Monthly Shipping Report | July 2015

COUNCIL UPDATE

• The next Council meeting is September 16-17 in Seattle, WA. If you plan on attending, please email [email protected] so we can make sure you are accommodated.
• Ballots have been verified and tabulated. Paperwork is now being prepared to send nominees to the Secretary of Agriculture for appointment. Positions are for Region 2; PA (two positions) and Region 3 (one position). Thank you to all who participated; it was the best participation year in quite a while.
• The 2014 Annual Report is on our website

SHIMPENT SUMMARY

To see current charts click here.

MARKETING SUMMARY

 

• White-Hot Foods, Cosmopolitan, June 2015
• Enter Here!, National Culinary Review, June 2015
• Eat More Vegetables: 100 Ways to Live to 100, Men’s Journal, 6/2
• Local chefs plan to build a Better Burger, launch party for Em’s Neighborhood Kitchen, plus a dozen new restaurant openings, Sun-Sentinel, 6/10
• How to Make a Healthier Burger, Food Network Healthy Eats, 6/10
• Better burgers, Miami Herald, 6/17
• What People Who Live to 100 Eat Every Day, Yahoo! Food, 6/17
• 5 Ways to Treat Vegetables as Meat, The Kitchn, 6/19
• South Florida chefs building a better burger, Sun-Sentinel, 6/21
• A kid-friendly potato chip alternative, Washington Post, 6/23
• Umami Bomb Mushroom Burgers, Fine Cooking, 6/23
• How to Make a Healthier Burger, Huffington Post, 6/24
• HOW TO SPICE UP YOUR BURGER, Potluck, 6/24
• 25 Chefs’ Burger Secrets, Food Network Magazine, 6/30

• Richard Blais touted the blend technique in Food Network Magazine (June/July), featuring 25 chef burger secrets.
• Jehangir Mehta was featured in a Potluck video that was picked up by Huffington Post Taste (6/24), reaching more than three million people. The article and five-minute video went into detail on how burgers are the best part of summer and how they can be made healthier by utilizing the blend technique. He was also interviewed for What’s Cookin’ Today radio show (6/26) that re-aired three times, reaching 9M people.
• Conducted media outreach, with a focus on men’s health outlets, for Dr. Chen’s recent study, A Phase I Trial of Mushroom Powder in Patients With Biochemically Recurrent Prostate Cancer: Roles of Cytokines and Myeloid-Derived Suppressor Cells for Agaricus bisporus–Induced Prostate-Specific Antigen Responses.
• Surpassed 792 followers (and growing) on the Mushroom Channel Instagram.
• Featured the ongoing Veal Check-Off Partnership on our owned social media channels. Promotion will continue into September.
• Mushroom Channel published one blogger recipe and one Veal Made Easy post with 1,704 page views and accounted for 2.09 percent of all website referral traffic in June.
  • Denise from Chez Us’ Tagliatelle Pasta with a Light Mushroom Sauce
  • Calling All Burger Lovers!
  • Win big with The Mushroom Council and Veal Made Easy
• Search ad words accounted for 8.1 percent of total visits in June. Top performing paid keywords included: mushroom recipes, morel and mushrooms + meatloaf.

For more detailed social analytics download the NEW Social Analytics Report here.

FOODSERVICE SUMMARY

Chefs Luncheons
Two more highly successful chef luncheons were held in conjunction with one of our other partners, Plate Magazine, in Philadelphia at Supper and in San Francisco at Tavern on the Park. In each case, four chefs cooked up their version of The Blend for other chefs in their respective markets. In Philadelphia, several very hip restaurants and chefs met at Supper to see the Blend in action. In Nashville, a number of chefs from the surrounding area and as far away as Lexington, KY met at Chopt Chef Maneet Chauhan’s Chauhan’s Masala and Ale House to see Chef Chauhan and Chef Mehta (from Iron Chef) cook their versions of the Blend. Along with the other chefs, several media, including a local TV station covered and filmed part of the event, airing it several times. In San Francisco, four well-known chefs, including Domenica Catelli, an Iron Chef Judge, showcased their four very different versions of The Blend. As you can see from the participants, many of the attendees from each of the events loved the idea and are menuing the Blend in their own restaurants.

The Blend in Philadelphia

The Blend in Nashville (including Chocolate Mushroom Lollipops for dessert)

Colleges and Universities:
The Council spoke at the University of Massachusetts Annual Culinary Conference where 225 foodservice chefs, many of whom had already had experience with the Blend, heard up to date information on the Blend, who was menuing and the James Beard promotion. We also continued to work with many of our partners’ meat suppliers, so they can menu a meat-mushroom burger in their dining halls. The Council is preparing for their upcoming demo and presentation at Purdue University as well as the national college foodservice conference (NACUFS) where we will not only will be exhibiting for the first time, but we will be presenters on two different panels.

