| October 6, 2005 | Vol 1, Issue 7 |
Happy National Pasta
Month! Yes, there truly is such a thing, and we hope you spread the word
to all of your pasta loving customers.
This newsletter will from
here on out become a monthly missive. By the time you receive this you
should have also seen the new website. We spent a tremendous amount of
time creating a streamlined, e-commerce efficient site that we truly
believe will be a benefit to everyone. We'd love any feedback -- good or bad -- about the new
site.
And a heads up -- in
the next couple of weeks all of our summer vendors will be receiving
from us our Annual End of Season Survey Package. This will
include the following:
1. A Comprehensive survey
for you to fill out. This document will also include some
information about changes/additions/deletions for the upcoming season.
2. Individual analysis of your order history
3. Secret Shopper results/analysis
2. Individual analysis of your order history
3. Secret Shopper results/analysis
4. Product
samples
Featured Product: Orzo
Orzo is often mistaken as rice or risotto. This is not an accident. Although orzo is made from the same ingredients as our flat-cut noodles, it was originally conceived as a substitute for rice. Italians wanted a faster and cheaper way to approximate the time-consuming dish, risotto, and thus they created the orzo shape.
For those who do not know this, orzo is our most complicated pasta to produce. Its unique "football" shape makes even-drying it a tricky procedure. If it does not dry evenly the orzo will crack and split, making it unusable.
Attached are two new recipes:
Lime Cilantro Pasta with Cilantro and Roasted Poblano Chile Pesto
Roasted Squash Soup with Autumn Harvest Orzo
Don't forget:
tell your customers to find us on the web or call our 800# to order more
products if they can't make it to the market. You will receive a 20%
product credit on all gross sales. And, be sure to mention the
newly designed website and easier ordering capabilities!
Tips of the Trade from Other Vendors
Tips of the Trade from Other Vendors
Several of our vendors have found a way to make some extra money by
collecting all of the broken bits of pasta from the bottom of boxes and
combining them into one box and selling it as a Soup Mix.
Gift baskets. We've noticed that a number of vendors are starting
to sell the pasta prepackaged as gift baskets. I've heard from two that
this has been a great success! Don't forget to market to people who
might own/operate their own business -- a unique gift basket makes a
perfect corporate gift. Another interesting idea that one our vendors
passed along was contacting local real estate agents or the local
realtors' association; a basket of our pasta would be a perfect house
warming gift. If any of you have sourced any unique or inexpensive items
that you are including in your basket or the baskets themselves, we'd
love to pass on the information to everyone.
Did You Know?
"In the beginning (around the turn of
the century) Italian-America restaurants did not serve meatballs with
their spaghetti. These were added to satisfy Amerca's hunger for red
meat."
---American Century Cookbook: The Most Popular Recipes of the 20th Century,
---American Century Cookbook: The Most Popular Recipes of the 20th Century,
Food for Thought
“People who like to cook like to talk about food....without one
cook giving another cook a tip or two, human life might have died out a
long time ago.”
Laurie Colwin, 'Home Cooking'
Laurie Colwin, 'Home Cooking'
Mange!
Annie