New York's Fancy Food Show, a mammoth twice-a-year specialty food industry convention that took place from June 27 to 29, was quite the affair. There was Rick Bayless, reportedly one of Barack Obama's favorite chefs, making chicken tacos in the basement. Upstairs, Top Chef host Padma Lakshmi was posing for pictures with eager fans. Not too far away, candy-maker Jelly Belly made a copy of the Mona Lisa entirely out of its jelly beans.
But for food producers in some of the world's newest states and semi-states, the Fancy Food Show meant serious business. Delegations from far-flung locations such as Kosovo, the Palestinian territories, and French Polynesia were hawking their wares, all trying to get a piece of the burgeoning gourmet food market in the United States. As thousands of American foodies have come of age, the prize for winning over taste buds has grown potentially huge. According to the National Association for the Specialty Food Trade, the industry group behind the Fancy Food Show, U.S. consumers spent more than $60 billion on specialty foods in 2009, accounting for 15.9 percent of American food sales. For producers in small nations (and would-be nations), the attraction is irresistible. The Palestinian Authority, which sent a delegation, exported approximately $558 million in goods in 2008; Americans spent more than $300 million last year on hummus alone.
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That's one tasty potential payoff, but cracking the largest specialty food market in the world is no cakewalk. You can't just take a local specialty, slap a fancy English-language label on it, and ship it over. Thanks to a combination of byzantine U.S. import regulations, an aggressive domestic industry, and a handful of juggernaut retail chains such as Whole Foods, Trader Joe's, and regional supermarkets, foreign producers from small countries have to fight to see their labels on the shelves -- not to mention to get them sold.
Take EuroFood, a recent guest at the Fancy Food show. This small Kosovar company from the provincial town of Prizren specializes in sauces and jellies. At the show, samples of ajvar (a spicy Balkan eggplant-and-pepper dip) were there for the taking, next to helpful explanations of the dish's provenance and ingredients. And there were thousands of booths just like this -- endless rows of friendly producers and exhibitors, trying desperately to attract the attention of U.S. wholesalers and distributors.
The Kosovars were hardly alone; just a few yards away was the Palestinian pavilion, and beyond that, the Albanian delegation. Madico, a Jordan Valley-based date grower, offered samples of its products, directing potential buyers to its English-language website. Sinokrot, one of the largest companies in the West Bank and a trade-show veteran, was promoting its Jericho chocolate wafers, which boast an anthropomorphized, smiling cable car on their packaging. (Sinokrot also operates the concession -- and, yes, cable cars -- at the tourist destination of the Mount of Temptation, where Christ is said to have fasted for 40 days.)
Trade show by trade show, these small countries are elbowing their products into American grocery stores. But the competition is fierce: The storied successes of Italy and France are ever on display. A well-stocked Italian pavilion at the Fancy Food Show had more than 100 vendors, many of whom were offering high-end meats such as porchetta and salame. And French exhibitors had no problem finding buyers for their cheeses and pastries. In 2009, France exported about $150 million worth of cheese and Italy sent about $1.2 billion worth of wine to the United States.
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