The Couturier brand has been known to the American market for the past two decades, but this year there are exciting developments, and Alain Foster, President of Couturier North America, LLC stopped by Restaurant Daily News to tell us more about those.
RDN: Tell our readers what you've been up to in the past year.
AF: We have created a new subsidiary, Couturier North America, which we just started in April, 2011. In addition, we've opened a new plant, the Hudson Valley Creamery, in Hudson, New York in April 2012. Both of these companies are owned by our French parent, Eurial, which is a very large co-op for both goat's milk and cow's milk.
For more information, visit Couturier in booth 9576 during the NRA Show. French chef Gregory Corman will be presenting new concepts for using goat cheese in cooking. You can also watch some videos with Chef Corman on www.iqf-solutions.com/en/. To reach Couturier after the show, call 518-851-2570, visit www.couturierna.com or email [email protected].
RDN: How is this going to change your business?
AF: As you already know, Couturier North America has operated in the U.S. for the past 20 years. People here will be familiar with the long-shelf-life vacuum-pack product that we pioneered and sold to importers under the Couturier brand name.
Now we have a 41,000 square foot facility with lots of room for growth to produce fresh goat cheese . This will help us to give better service to the U.S. market and to be able to give more flexibility in turnaround times. Where before it took us seven weeks to receive product from Europe, now we are able to supply fresh goat cheeses within two weeks from order. This is very important to our foodservice market.
RDN: Does the investment in this new facility reflect Eurial's confidence in the strength of the U.S. market for goat cheese?
AF: Absolutely. We’re seeing goat cheese on more and more American restaurant menus, often prompted by customers who are concerned about their health. Goat cheese has lower cholesterol than cow's milk. Chefs like goat cheese because it offers a lot of flexibility – you can use it on a pizza, in a sandwich, on salads. In fact, French chef Gregory Corman will be in our booth, 9576, during the show to demonstrate new concepts for cooking with goat cheese, so you can expand your repertoire even more.
This all helps to explain why the category has grown by 18.5 percent for the deli channel in 2011. We estimate that a lot of our new growth will be coming from the foodservice market, which currently represents about 60 percent of the American goat cheese market.
RDN: How will we recognize your Couturier product in the marketplace?
AF: Our major food service brand here is called Capra, which is a brand already known for our honey goat cheese. We are now developing the rest of the line. Capra is a very smooth and creamy goat cheese, and it's available in 2.2-pound logs, 10.5-ounce logs, a 4-pound tub and in a 2-pound package of goat cheese crumbles. Our goat cheese crumbles have bigger bite sizes than other crumbles, so they look very good on a salad, for instance.
We also offer a line of individually quick-frozen, IQF, cheeses that come from France and are available through our distribution company. These cheeses come in a number of varieties of both cow's milk and goat's milk cheeses in portion-controlled packaging, so that they're very fast and easy to use.
Altogether, Couturier now offers to the foodservice market the opportunity to provide fresh goat cheese products from Hudson, N.Y., plus an imported French product, both from the same warehouse in New Jersey.
Comments