Hospitality : Innovation + Job News

A Washington, D.C., nonprofit that certifies restaurants that offer diners healthful and sustainable foods is expanding to Baltimore.
 
The United States Healthful Food Council (USHFC) has certified its first restaurant in the Baltimore area, Zia’s Café in Towson, and will certify up to 10 Baltimore-area locations as part of its continuing expansion, says the food council’s Director of Marketing Chris Stemp.


Founded in 2011, the council offers the Responsible Epicurean and Agricultural Leadership (REAL) certification program. It is a points-based nutrition and sustainable best practices certification similar to  the United States Green Building Council’s LEED program.
 
The food council has certified more than 30 dining establishments in D.C. via its pilot program, as well as four national corporate cafes, including Google in San Francisco. Partnerships with sites like OpenTable allow diners to search for REAL restaurants.

The food council received the majority of its undisclosed funding from one individual, as well as funding from its founding corporate sponsor, Fortessa Tableware Solutions. A three-year grant from the state of Tennessee allows expansion into the state. Establishments do pay a small fee for certifications.

To date, the council has not applied for funding from Baltimore-area investors or for city grants.

“Baltimore is a great city with a thriving food scene,” Stemp says. “DC was our pilot city and we were very successful, which gives credibility in Baltimore; many of the chefs and restaurant owners know each other.”

The food council currently has a registered dietician in Baltimore and a member of its panel of experts who helps identify potential REAL restaurants. Once a core group of Baltimore-area restaurants are established, the food council plans to hire a city manager to aid Baltimore operations. The food council currently employs 11. 

Writer: Renee Beck
Source: Chris Stemp, United States Healthful Food Council

Canton online food ordering company OrderUp is adding more franchises to its current 14 as the company prepares to take a bigger bite of the $188 billion quick-service food industry. The company will be spending an initial $1.5 million to $2 million this year to support that initiative, says CEO Chris Jeffery.

The company is currently working with new franchise owners to launch in several new markets over the next few months. Jeffery says franchise units generally have a population of about 100,000, and include 200 to 400 restaurants.

OrderUp has identified thousands of units around the country that meet what Jeffery calls, “benchmarks for growth.” With OrderUp’s digital franchise model, the initial franchise fee is $32,500.

Many franchisees buy multiple units. Jeffery cites Norfolk, Va., as an example of a franchisee that bought two units that cover the city’s downtown area.

OrderUp facilitates local online meal orders for delivery or pick-up. OrderUp runs the Baltimore market, where residents can order from 65 restaurants, including the Cross Street Kabob House, Grilled Cheese & Co. and Ultimate Pizza. The company is starting to expand into Baltimore County.

Chris Jeffery and Jason Kwicien cofounded OrderUp in 2009, when they saw the growing consumer demand for an online food delivery service that aggregated the menus of a fragmented restaurant industry.  In December 2012, OrderUp adopted a new business model to establish its own national online food delivery brand selling franchise units to entrepreneurs in local markets across the country.

“OrderUp is the liaison between the restaurant and the consumer,” Jeffery says.

In addition to expanding its franchise reach, OrderUp this year is updating its technology platform and providing franchisees with training and support in using social media tools.

Jeffery says OrderUp has doubled revenue in 2013, with 36 months of straight growth.

OrderUp is privately financed. The company has 28 employees, of whom 16 work from its Canton headquarters. The company is looking to hire three staffers in digital marketing and support.
 
Source: Chris Jeffery, OrderUp
Writer: Barbara Pash

Friends & Farms last month launched two pickup sites in Baltimore, in Roland Park and Little Italy. The Columbia-based alternative food provider is starting with 30 customers at the new locations but expects to increase that number and to add additional pickup sites in the future.
 
“We knew there was a community in the city for us,”  says director of marketing Regina McCarthy, who conducted a marketing campaign with an emphasis on social media before the Baltimore launch.
 
“We picked those sites because they are central and north of downtown,” says McCarthy,  “and also because we are working with people who understand what we're doing.”
 
