SAN FRANCISCO -- Cauliflower-based pizza dough. Chocolate-covered quinoa. Bagel balls stuffed with flavored cream cheese. Vegan, paleo, dairy-free frozen dessert that is a bit hard to describe other than to say it is not ice cream.
Nothing says American ingenuity like the eager food entrepreneurs who think their scrumptious concoctions can make it in a culinary landscape that favors big corporations. Last week, 1,400 exhibitors set up shop at the Winter Fancy Food Show in the cavernous Moscone Center here, including some mom-and-pop operations determined to defy the odds.
"It's possible we do fail," said Rachel Geicke, 25, who was there with her business partner, Mariana Ferreira, 23, peddling their non-ice-cream, Snow Monkey. The product, which comes in two flavors, cacao and goji berry, came to market eight weeks ago -- with vast ambitions.
Snow Monkey "is a vehicle to spark change," said Geicke, who met Ferreira when they were undergraduates at Boston University. They describe their fruit-based creation as a "superfood ice treat, ice cream so good you can have it for breakfast."
As they spooned out samples of Snow Monkey last weekend, one fan jumped and fist-pumped her approval. Now, they only need 100,000 more customers like her.
"The conventional wisdom would be that up to 90 percent of new packaged food products fail," said David Sprinkle, research director of MarketResearch.com and publisher of Packaged Facts. For established brands, he said, the rate is much lower.
In one part of the convention center, crowds were clotting at the Bantam Bagels booth, where the husband-and-wife team of Nick and Elyse Oleksak were handing out their ping-pong-ball-size toasted bagel balls. The flavors include cinnamon bun, French toast and classic onion.
Their bagels have that all-important ingredient: authenticity. They are made in Brooklyn with New York water. We "are trying to be the authentic New York bagel in a different way," as Nick Oleksak put it.
Before they were bagel mavens, Elyse worked in asset management at Morgan Stanley, and Nick was a credit broker for GFI Group, which operates trading marketplaces. The recession convinced them it was time to take control of their own careers.
For four months the Oleksaks, who knew nothing about baking, made bagels nightly, letting the dough rise in the darkened laundry closet of their Park Slope apartment.
They appeared on NBC's Today show and in The Wall Street Journal even before they opened their shop on Bleecker Street.
"We learn as we do," Elyse Oleksak said. Six months ago, they reintroduced their bagels to supermarkets; now their bagel balls are in 2,000 stores and 7,500 Starbucks.
Listening to these entrepreneurs, they almost sound like politicians. They speak about "authenticity," "honesty" and "transparency."
That message came across in Carol Healy's No-Bake Cookie Co. booth, designed by her husband, Tom, to resemble a 1950s kitchen. Carol Healy's cookies -- in flavors like chocolate mint, peanut butter and coconut macadamia -- are made from her grandmother's recipes. She sold them at her family's market at a gas station in Bend, Ore., before deciding to turn the cookies into a family business.
Seven years ago, the family built a factory in Bend to make what they call "the only branded natural no-bake cookie out there." Their gluten-free cookie tastes like old-fashioned soft fudge, transmitting the message that it is pure, honest and good. It has no four-syllable ingredients.
Not all efforts have succeeded. Early on, the Healys agreed to pay $1,000 and deliver 850 gift boxes to Off the Wall Gifts, a provider of "celebrity gifting" for Emmy Award nominees in the news and documentary category. It was good exposure, they said, but the payoff was minimal for the money they put up.
Last month, Carol Healy was told by Sprouts Farmers Market, a natural and organic supermarket chain, that it was dropping No-Bake Cookies to invest in its own product.
The Healys remain upset. "We're the little guy," Tom Healy said.
They spread the little-guy message on social media. On Instagram, they post pictures of people enjoying their cookies, including one of an adorable blue-eyed boy (a relative, naturally).
Today, their cookies are sold in 4,000 stores, twice the number of a year ago.
As for the Snow Monkey team, Geicke and Ferreira are a startup, working out of their Santa Monica apartment (where they moved, they said, because lots of trends start there) and not taking salaries.
Their sole employee, Katie Krell, whose title is "director of impact and partnerships," said, "We are movement-driven -- what you eat can be how you live."
SundayMonday Business on 01/29/2017