Custom, Handmade Appetizers Offer Consistent Quality

By L.L.M. Pilch

Mise en place: Two chefs, two coasts and the highest quality ingredients. Hand toss with meticulous care and voila! Meet made to order hors d’ouvres from Gourmet Foods Inc.

In business since 1993, the bicoastal luxury food manufacturer serves international clients such as hotels, airlines, high-end caterers and special events, including the U.S. Open, with custom made foodstuffs from sushi and pates to seafood and sausages.

“Ours is a hand-made product,” says Alfred Fuchs, managing partner of Gourmet Foods on the East coast. “Absolutely no machinery is involved and because we have the capability to do small quantities, we can pick and choose our ingredients,” he says.

Serve It Up
With offices in New Jersey, as well as California, Phoenix, Las Vegas and Dallas, Fuchs and Heinz Naef, his partner on the West coast, have grown Gourmet Foods into a multi-million company with 350 employees.

Naef and Fuchs met in Los Angeles when both were chefs. Fuchs, who is Swiss-German and grew up along the Rhine, had a love of travel and felt a profession in the hospitality industry would satisfy that desire. He has cooked in Hawaii, California and Greece. “Working in small restaurants and large hotels gave me enormous experience in different cuisines,” says Fuchs.

Combined with the founders own multicultural experiences, Gourmet Food’s staff and employees bring their own diversity to the company’s menus. For example, choices include crab cakes, Shiu mai, Dim sum, Filo and Puff pastry items, such as Filo Purse with wild mushroom ragout, mini Wellingtons and Grilled Vegetable en croute.
“Our dedicated staff are from areas as far flung as Vietnam or Latin America,” says Fuchs, with an eye for food detail. “Clearly a canapé requires detail.”

Inspiration & Ingredients
In addition to employee’s suggestions and experiences, menu inspiration comes from customer feedback. “We have an R&D staff in Los Angeles where we get together quarterly to discuss new items,” says Fuchs. “We also watch trends on both coasts and brainstorm with management, production, chefs, sales managers, operation managers, quality control and even our front office,” he says. “Even airlines need new suggestions regularly so we come up with something within their guidelines.”
Gourmet Foods chooses only high quality, fresh ingredients. For example, baby carrots come straight from farms in California, while all buttered puff pastry is imported from France. ?”If there is a special request, such as vegan, we would scout for margarine and work with that,” says Fuchs.

The exclusive produce supplier to Gourmet Foods on the East coast for the past eight years is Ward Brothers Produce, run by 3rd generation purveyor Al Ward and operating out of Hunts Point Terminal in New Jersey for 30 years. Ward Brothers sources daily from the market, which is supplied by U.S. growers and specialty farmers, and occasionally ships in lighter weight produce, such as herbs and mini vegetables, direct from California. “We are as customer driven as Gourmet Foods and bring them the unique products they require,” says Ward. “We look for quality first, then size, depending on application and eye appeal.”

Seafood is sourced from a Japanese American seafood company clearly emphasizing freshness, particularly for the exacting standards of sushi-grade fish. According to Fuchs, “sushi is what’s hot” on the East coast.

The East coast office specializes in vegetables and seafood, while the West coast production handles meats. Why? Because USDA inspections are handled out west, while the FDA monitors east coast seafood inspections. “We don’t have the capability to do meat dishes here in New Jersey,” says Fuchs, “but we are thinking about this down the road. Right now it makes more sense to keep at full capacity with vegetarian and seafood specialties.

The company is focused on fresh ingredients and would not utilize something out of season, nor does it do desserts. “We are top quality from production to delivery,” says Fuchs. “We make menus to specification, so no production if there is no order.”

Future Menus
Though airlines represent a fair amount of business for Gourmet Foods, September 11 put a crimp on domestic airline business more than international. Fortunately the company did not have to cut staff. “We create items for the Concorde , Air France and other international first and business class airlines,” says Fuchs, “so the impact on us wasn’t that strong. We even see domestic lines, like Air Canada, coming back as they put food on the plane again in order to entice customers,” he says.

The company aggressively services local clients, such as Hershey Park and Atlantic City casinos on the East coast, and has plans to move to a larger facility and perhaps open a satellite office in Washington, D.C. to pick up some of the convention and political event business.

“We are also trying to do some retail business in terms of a line of pates to market to upscale retail stores,” says Fuchs. “We are working on this project out of our Los Angeles office and have packaging ready to go, while we get the sales team together to launch, maybe in the next six months.”

What’s Hot?
Fuchs says his number one seller is a Potsticker, a Shitake mushroom Gyoza, which is somewhat unusual because they are typically made with beef, chicken or seafood.

One might be tempted to ask how such haute cuisine can be produced on a large scale in a production facility, but although many chefs would welcome the space and labor to produce such consistency themselves, they simply can’t manage the overhead expense. “Our items are prepared as well as if the chef made it themselves because we offer consistent, high quality, handmade products,” says Fuchs. And for the busy chef, who unexpectedly must serve a celebrity dinner party walking in at 11:30 pm, if continuity of product on the table is important, economics might not even matter.

Clearly Fuchs adores food and the people surrounding it. “This business allows me to deal with many different people,” he says, “but you have to like planning, tasting and testing to get the product you want.” Gourmet Foods Inc. clients get exactly what they want.

Try this Great Recipe from Gourmet Foods, Inc.
Grilled Vegetable Terrine