The Baltimore pickup sites are at the Gilman School, at 5407 Roland Ave. and 210 South Central Ave, at Stratford University.

Friends & Farms sells weekly baskets of fresh, locally-grown produce and other items year-round. Customers pick up their baskets at designated sites on designated days. Since its founding last year, the company has grown from three sites to seven and from 30 customers to over 250. Sites are located in Anne Arundel, Baltimore and Howard counties besides Baltimore. It's one of several companies that are delivering farm-fresh produce and meat. 
 
McCarthy says that co-founders Philip Gottwals and Tim Hosking not only wanted to offer an alternative food system to consumers but to give farmers financial security. Before the growing season, company staffers meet with about 70 local farmers to plan crops for the baskets. The company also works with local bakeries, creameries, meat processors, fishermen and people who make honey and preserves.
 
Weekly baskets vary in size: one-person at $40 per week, two-person at $51 per week and four-person at $76 per week. A vegetarian basket runs $55 per week. New this year are gluten-free and dairy-free options.
 
Each basket contains enough food for one week, including  fresh produce,  two proteins (fish, poultry, meat or vegetarian),  bread and dairy. Food selection varies with the seasons. The company sends customers a weekly newsletter with recipes and updates on the farmers, and sponsors a yearly tour of the farms.

Friends & Farms has a staff of nine, and may be hiring additional staffers this fall.

 
Source: Regina McCarthy, Friends &Farms
Writer: Barbara Pash
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Baltimore’s Taharka Bros. Ice Cream is launching a Kickstarter campaign June 12 to raise $35,000 for their new “Vehicle for Change” food truck. And a new movie by Oscar-nominated directors will document their effort in a new, yet-to-be named movie that highlights businesses that support social change.
 
“We don’t have a retail shop and a lot of people ask us to have a retail shop or ask how to get our ice cream,” Taharka CEO De'Von Brown says. “So this is a way for us to reach our audience, to have something that’s out in the community.”
 
Taharka Bros. serve up more than just the typical cookies and cream ice cream flavors. They serve what they call “food for thought,” flavors based on social movements. Their goal is to spread the message of inspiring movements and people in history through ice cream, such as a flavor named after Langston Hughes’ poem, “A Dream Deferred.”
 
Taharka has had a presence at festivals such as the Baltimore Book Festival and Artscape. They have also held events at their factory in Hampden, Baltimore and their products are available at over 65 restaurants in Maryland, Washington, D.C., and Virginia. But a food truck will allow it to make appearances at more festivals, corporate events and colleges.
 
“Hopefully the food truck will be a way to reach people in terms of a physical one-to-one type of outreach. It’s a community outreach vehicle,” Taharka Creative Director Darius Wilmore says.
 
Rachel Grady and Heidi Ewing, who directed “Detropia” and “The Boys of Baraka,” have just wrapped up filming of a yet-to-be named movie on Taharka’s Kickstarter campaign. The movie will be featured at the Tribeca Film Festival next spring. The movie will also document Taharka’s collaboration with actress and comedienne Rain Pryor to craft a flavor named after her late father Richard Pryor, whose comedy often addressed class and race. The flavor is tentatively being titled “A Richard Pryor Moment.”

Writer: Daryl Hale
Sources: De'Von Brown and Darius Wilmore, Taharka Bros. 

As the summer tourist season gets underway, Fort McHenry last week added another attraction. For the first time, visitors to the national landmark located in South Baltimore will get the same view of the fort —from the water —  that inspired Francis Scott Key to write the national anthem during the War of 1812’s Battle of Baltimore.
 
The Fort McHenry Boat Tour: A Star-Spangled Experience runs every weekend, Saturday and Sunday, through Sept. 15 and is expected to return next summer. Seven tours depart daily, on the hour from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tours leave from the Fort McHenry Pier at 2400 East Fort Ave.
 
