicking ideas around with our Chef & foodie friends.