Culinary Institute Partnership and Other Chain Events
In June, mushrooms and the Blend were featured prominently at two CIA events: Menus of Change and Healthy Menus Collaborative. At MOC, the CIA featured a Better Burger Bash where most of the burgers were made by combining meat and mushrooms. The also introduced their “Protein Flip” strategy that we helped develop, with one of the activations being to blend meat with mushrooms to provide higher quality protein. At Healthy Menus Collaborative, we not only met with a number of the top chains in the U.S., but also a large meat suppliers who is developing a version of the Blend. At International Corporate Chefs Assn., the Council met with chefs from the second Top 200 chains and, of course, showcased the Blend.

National Accounts
The Council has been working with a number of top chains including a major burger chain, AMTRAK, Golden Corral, Captain D’s and many others. Coming up, the Council is preparing for a presentation at a major Avendra meeting with a number of hotel chains signed up to learn about and sample the Blend.

 

SCHOOL SUMMARY

• Met with Philadelphia Public Schools director to discuss promotions for fall 2015. Met with Santa Fe School District, Garland School District, Cypress Fairbanks District, Dallas Independent School District and Raleigh school district to implement mushroom promotions and The Blend into the fall school year.
• Council representatives continued the relationship with Sodexo to prepare for fall 2015 blend burger launch.
• Met with JTM, MaidRite, Cargill and Advance Pierre at the SNA Annual National Conference to discuss marketing support for Blend products in 2015/2016.
• Council representatives attended School Nutrition Association Annual National Conference in Salt Lake City, UT. The Council sampled blend meatballs, farm to school mushrooms and IQF diced mushrooms to attendees.
• The Council launched farm to school kit at SNA ANC. Will be distributed in follow up e-blast to all attendees. The kit includes kitchen manager, teacher and parent resources to create an integrated farm to school plan to promote mushrooms in the cafeteria and outside the cafeteria. There are plans to work with distributors to share the farm to school kit with sales reps.
• All recipes on mushroomsinschools.com are currently being updated to meet changing meal pattern requirements. You can view the updated recipes and resources here.

Retail – Supermarket RD

We hosted a successful mushroom farm tour on June 9th for 8 supermarket, media and blogger dietitian influencers. RDs visited To-Jo and Phillips Mushroom Farms, learned about the Blend and the Council’s latest nutrition initiatives, and enjoyed a mushroom-heavy lunch at Sovana Bistro. We used the hashtag #ShroomTours to capture the buzz from the day. As a result of this event, we saw 17 tweets, 108 engagements, and over 2,100 impressions as well as valuable blog post recap by one of the attendees.

Planning for RD dinner at FNCE in October in Nashville is underway. We’ve confirmed the event with Chef Chauhan to be held at Chauhan Ale & Masala House on Sunday, October 4th. We are currently working on finalizing the guest list and save the dates.

Kroger is now printing Blend recipes on their pharmacy inserts distributed to customers – this is a direct result of a connection made with a supermarket dietitian at Oldways Symposium.

The RD team at Meijer will be sharing summer grilling and back to school family-friendly Blend recipes over the next couple months on Meijer’s social media channels (blog, Facebook, etc.).

Nutrition Education

Q2 Nutrition News About Mushrooms e-newsletter was delivered to over 8,000 nutrition influencers at the beginning of June. This quarter’s issue focused on mushrooms as a source of vitamin D and included a guest article on vitamin D by media dietitian and Author, Sharon Palmer.

Finalized nutrition education handout on mushrooms and vitamin D and included a link to the PDF in the Nutrition e-newsletter.

 

RETAIL SUMMARY

The Council continues to target small to mid-sized regional retailers (on both coasts) for the introduction of The Blend in grocery chain’s deli, foodservice and meat departments.

C&S Wholesale Grocers, Inc. runs a healthy living program (Eat Right for Life) for a group of 60 independent store locations. Four of the stores are corporate-owned and they will run a test program with The Blend. The Council will work with them on developing promotions once they are selling The Blend in all their stores. C&S Wholesale Grocers will run a four-day meat and mushroom event to promote The Blend July 23rd through July 26th. They will print the Council’s dangler and customize it with the Eat Right for Life logo. The Council’s Blend recipe booklet will be printed and distributed during the event. Background on C&S Wholesale Grocers: C&S serves about 5,000 stores from more than 50 locations in 15 states. Many of their customers include America’s best known companies, including Stop & Shop, Giant of Carlisle, Giant of Landover, BI-LO/Winn-Dixie, Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co. (A&P), Safeway, and Target.

Independent Grocers Alliance created a health and wellness Better Choices microsite and will promote The Blend using content from mushroominfo.com. The Council’s content used on their microsite will link back to mushroominfo.com. Materials used will credit the Mushroom Council as the source.