The 45-minute narrated tour recounts Key’s experience during September 1814. There are “special audio effects. We’ve got all the bells and whistles, bombs and music,” says Lisa Lynn Hansen, director of Friends of Fort McHenry, a nonprofit that works with the National Park Service to provide educational programs and living history activities.
 
The Friends of Fort McHenry, Fort McHenry National Monument & Historic Shrine, Living Classrooms Foundation and Baltimore Water Taxi partnered to create the tour, which is expected to be an annual summertime offering.

A $33,000 grant from the the state's Maryland War of 1812 Commission funded the effort. Students from the Baltimore School for the Arts narrate the tour while El-J Productions produced the script and sound effects. Baltimore Water Taxi is providing the 49-passenger boats under a charter arrangement with Friends of Fort McHenry.
 
Fort McHenry drew 850,000 visitors last year. Hansen says the main challenge in arranging the boat tour was setting the length of the tour.  “We didn’t want to take them out on the water too long. They’ve come to tour the fort and this is an add-on,” she says.
 
Friends also wanted to make the boat tour affordable. Visitors can walk around the grounds of the fort for free. A tour of the fort costs $7 per adult, children under age 16 are free. The boat tour costs $10 per adult (age 11 and up) and $5 per child (ages 3 to 10). Tickets are sold at dockside on a first-come, first-serve basis.
 
Source: Lisa Lynn Hansen, Friends of Fort McHenry
Writer: Barbara Pash

Baltimore County's Roseda Beef expects to hit $5 million in sales this year thanks to the expanded distribution of Ripken Gourmet Burgers.

Named after baseball’s Hall of Fame and former Baltimore Orioles baseball star Cal Ripken Jr., the burgers will help bring in an extra $2 million in sales, says Mike Brannon, vice president of Roseda Beef. The number of outlets for the burgers nearly doubled in one year, from 173 stores last year, when the product was originally introduced, to more than 400 stores last month.

Located at Roseda Black Angus Farm in northern Baltimore County's Monkton, Roseda Beef makes and markets the frozen and boxed burgers. Roseda Beef is part of Roseda Black Angus Farm and Old Line Custom Meat Co., a meat processor located in a 17,000-square-foot plant at 1600 South Monroe St. in Southwest Baltimore. 
 
Brannon says the Ripken burgers, priced at $10 per box for four six-ounce patties, is a first for the company. “It’s a big undertaking, our first pre-packed, co-branded product,” he says.
 
Roseda Beef sells fresh meat under its own name to restaurants and grocery stores like Graul’s Market, a local chain. “We raise cattle and sell strip and tenderloin. But selling the ground beef is a challenge. The Ripken burgers enable us to sell more of the middle meat,” says Brannon.
 
Roseda Beef and Ripken signed the deal in 2012. A portion of sales goes to Ripken himself and to the Cal Ripken Sr. Foundation. Ahold USA’s Giant Food grocery chain  is the exclusive outlet for the product because, says Brannon, “Ripken had a relationship with Giant through his community baseball projects.”
 
Ripken burgers were originally sold in 173 Giant stores in Maryland and Washington, D.C. Sales were so strong that this spring the product was introduced into more than 200 stores in Pennsylvania, Virginia and West Virginia as well. In the latter two states, the stores operate under the name Martin’s Food Market. Brannon says there is a possibility of expanding to even more Ahold USA stores in the future.
 
Roseda hired the Florida-based Studio Spear to organize and conduct a social media and public relations campaign. The campaign kicks off this month, officially designated as National Hamburger Month and the start of the “grilling season,”  Brannon says.
 
Ripken is scheduled to promote the product through appearances at a Little League baseball clinic at his Aberdeen Stadium and an end-of-summer picnic to be held at the Roseda Black Angus Farm.
 
A contest for tickets to attend the picnic will be held this summer via Giant and promoted on the Ripken baseball website that becomes operational the end of this month.
 
Source: Mike Brannon, Roseda Beef
Writer: Barbara Pash

Baltimore's tourism bureau is expanding its free app for tourists and convention planners to new platforms and neighborhoods.

