Welcome to the June 2011 issue of Food World, the Annual Market Study Issue. This is the 33rd year we have published the Mid-Atlantic Grocery Industry Market Study. It is completely researched and prepared by the staff of Best-Met Publishing Company and is the most definitive study done on the grocery business on the East Coast. Retailers, food marketing companies, print and broadcast media, marketing consultants and manufacturers will be quoting the facts and figures contained here for the next twelve months. And we can proudly boast that it will be used as a source by The Washington Post, The Baltimore Sun, The Wall Street Journal, and numerous other consumer publications both national and regional.
While many in and outside the grocery industry benefit from all the research in this issue, the great companies that choose to advertise in it are the major beneficiaries. Their ads will be seen and read by every food company and food retailer doing business or wishing to do business in the Mid-Atlantic. No other medium can deliver such a targeted audience. We thank all our many advertisers and we urge our readers to support them and their products.
As you can imagine, preparing this issue is no easy task. It takes months of preparation and research from many sources. The one person who plans the issue and puts it all together is the publisher Jeff Metzger. He oversees all the work along the way and directs the entire process from beginning to end.
Heading up that team is vice president and editorial director, Terri Maloney. Assisting Terri are Jenny Jones and Matt Danielson of Electronic Ink, our production company.
Beth Pripstein, a 15-year veteran of Best-Met Publishing, has the task of maintaining our mailing lists, preparing and maintaining the billing, assisting with the proof reading, and helping with much of the research. And without our advertising staff and marketing staff, we would never have an issue to put together. They are the most knowledgeable food trade people on the face of the earth: Karen Fernandez, director of sales and marketing; Maria Maggio, vice president/general manager, Food Trade News; advertising and sales executive Mike Keba, and Nina Weiland, advisor to the publisher.
And a very special thanks must go to our many faithful and loyal advertisers. They are the lifeline of our business and we are most grateful to them for their support. Many of them have been with us for as long as Best-Met Publishing has been publishing Food World, Food Trade News, and the Grocery Industry Directory.
And HUGE THANKS to our legions of loyal readers who have been with us for many, many years. We also welcome the many men and women who have recently joined the food industry in the Mid-Atlantic and in other parts of the United States. Our circulation reaches into every state in the United States and into some foreign countries. And as people get promoted out of the region, they still maintain their subscriptions to our papers.
Our sincere sympathies go out to the family of Leo Kahn, founder of Fresh Fields and and Heartland Food Warehouse, a big-box-style grocery that Inc. Magazine called “the first success deep-discount supermarket in the country”. Leo passed away in Boston last month of complications from a series of strokes.
Jeff and I got to know Leo from our days in Boston when he was running Purity Supreme Super Markets, his family’s small business which he had built up into one of the largest supermarket chains in New England.
In 1984 Leo sold Purity Supreme to Stop & Shop.
Soon after, Leo and one-time supermarket industry rival, Tom Stemberg, got together and opened an office supply store in Brighton, MA called Staples. Today Staples has more than 1,800 locations around the world and has sales of $27 billion a year.
Jeff and I renewed our relationship with Leo in 1991 when he started Fresh Fields, a health-oriented grocery store in Rockville, MD. In 1993, Money Magazine named Fresh Fields the store of the year. Leo sold his interest in Fresh Fields in 1994 and shortly thereafter opened Nature’s Heartland in the Boston area which he sold to Whole Foods in 1999. Leo was 94.
Congratulations to JOH’s John Saidneway on receiving the Lifetime Achievement Award from the New England Food Foundation. The award was presented to him at the organization’s 50th anniversary event.
Ahold USA has been named to DiversityBusiness.com’s “Top 50 Organizations for Multicultural Business Opportunities,” ranking #47 in the United States. Ahold USA was honored at a special awards ceremony at DiversityBusiness.com’s 11th Annual Multicultural Business Conference in Washington, D.C.
