My primary business is gift baskets and gourmet gift baskets are our biggest seller throughout the year.  So I wasn’t real surprised when I read in the November issue of Specialty Food Magazine that 73% of all consumers purchase specialty foods.  But I did wonder how most people could afford or would want to buy speciality foods on a regular basis.  As I continued to read the article and saw the list of “specialty foods”, it began to make sense. 

Those of us in the gift basket industry are constantly on the lookout for the new, the unique, the different–the kinds of foods that you can’t find in your local mall or grocery store– for our gift baskets.  We go to the Fancy Food Show and other trade shows and are shown the newest things for the season.  When we think of specialty foods, we think smoked salmon, basil tomato cheese, cranberry smoked sausage, gogi oatmeal cookies, wine wafers, etc.

But according to Specialty Food Magazine, and this has proven to be true with my own customers here in Flagstaff as well as nationwide, they don’t want the “weird kinds of foods that taste funny and are unfamiliar.”  To most folks, comfort foods are familiar foods–but they don’t have to be the grocery store variety either.

The list created as a result of a nationwide survey by Specialty Food Magazine includes:
Cold beverages (specialty water, tea, soda or others)
Coffee/tea
Chocolate
Cheese
Olive oil
Crackers
    …and so forth.  With the exception of the olive oil, these are our biggest sellers and the most requested in our gourmet gift baskets.  The article continued to explain that they considered specialty foods to be  ‘foods of premium quality, that are often made by small or local manufacturers or have exotic ethnic flavors — foods that are unique.”  And this is exactly what we at Creative Gifts To Go search for when we attend the trade shows.

And then there are those who just want the junk foods that they buy at the grocery stores–the cans of Coke, the bags of chips, M&M cookies, and candy bars.  Our college students, that are lonely and want to be reminded of home, are a great example of this group of folks.  And, yes, we provide those as well.  Our junk food baskets are near the top of the popularity scale for many.

So whether it’s junk foods or specialty gourmet foods, we never try to force our tastes on our customers.  We offer both and trust you to choose what is considered to be “comfort foods” by those you are sending the gift basket to.