Food innovation seen as job creator

FOOD FOR THOUGHT: Jamie Schapiro is vice president of marketing at Galaxy Nutritional Foods, a Rhode Island firm that is focusing on special dietary needs and food allergies. That segment of the food-manufacturing industry, according to the company’s CEO, is “exploding in the U.S.” / PBN PHOTO/TRACY JENKINS
FOOD FOR THOUGHT: Jamie Schapiro is vice president of marketing at Galaxy Nutritional Foods, a Rhode Island firm that is focusing on special dietary needs and food allergies. That segment of the food-manufacturing industry, according to the company’s CEO, is “exploding in the U.S.” / PBN PHOTO/TRACY JENKINS

Rhode Island is renowned for its chefs and its place in the history of American manufacturing, yet only sporadically have food and factories come together on a large scale in the Ocean State.
That could change, however, as food science, specialty diets and medical nutrition become bigger parts of people’s lives and the economy.
As local business and community leaders look for new opportunities for job growth, many see food manufacturing, and all of the potential enterprises connected to it, as a prime candidate.
“The whole food-innovation economy has great promise because there is a repository of talent here that crosses the intersections of design, health, wellness and culinary,” said Greater Providence Chamber of Commerce President Laurie White. “There is great potential to grow food as an industry.”
While Rhode Island can’t boast inexpensive land or labor like food-processing hubs in the South and Midwest, it does have the culinary talent, academic research and industry heavyweights to form the core of a food cluster.
The academic end includes the cooking and nutrition students at Johnson & Wales University, the food scientists at the University of Rhode Island, medical researchers at Brown University and industrial designers at Rhode Island School of Design.
On the industry side, Rhode Island is home to retail pharmacy giant CVS Caremark Corp., the largest pharmacy chain in the country, and United Natural Foods Inc., the largest American distributor of specialty and natural food products.
While the success of those companies won’t necessarily rub off on others, it can result in spinoffs, opportunities for suppliers and advantages for firms next door.
“It is an advantage to be close to UNFI for the ease of communications,” said Rick Antonelli, CEO of Galaxy Nutritional Foods Inc., a leading manufacturer of lactose-and dairy-free cheese substitutes headquartered in North Kingstown. “We have excellent relationships with them on products. Especially for the rebrand we did, it was convenient having their office so close.” Before coming to Galaxy, Antonelli was chief operating officer and president of distribution at UNFI, headquartered in the American Locomotive Works complex in Providence.
Unlike some more traditional processed foods, products like Galaxy’s cheese substitutes, now sold under the brand GoVeggie!, require significant research and development.
So while Galaxy does not manufacture or pack any of its GoVeggie! foods in Rhode Island, it employs food scientists in the state, as well as managers.
And foods for special diets, which deal with everything from allergies and gluten intolerance to more serious medical conditions, are becoming a larger part of the processed-food market each year.
“This company is all about special dietary needs and food allergies, which are exploding in the U.S.,” Antonelli said.
The more medical side of special diets is the focus of the Food Innovation Nexus, a group launched this month to connect local colleges, health care entrepreneurs and culinary professionals to build a food-industry cluster.
Kenneth Levy, senior vice president of special projects at JWU and co-founder of the Food Innovation Nexus, said Rhode Island’s restaurant and hospitality cluster is well-developed, but merging it with the medical cluster hasn’t been properly tried yet.
“When you take the food cluster and the medical cluster and combine the two, it has always been my contention … that the result is an excellent way to create new revenue,” Levy said. “What we are looking to do is develop an independent research and design-driven product-development organization, so we can innovate at the intersection of healthy food and medicine.”
In addition to special diets, the food-medicine intersection includes products providing a nutritional alternative to pharmaceuticals and using the latest science in preserving brain health. The food economy is also one of four focus areas of the Rally Rhode Island project started by Betaspring co-founder Allan Tear and funded by the Rhode Island Foundation.
Rally Rhode Island is also forming entrepreneurship groups in sectors that include design, social ventures and advanced manufacturing, to generate new ideas, relationships and experiments.
Some examples of the local companies operating in the food-manufacturing or innovation space include soup-maker Blount Fine Foods, prenatal vitamin drink-maker Premama, prosciutto and pork-product maker Daniele Inc., pasta maker Venda Ravioli and child-nutrition nonprofit Edesia Global. That doesn’t include the numerous beverage companies and smaller food brands or the large aquaculture industry in Washington County.
At the Rhode Island Foundation’s latest series of Make It Happen forums for generating economic strategies, food innovation was a major discussion point.
In one session, Davide Dukcevich, co-owner of Daniele Inc., which recently invested in a new $16 million prosciutto factory, said Rhode Island could become the “Silicon Valley of food.”
But the objectives of the food manufacturers and nonfood manufacturers seemed to diverge and the foundation created a separate food-driven group, including agriculture, aquaculture, processed-food production, warehousing and distribution, breweries and distilleries.
“We have this really rich group of people who are exporting products and working in the supply chain,” said Jessica David, vice president of strategy and public affairs at the foundation. “Providence is known for food and we have done a really good job of leveraging that on the hospitality side. Now more is happening on the production and manufacturing product side.” •

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