Updated: The Redner’s Warehouse Market – Redner’s is running Blend demos July 17th – 19th with in-store product promoted along with information and recipes for consumers. The Council will print and distribute The Better For You Blend Fact Sheet to be used during the demos. Redner’s will monitor sales of meat, mushrooms, and Blend burgers for the 20-store demo. The demos will also include copies of the HealthCents magazine being distributed to consumers. The HealthCents magazine is a full-color, high-gloss magazine published six times annually. Over 10,000 copies are distributed among all Redner’s stores. The magazine is also promoted on Redner’s website, mobile app and Facebook page. Additionally, 1.2 million circulars with the Best Food Day ad are distributed among 45 stores. Below are the images for the Health Cents magazine and the Best Food Day ad.

 

The Council is reaching out to Gelson’s, Sprouts, Sendik’s and several other retailers to introduce Blend items in their stores.

Follow-Up:
The Veal Mushroom Summer Grilling Sweepstakes promotion has generated 40,525 entries!

The Beef Checkoff and Mushroom Council Veal promotion started on June 19 and will run through September 4th. The cooking demonstration video was posted on mushroominfo.com and VealMadeEasy site and YouTube. A press release was distributed to the trade and sent though a newswire service. The release was picked up by The Packer, Produce News, LA Daily News, The Daily Breeze, Sacramento Bee and The Boston Globe to name a few. The release generated over 33,752 impressions. Edelman and the Beef Checkoff are supporting the promotion with social media. The Council’s website generated 45 page views for the Muenster Stuffed Veal and Mushroom Burger. The veal on-pack recipe labels with the consumer sweepstakes promotion will drive consumers to the websites.

The Beef Checkoff – Veal Made Easy is featuring the Muenster Stuffed Veal Mushroom Burger on Facebook and YouTube promoting the Power of Protein. This promotion is running concurrently with the Summer Grilling promotion. Due to the excitement of the women’s World Cup, the soccer promotion ran from June 26 through July 6th. Consumers voted for their favorite team USA player and were entered to win $100 in free groceries. Both promotions were supported with TV spots running in the Philadelphia and DC markets during the 4th of July weekend. Check out the YouTube Commercial and the Veal Made Easy Facebook Page.

Veal Summer Grilling Partnership with the Mushroom Council Recap/Stats

The Council was included on the on-pack recipe label which was distributed to 2,000+ stores. Nineteen retails chains have participated to date. They include: Ahold-Giant Landover, Ahold Stop & Shop NY, Ahold Stop & Shop New England, Waldbaums, A&P, Pathmark, Food Emporium, Market Basket-DeMoulas, Big Y, Harris Teeter, Ahold Giant Carlisle, King Kullen, Tops Markets, Weis Markets, Safeway-Maryland, Fairway Markets, Pecks Markets, King’s Food Markets, Redner’s Markets)

• The Council was included in the cooking demonstration videos which were posted to A Veal Made Easy You Tube channel. The Council’s website link was added to the Veal Made Easy website driving consumers to enter into the sweepstakes.
• The sweepstakes generated 959 entries into the Veal Soccer “Power of Protein.”
• The sweepstakes generated 40,525 entries into the Veal Summer Grilling.
• The Summer Grilling Online Video Campaign generated 51,229 impressions promoting mushrooms and veal for the month of June.
• The Veal Soccer Facebook Sweepstakes Online Video Campaign generated 149,962 impressions promoting mushrooms and veal for the month of June.

Mushrooms on TV!

The Council was included in TV advertising during the Women’s Soccer Finals generating more than 672,000 TV impressions on Fox Philadelphia and Washington D.C. markets.

The American Egg Board is excited to be co-marketing with the Mushroom Council through social media channels. The AEB is developing custom content that will be distributed to their 700,000+ Facebook followers. Content will also be sent during Mushroom Month in September. The Infographic is in development.

The Gourmet Garden mushroom recipes hosted on mushroominfo.com site generated many page views. The Mediterranean Stuffed Mushrooms had 141 page views for the month of June. A trade press release announcing the co-marketing promotion was featured in The Packer, Produce News and others.

Communication Updates:
Retailers are beginning to contact us through MushroomsAtRetail website. The Dietitians from C&S Wholesale Grocers, Inc. and IGA found our contact information through the website.

Jennifer Strailey from Progressive Grocer interviewed The Council on The Blend. A link will be distributed once the article is published in July issue.

The Council provided Jim Offner from The Packer with information for his article on mushrooms including retail and foodservice with a focus on The Blend.

Trade Media

• Mushroom Council and Beef Checkoff Partner – Produce News
• Mushroom Council partners with Beef Checkoff – AndNowUKnow
• Council cross promotes with Beef – The Packer

 

TOPLINE

The Topline report week ending 5/17/2015 was sent to the industry on 6/30/2015; click here to access the report online.