To keep growing, food purveyors must embrace innovation. Finding and incorporating new ideas and advancements is crucial to the stability and appeal of a business. Innovation can be challenging for those with fewer resources. However, artisans can be innovative in sourcing ingredients, farming, design packaging, and promoting offerings. By being creatively innovative, they stay ahead of the game, keep customers interested, and resist being eclipsed or outsold by competitors.

On Tuesday, June 22, the Jamaica Observer Table Talk Food Awards hosted the second in its webinar series. This time, the topic was Taste & Applaud — saluting the best in local food innovation. Applauded were Uncle Ducky’s, Somm Jamaican Pasta Sauces, Likkle More Chocolate, Rummy Rum Cake, Nella’s Sweet Potato Tendaronis, Brie + Vino, Nature My Therapy, Outland Hurders Creamery and Farmsteads, and Netty’s Farm.

Innovation is subjective. But anyone who’s in the food and beverage manufacturing space can agree that it’s the process of translating ideas into valuable products. This would not be a Food Awards event without a surprise guest, and the event’s conceptualiser Novia McDonald-Whyte did not disappoint. Opening the webinar was Wegman’s SVP, Perishables Merchandising Dave Corsi. Securing industry heavyweights is clearly McDonald-Whyte’s superpower. When asked what innovation advice he’d give local artisans, Corsi kept it simple: “Create memorable items that keep customers coming back.”

But to keep customers clamouring for products, purveyors have to know to whom they are selling. Does one’s respective demographic prioritise exclusivity, value, novelty, or price point? Knowing your customer allows artisans to apply laser focus to their business, develop coveted products and create deep relationships. As Corsi put it, “It’s not about the one-time purchase; it’s about the repeat purchase.”

Innovation is the lifeblood of the food industry. It creates an architecture within which different players with specific and highly diversified skills can thrive. Cue: Outland Hurders is Jamaica’s first artisan cheesemakers. Local turophiles rejoiced when co-principals Gordon Dempster and Kristina Budhoo delighted the market with their experimental cheeses that are a homage to Jamaican history, culture and foodways. From their initial offerings — Jamaican Jack (a Jack-style cheese with roasted Scotch bonnet peppers) and Red Maroon (a Caerphilly-style cheese that is washed with Red Label wine and sorrel) — Outland Hurders now boasts an Alpine-style cheese (yes, like Gruyere) with local edible flowers pressed into the rind. It’s aptly named Williamsfield Wildflower. Though cheese is the brand’s bread and butter, they also sell grazing boxes, cheese knives and boards, and offer farm tours.

Consumer demands are constantly evolving, and food purveyors continuously test and develop new products to meet these needs. Meeting the needs of those who want a bit of kick in their butter is Uncle Ducky’s principal Robin Perkins. Some customers use the brand’s Scotch bonnet butter daily. While others highlight the product’s innovation by using it in baked goods.

Innovation runs in Perkins’ family. His wife Allison is the principal of Rummy Rum Cakes, whose delicious cakes and banana breads delight many. Perkins’ innovation was born from a need to bring something different to a party. She opted for a rum cake, and it was so well-received that it prompted her to start a business. Now offering coffee rum cakes, butter rum cakes, and banana bread, Perkins Rummy Rum Cakes brand delights customers across the island and abroad.

In 2013 Netty’s Farm principal Eileen Dunkley-Shim treated herself to 10 beehives. When most would opt for a vacation or a new wardrobe addition, Dunkley-Shim invested in herself and her business. Now the honey from those hives is used in her Likklebits granola and kombucha. With unique flavours such as mango-cayenne (granola), turmeric and ginger and passionfruit, ginger, and honey (kombucha) and consistently improving her recipes, Dunkley-Shim uses different technical innovations to create exceptional products.

A #pandemicpivot resulted in former entertainment execs Chelsea Wauchope and Amanda Mckellar creating Brie + Vino — a company that creates charcuterie experiences. Whether it’s grazing boxes or charcuterie boards, the Brie + Vino duo’s exquisite taste level elevates snacking allowing folks to have what would feel like a fine-dining experience at home. Tasked with creating a Jamaican-themed grazing board for the webinar, the duo presented pickled salt fish dip with plantain and banana chips; goat cheese encrusted with crushed cashews; Roast Meats salami and Rainforest smoked marlin; grater cake; mango bruschetta; cream cheese layered with Solomon Gundy and sun-dried tomatoes; and a papaya-pineapple salad. Yum! They have built a sustainable business from having a clear understanding of the needs of the marketplace. That, too, is innovation at work.

For Nella’s Sweet Potato Tendaronis innovator Onel Williams, necessity was the mother of invention. Williams’ son has eczema, which is exacerbated whenever he consumes wheat. It was necessary to place him on a reduced-wheat diet. However, Williams did not want his son to miss out on having some of his favourite foods, and came up with Jamaica’s first sweet potato pasta. Stefany Mathie saw room in the market for Jamaican-made pasta sauces and launched Somm Jamaican Pasta Sauces with innovative flavours such as creamy curry and creamy pineapple.

Nature My Therapy’s mission is to make the life-changing benefits of a plant-based diet accessible to as many people as possible. Made from 100% organic produce from small local farmers, company principal Danielle Thompson’s juices reinvigorate, cleanse at a cellular level, and allow busy consumers to easily consume nutrient-dense products while on the go. Also utilising 100% Jamaican products and no additives is chocolatier Nadine Burie whose artisan bean-to-bar Likkle More chocolates have wowed the most discerning palates on the island. With each bar looking like a work of art, Burie has independently created a business with multiple touchpoints, contributing to the revival of Jamaica’s chocolate industry.

Economists agree that a significant portion of a nation’s economic growth is generated by new ideas and innovation. With trends like veganism and gluten-free diets, the food industry has never been more innovative. But what’s even more exciting is that these innovations are coming from several different perspectives. Jamaican artisans and purveyors have a unique cultural influence that can elevate the humblest of products to something delightfully exotic. But to maintain the ongoing cycle of innovation in the local artisanal food and beverage manufacturing space, support for the artisans is needed. In other words, taste and applaud.

— Vaughn Stafford Gray

Corsi’s top four picks will be revealed on Thursday, July 15 during the (virtual) 21st staging of the Jamaica Observer Table Talk Food Awards.