The largest grocery store chain in the United States recently announced its earnings. Profits were up almost 3.5 percent.  What is most striking about the numbers is not the increase in revenues and profits, but that more than 25 percent of the total revenue is a result of private label products.  The private label category is the fastest growing for the entire chain.

At Mont Blanc Gourmet, we are experiencing the same thing. Our lab is developing more and more private label products for our customers, and those products represent the fastest growing part of our sales.

We create private label products for well-known, well-established consumer brands, enabling these national entities to effectively extend their brand identity into more aspects of their operations.

One customer offers to consumers a private label retail bottle of chocolate syrup that is the same product they use for making their mochas.  Another client supplies its franchise partners with proprietary products to ensure consistency in drinks served in stores that they don’t operate.

CoffeeTalk, a major specialty coffee trade journal, published a private label article in its September issue entitled “Build Your Own Brand through Private Labeling.”

With both the foodservice and retail packages, Mont Blanc has experienced significant sales increases in the past year.  The private label trend is strong and growing.  In tough economic times, it makes sense to act on the strong trends.

Denver temperatures remain in the 80s after a month of record-setting heat. It’s hard to believe that the winter holiday season is almost upon us.

But at Muppet labs we have been hard at work creating seasonal drink mixes for this fall and winter, and two projects are now complete. Both are following the trend this year toward comfort-food drinks. This will be a strong season for flavors associated with a traditional home kitchen.

For one customer, we developed a Pumpkin Spice syrup. Our second formulation involved creating a ginger spice latte.  We are extremely happy with the results in both cases.

From a flavor standpoint, customers also have begun inquiring about our spicy chocolate syrup which has a chocolate base and is flavored with peppers, ginger and cinnamon.

As people grapple with political, economic, and financial uncertainty, the consumer shift to the comfortable becomes even more pronounced.  So this year, get ready to enjoy the taste of pumpkin pie, gingerbread and chocolate and cinnamon in your special beverage.

One of my favorite products Mont Blanc has ever created is a blender drink we formulated for one of our clients. A well-known coffee company had created this drink but was looking for a way to offer it to their customers so that it was easy to make and serve. This unique frozen coffee beverage is mixed in a blender and combines fresh espresso with milk and ice. It has the smooth and creamy taste of a coffee milkshake, and is one of the most popular menu offerings in their stores. Because it was so popular, however, there were operational problems with being able to make and serve a high volume of drinks while customers waited.

We proposed to create a liquid base for our client, using their coffee, that didn’t require the mixing of powders and fresh espresso in each store. What made this project so interesting was that it took two manufacturers to create the finished product. One of our suppliers used our client’s coffee beans to make an espresso extract. The extract then was shipped to a second manufacturer who combined it as an ingredient into the final blender drink base.

The product is still available and is packed in a 46 oz. container. When stores receive the mix, the entire contents are combined with a half gallon of milk into a one gallon pitcher. When the drinks are ordered, baristas simply pour the mixture into a cup filled with ice, blend, and serve.

Since we created this product, the drink’s sales have consistently increased and baristas are happier because making and serving frozen drinks is so much easier. One of the most gratifying aspects of my job can be the result of working with a customer that allows Mont Blanc to innovate - and then share in our client’s success.

I empathize with Susan Lucci. My version of her Emmys are the Fancy Food Show awards for best new products. I have been entering almost every year for the past fifteen years and have never won. And over the years I thought that I had created some really neat, innovative products.

The Kahlua Chocolate syrup was the first cobranded product with such a well-known company for the specialty coffee industry. The bag in box packaging that we used for a while was the most unusual ever used for chocolate syrups. And our line of hot cocoa mixes was the first all-natural, instant drinks on the market. Never even made finalist.

The awards honor innovative, unique products within the specialty food trade and are given out during the Fancy Food shows.

This year, I thought I had a sure-fire winner. Or at least a silver statue for being a category finalist. I entered Mont Blanc’s new single-origin chocolate syrup made using cocoa powder from Ghana. (See July 3 post.) Surely, I thought, a slam dunk, for the academy, who would recognize how innovative an idea this really is.

The notice from the awards committee included comments about why my product was not selected as a finalist. One of the comments was that the product contained high fructose corn syrup and that the judges did not feel that this constituted a “gourmet” product.

High fructose corn syrup in our chocolate syrups is a common ingredient and one that is hard to do without in the world of syrup.

So even though Mont Blanc will have the first single-origin chocolate syrup on the market, I will not be traveling to New York to pick up a gold or silver statue.

Through our partnership with Omanhene, Mont Blanc will continue to support the system that benefits the people of Ghana while offering coffee drinkers a truly unique experience.

As for the Fancy Food Show, I’ll have to try again next year.

Mont Blanc will soon have a market first in the form of its single-origin syrup, which goes into production next week. I am excited about this new product, since it is the first time that any company has made a chocolate syrup using single origin cocoa, and the idea of single origin and sustainable production fits nicely with single-origin coffees that so many of our café customers serve in their drinks.

I purchase the cocoa from Omanhene, the company that introduced the concept of single-origin chocolates to the United States 15 years ago.  Omanhene founder Steven Wallace has done something unique in the world of chocolate manufacturing. Chocolate manufacturing is dominated by a handful of multinational companies mostly unknown by those outside the industry. Even the largest chocolate brands such as Hershey’s rely on these companies to process bulk chocolate from cocoa beans.

Chocolate production follows a typical commodity supply chain paradigm. That is, the commodity, cacao beans, are grown in a third world country, extracted and sold for a small sum. The beans are then transferred to an industrialized country where they are processed. The finished product is then sold for significantly more than the cost of the commodity itself. I know of one artisanal chocolate maker who pays higher than market rates for cacao beans (currently about $1.00 a pound). He sells his finished chocolate bars for almost $50 a pound.

What makes Omanhene unique is that it has set up a factory in Ghana so beans are processed in the country where they are produced. The end result is that significantly more money from each sale stays in Ghana rather than going to an industrialized nation elsewhere.

This guarantees higher pay for farmers, creating a sustainable cycle for the farmers, growers and processors.