For the past four years, Ahold USA and its supermarket divisions have hosted a Supplier Diversity/Regional and Small Business Trade Show with a goal of strengthening the connection between agricultural, minority and retail industries. Participants have an opportunity to meet with Ahold USA’s procurement teams to discuss future business opportunities with the company.
Congratulations to Shawn Commons of PriceRite, Reading, PA, on being named one of the grand prize winners of the Food Marketing Institute’s 12th Annual Store Manager Awards. Shawn got the grand prize for Category A, companies with 1-49 stores.
Finalists are selected based on stories submitted from their supervisors or store associates. The grand prize winners were presented a $1,000 check during an awards ceremony and a crystal award.
With the second leg of the Triple Crown of Horse Racing just completed at Baltimore’s Pimlico Race Course, we are pleased to report that Larry Collmus who called the Derby and the Preakness will also be the track’s announcer for the Belmont Stakes, the third part of the Triple Crown.
Larry, an Ellicott City native, as it turns out, was a classmate of my son, Rick Bestany, at Mount St. Joseph High School 27 years ago.
He was the longtime track announcer at Monmouth Park in New Jersey and race caller at Gulfstream Park in Florida since 2007 and was recently picked to be the voice of the televised Triple Crown races, according to NBC Sports.
It was recently recalled by a classmate of Larry’s at Mt. St. Joe, Jim Schwartz, that Larry could pick the race of the day at Pimlico and reconstruct the whole thing in his mind and call the race after the fact during their lunch break at Mt. St. Joe’s.
Twenty six years later, Collmus is NBC’s new voice of the Triple Crown and Schwartz is head football coach of the Detroit Lions.
Since vacation season is about to begin, from time to time, we will review some restaurants from our travels to vacation spots.
We begin with a lovely restaurant on Cape Cod in Harwich Port, MA called Cape Sea Grille. Located just a few yards from Nantucket Sound it offers diners a wonderful view of the Atlantic Ocean in the heart of Cape Cod.
In a 19th century sea captain’s house, owner/Chef Douglas Ramler cooks up some of the best food found on the Cape using a variety of fresh caught native fish and local ingredients. Along with his wife, Jennifer, the two have created a restaurant that brings in locals as well vacationers. If you should ever find yourself in Harwich Port, you should plan a dinner at The Cape Sea Grille. You will be very pleased. For more information visit capeseagrille.com .
And speaking of restaurants, many of our readers are very familiar with the Prime Rib Restaurants located in Baltimore, Washington and Philadelphia. Buzz Beler, founder and owner, is on a first name basis with just about every food VIP in the Baltimore-Washington-Philadelphia markets. We congratulate Buzz on receiving the most coveted award in the foodservice industry, The Silver Plate Award.
If you have never dined at a Prime Rib, you must. They are probably the finest steak houses in the United States and privately owned. (Their prime rib is the best on the East Coast also.)
Happy Birthday wishes go out to: Ciao Bella’s Mickey Parsons; Coca-Cola Refreshments’ Cyndi Ireland; H&S Bakery’s J.R. Paterakis; Agora International’s Jerry Shupack; and Food World’s Lou Rosenthal, Beth Pripstein, Terri Maloney, Jeff Metzger and his daughter Dana Metzger; and to my granddaughter, Kathryn Dougherty Ireland, who will be celebrating her 5th birthday.
Celebrating wedding anniversaries this month are: Edy’s John and Donna Plumhoff, their 29th; H&S Bakery’s JR and Emily Paterakis, their 29th; display consultant Mike and Jennifer Keefe, their 22nd; Utz Quality Foods’ Tom and Bekki Dempsey, their 30th; Pro-Star/Star Sales & Marketing’s Randy and Debi Holland, their 32nd; Quaker Maid Meats’ Tom and Janine Robinson, their 10th; Coca-Cola Refreshments’ Cyndi and Clyde’s Restaurants’ Bill Ireland, their 7th.