The 3-D app of the city, known as BaltimoreInSite, will be available free for Android devices and downloadable from Visit Baltimore's website by mid-2013. The app is currently available on the iPhone. Since it was launched last year, 60 people have downloaded the app. 

The app's map will cover about half the city by this summer and the rest by next year, says Brian Russell, integrated practice manager at Ayers Saint Gross Inc. The Baltimore architectural firm developed the app, which currently covers about one-fourth of the city. 

“We are applying video game technology to telling about the city in a unique way,” Russell says. 

Baltimore InSite now covers the Inner Harbor to Amtrak’s Penn Station, including Canton, Fort McHenry and Locust Point. Future coverage will extend to Station North Arts & Entertainment District and the Charles Street corridor along with major institutions and attractions like Johns Hopkins University, the Baltimore Museum of Art, the Maryland Zoo in Baltimore Zoo and M&T Bank Stadium. The app links to hotels, restaurants, retail and attractions that are Visit Baltimore members.
 
Visit Baltimore  CEO Tom Noonan says the app has several uses. Convention and hotel sales teams use it to show potential convention customers the layout of the city and its attractions. It is a media planning guide to find restaurants, caterers and venues. Tourists use the app to find attractions and walking tours.
 
Noonan says the app is an ongoing project.  The web version will link to other websites, and new buildings and attractions like Horseshoe Casino will be added as they open.
 
The app cost about $40,000 to develop, paid by Visit Baltimore and Ayers Saint Gross, which also contributed pro bono work to the project. 
 
Sources: Brian Russell, Ayers Saint Gross; Tom Noonan, Visit Baltimore
Writer: Barbara Pash

Bennett’s Curse Haunted House and Creepywoods Haunted Forest has put out a casting call for vampires and werewolves, ghoulies and ghosties and long-leggedy beasties and things that go bump in the night. The two Halloween attractions are hiring 100 seasonal workers.
 
Recognized by Top Haunts magazine as a star spooky attraction, Bennett's Curse Haunted House is located in Blobb’s Park, Jessup, and opens Sept. 21. Creepywoods, located at Huber’s Farm, Kingsville, opens Sept. 28. The former is hiring 60 part-time employees; the latter, 40 part-time employees. The casting calls attract numerous applicants, some of whom arrive wearing costumes and makeup.
 
Jill Bennett is co-owner with her husband, Allan Bennett, of the two attractions. The Haunted House, now in its 12^th season, draws 20,000 to 30,000 people annually. Attendance depends on the weather and fall sports. ”If the teams are doing well, we won’t do well,” she said.  
 
The Haunted House is a walk-through event with three attractions set in a 22,500-square-foot medieval-looking building that is used only for Halloween. 
 
It is open weekends from Sept. 21 to Nov. 3, except for the Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday of Halloween Week, when it is also open. Admission fee is $30 per person. On Sept. 28 and 29, in partnership with the Maryland Food Bank, bring a can of food and the admission fee is reduced by $5. 

Creepywoods, now in its fourth season, is a one-third-mile walk in the woods that attracts 10,000 to 15,000 people. Bennett calls it  “classical Halloween,” with werewolves and witches. It is open weekends from September 28 to October 31. Admission fee is $20 per person.
 
Source: Jill Bennett, Bennett’s Curse Haunted House & Creepywoods Haunted Forest
Writer: Barbara Pash
 
 
 
 

Baltimore Helicopter Services this month added a second helicopter to its two-helicopter fleet. The executive charter service bought a twin-engine Bell 430 with a seating capacity of six, compared with its single-engine Bell 407s that hold five passengers.
 
Jessie Bowling, director of sales and marketing, says the $4 million Bell 430 was acquired in response to customer demand. From 2010 to 2011, sales increased by almost 65 percent, according to Bowling, who says that its Fortune 500 companies and other clients prefer twin-engine aircraft because they are faster and hold more passengers than single-engine aircraft.
 
