SPECIALTY FOODS

Taranaki Daily News, 2 April 1934, Page 16

SPECIALTY FOODS

NEW ZEALAND OPPORTUNITY. UNITED STATES MARKET. “Your costs of production may be such as to make it difficult to sell these products overseas, but on the other hand you must remember that the United States buys great quantities'of sausages each year from Germany, cheese from Switzerland, and speciality food products from many other countries. Speciality food products should develop into a real big business here, though it may require time to study.” These remarks were made by Mr. J. David Larson, trade counsellor in the Pacific for the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce, when discussing with a Christchurch reporter the possibilities of marketing such delicacies as whitebait and toheroa soup on the Pacific Coast of the United States. Mr. Larson thinks that there is a market on the Pacific Coast for a number of speciality foods packed and sold in New Zealand, but they must be attractively packed and pushed. “It has been my observation that the boys here, and in Australia too, are rather inclined to wait for the business to come to them,” he said. “You folks may make the best toheroa soup in the doggone world, but that’s no use unless you can sell it.” Already Mr. Larson has made two visits to New Zealand in the course of a survey of reciprocal trade opportunities between Southern California and the Antipodes, and his work in connection with speciality food products has taken the practical form of establishing communication between canning firms in the Dominion and merchants on the Pacific Coast. Acting in co-operation' with the Department of Industries and Commerce he has furnished the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce with a list of speciality foods which New Zealand can supply, and for which a demand may be created in California. This has been distributed to firms in America which might be interested in handling these products! together with a list of New Zealand firms which are anxious to find a market for such things as toheroa soup, frozen crayfish tails, canned whitebait and crayfish, preserved crayfish in glass, canned oysters and canned lamb and sheep tongues.