In celebration of Independence Day, enjoy this red, white and blue collage of products from food producers who are living the American dream and representing entrepreneurship at its best! In some browsers, if you put your mouse over the photo you’ll see a short description about the product and company. Or click any photo to learn more:
Thanks to everyone that participated in our S’more Kit giveaway for the 4th of July!
Here’s the list of the lucky winners! You all are in for a treat.
On Twitter
@jordanful
@sara6633
@nodanaonlyzuul
On Facebook
Fatima Kioskli Rodriguez
Michele Di Pietro
Ever since we toasted up our first urban s’more at SXSW in March, we keep getting requests for the classic campfire treat. Since then, we’ve served up s’mores at our community tasting, at the Twitter and Digg offices, and now we want to give you your own s’more kit to enjoy for the 4th of July holiday!
We’re giving away 5 s’more kits that include 20 handcut Vanilla Marshmallows from BonBonBar and 20 Dark Chocolate Covered Carmelized Grahams from Kikas Treats.
How do you enter? Two ways!
1) Just join our Facebook page!
And/or
2) If you’re on Twitter just retweet:
“I want to win a S’more Kit from Foodzie! Join their Facebook http://bit.ly/16F7oz &/or RT for a chance to win! TODAY ONLY!”
We’ll be choosing winners from Facebook AND Twitter today at 3PM PST.
Check out our urban s’more action at SXSW to get a taste of what could be yours!
Our community tastings are back in action! This go-around we packed the office with about 20 tasters, people who are fans of ours on Facebook, Twitter or just friends of the Foodzie crew. If you want to attend one of our future tastings, be sure to become a fan on Facebook. Fans are the first to find out!
With the 4th of July around the corner and camping season in full swing, we thought we’d hold a camping-inspired tasting with products fit for your next trip into the wilderness.
Before everyone started feasting, we did a quick get-to-know-you. This tasting everyone shared the strangest thing they’ve ever consumed, and I think Liz won the prize with fish sperm soup! We extended the same question out to the Foodzie fans on Facebook to hear stories from those that weren’t at the tasting. The group agreed the best story came from Natty about his mysterious “tuna”. You can checkout our Facebook Fan Page to get his full story. For sharing his story, Natty won some Gary West Jerky.
Next, Susie gave us the scoop on the spread and shared the stories behind each product.
Here’s what we sampled:
-Beef and Buffalo Jerky from Gary West
-Heirloom Popcorn + Spices (flavors below)
-Let’s Be Frank Grass Fed Beef Hot Dogs - local producer
-Russian River Fine Foods Chipotle Ketchup
That’s Jake, a local attorney and Kika from Kika’s Treats. Kika came to the tasting and helped roast up s’mores with her tasty grahams. Our tasters got to meet the real people behind the food they were eating.
The fabulous Frederique shows off her signature cork, a tradition here at the Foodzie tastings. Each taster that attends leaves their mark on the Foodzie HQ with their own hand-decorated cork.
Here are a few of our favorite corks from all the tastings we’ve had here at Foodzie.
A big thanks to Richard from Tauber Photography, for snapping some of the great photos featured in this post! Our next tasting is in two weeks, with more products to sample from the awesome food producers that sell on Foodzie. We hope to see you at the next tasting!
Recently someone commented that they wished Foodzie could have a Willy Wonka-esque feature where the products could jump off the page like the chocolate bar and Mike Teavee in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Don’t we all!
Unfortunately that feature is in a future Foodzie release. In the meantime, I’ve started compiling a Food Photography Tips resource guide for our food producers to learn about taking utterly delicious, irresistable food photos (i.e., food porn) to visually communicate just how amazing all your food products are.
Please take a look and either email me or add comments / links to other food photography tips you know about. We’re always looking for food photographers and amateurs who “will work for food” to build up your photo portfolios. We’d love to hear from you as well.
Foodzie is looking for an efficient, smart, experienced, web developer (7+ years) to join a startup that is opening up the world of artisan food to consumers online. We need a PHP developer to join our technology team and be the lead developer on a fast-moving, ecommerce + community application.
You’ll find your position comes with an enormous amount of freedom and responsibility. We need someone who has a resilient personality and can be agile - things change rapidly as we get customer feedback/insights on our product.
We are looking for a person who is excited about artisan food and the people that create it. Our motivation stems from our passion and we won’t settle for anything less in those we bring on board. We are a venture backed, revenue focused company working with some of the best investors in Silicon Valley.
Duties and Responsibilities
Email jobs@foodzie.com. Taste something different.
Turn it into cheese!
Shy Brothers Farm has joined Foodzie to bring you their adorable and creamy, soft “Hannahbelles” thimble sized cheeses.
Like NY Cheese, which I recently wrote about, Shy Brothers is another great example of dairy farmers working with partners to create a small farmstead cheese operation.
The farm is also a future model of sustainability. The local paper reports that “Shy Brothers Farm has received $33,000 from the state Department of Agricultural Resources to design a new energy-efficient cheese-producing building and renovate a barn into a storage area and visitor’s center.”
Barbara Hanley, a friend of the brothers who helps sell the cheeses and keeps the books, explained that the farm will be tasked with finding ways to re-use all aspects of the operation including the water used for washing and cheese making.
Congrats for the farm’s Wall Street Journal feature today!
My first trip to the Portland Farmer’s Market blew me away, with an amazing array of local food producers. That’s where I first found Freddy Guys hazelnuts and snapped the shot of Dave, of Dave’s Killer Bread, shown here.
Then, the other day I was reading about a repeat criminal who now runs a bread company. Then it clicked: Dave! At the time, I thought he was, well, just another baker. Inc’s article tells Dave’s great story of redemption, determination, and entrepreneurial creativity as well as the story of his brother’s undying support.
Aspiring food entrepreneurs can learn lots of lessons from his story:
“Dave introduced his bread in August 2005. He drafted a few recipes and then took 100 loaves to a farmers’ market in Portland. In crunchy Oregon, amid a mounting nationwide taste for all things organic, Dave’s Bread, as it was first called, was a safe gambit and a modest one, until Dave threw the word Killer onto the label. Then, it was as though he had stepped into the shoes of Paul Newman. The Portland media lavished him with press. The families of ex-cons wrote Dave heartfelt letters. Women lined up at supermarket demos, hungry for a glimmering moment with the bad boy turned sweetie pie.”Coming soon on Foodzie: We’re thrilled to be working with several very cool artisan food makers with missions to help people rebuild their lives. Stay tuned!
Farm Aid has set up a petition to help small dairy farms get a fair price for their milk.
Foodzie would like to congratulate one of our producers, Empire Organics, for their part in helping out: The company was formed by a couple of guys with a goal of saving 10, then 20, and many more family dairy farms in New York by turning their milk into higher margin, and delicious, Certified Organic cheeses.
The company also sells milk, paying higher than the market price. Read more about how Dean and Dan are helping the dairy farms. If you’re a New York retailer and want to carry their products, we’re happy to help you contact them.
The recap on the second half of our trip to Seattle is long overdue. The first part, I covered in this post. The part of our trip that has yet to be shared was the great time we had at the farmers markets and meeting some of the great producers on Foodzie in person!
Of course we did Pike’s Place Market… It’s a beautiful market on the water, and it was fun to walk around, but definitely a huge tourist attraction, so not exactly our speed. Although we did enjoy a tourist-priced grilled salmon sandwich at Market Grill that was quite tasty!
Flickr Photo Credit: Foodista
Scoped out plenty of seafood…