Founded in 2004 by Dan Naor, the privately-financed Baltimore company has a “sister” company in Israel, Lahak Aviation, which runs a fleet of 10 helicopters and operates medevac, offshore and private helicopter transportation. In the U.S., only the latter is offered.
 
Baltimore Helicopter Services is located at Pier 7 Heliport in Canton, Maryland’s only public-use heliport. To charter the Bell 430 costs $3,500 per flight hour, all passengers included, plus an additional landing fee and pilot wait fee. The Bell 407 costs $1,800 per flight hour, plus additional fees. 
 
Bowling says the most popular executive charter is to New York City, slightly over an hour in flying time, where the company can make arrangements to land at three different heliports in Manhattan or at public airports. Other popular destinations are Atlantic City, N.J., universities (for meetings/conferences) and private residences.

 
Source: Jessie Bowling, Baltimore Helicopter Services
Writer: Barbara Pash
 
 

Chef’s Expressions Inc., one of Greater Baltimore’s largest catering firms, wants to win over younger customers.

The Timonium company has launched a new class of events called Social Expressions that targets 25-to-40-year-olds who might perceive that the caterer is too “elite” for them, Chef’s Expressions CEO Jerry Edwards says. Many brides and assistants to presidents are in this age range and hold the purse strings.

“We want to show them that we can do some cool events.”

Chef's Expressions, which pulls in $4.25 million in sales, caters weddings, corporate events, anniversary parties and other gatherings, hosts five-course wine dinners. But Edwards wants to get out the message that the caterer can offer cocktail parties and other informal events.

Edwards says the company will host one Social Expressions event every other month. The inaugural event will launch Aug. 23 with a tour around the Inner Harbor aboard Watermark Cruises' newest ship, the Raven. And aboard the Raven, guests can watch the Baltimore Ravens preseason game while sipping cocktails and eating mini corndogs, crab cakes with a Natty Boh tempura batter and chili served in a vodka shot glass. Advanced tickets cost $35 a piece and proceeds go to Living Classrooms Foundation.

Edwards says the events are for marketing purposes and he doesn’t expect to make money from these events, especially since the dollars generated will go toward a charity.

“We’re going after new clients. We want to reach out to a younger crowd. They may think that all we do are sit-down wine dinners.”

Writer: Julekha Dash
Source: Jerry Edwards, Chef's Expressions Inc. 

National Brewing Company is expanding production and moving into new markets for its craft beer National Premium after reviving the legendary Baltimore brand last year. 

Eastern Shore real estate agent Tim Miller founded the Easton company last year after buying the rights to the name and locating the recipe for the original beer. After going through several test batches, the beer went on sale in Maryland during Memorial Day weekend.
 
The company currently sells 2,000 cases per month in 500 liquor stores and bars in Maryland, says Miller, who is National Brewing's president. Miller's goal is to increase sales to 100,000 cases per year by the end of 2014 and to expand into restaurants as well. Next month, the beer is being introduced in Washington, D.C.
 
National Brewing Company has contracted with Coastal Brewery in Delaware to make the beer to its specifications. Coastal bottles and packages the beer for distribution. Because it does not have its own facility that requires investing in brewing space, equipment and warehouse that would be required, the company was privately financed for under $100,000, says Miller.
 
Matt Oczkowski, communications director of the four-person staff, says the company currently sells out its production. 
 
The company has a permit to sell beer in D.C. and is applying for permits to sell its product in Virginia, which it expects to obtain within the next three to five months, and in Delaware, within the next 12 to 15 months.
 
Oczkowski says the company intends to open its own brewery someday, possibly in Easton, although he did not have a timeframe for doing so. It also intends to broaden the variety of beer it makes beyond its current European-style pilsner.
 
“There is a boom in the craft beer industry. As fast as we are brewing it, we are selling out,” he says.
 
Sources: Tim Miller, Matt Oczkowski, National Brewing Company
Writer: Barbara Pash