A longtime staple of The Savory Pantry, Elki Gourmet occupies alot of real estate on our store shelves! We caught up with Giovanna Norde to get a peek behind the scenes of one of our favorite brands.
Elki is a family owned business, and that familial culture seems to reverberate throughout the company! Your customer service and support is extraordinary. How do you manage to maintain that personal touch in the very competitive world of specialty foods? Thank you so much, customer service is very important to all of us at Elki. We are known industry wide for our hands on customer service, something that is a continual priority for us. We know that we are celebrating our 30th anniversary this year because of our wonderful customers! We are honored that they continually look to ELKI for their specialty food needs, we never take that lightly.
What has been your biggest challenge in bringing your products to market? Our biggest challenge is fine tuning our new products so that they have the perfect balance of texture, color and layering of flavors. It always takes a little longer to get new products to market, we won’t introduce anything until it is absolutely perfect!
What is it about what you do that you love the most? I love the specialty food industry, I get to work with the most wonderful customers, yourself at the top of that list! No two days are the same and the excitement when introducing new products to the market is the best!!
What is your favorite Elki product and your most creative way of using it? Oh boy, that’s a tough one, I have several “favorites”. Our new Caramelized Sweet Onion & Balsamic Crostini Spread is wonderful. We sourced the onions from Belgium for that perfect taste and consistency, it made all the difference in the world. I use it as a base on a flatbread and then top it with thinly sliced fresh pears and goat cheese. I pop it in the oven and baked it until the cheese is softened. It is amazing! I’ve made some fantastic pasta dishes by using a combination of ELKI products. I’ve used the bruschetta’s with the tapenades mixed with hot pasta and topped with fresh herbs and cheeses, thinned our whipped mustards with olive oil to make salad dressings. The combinations are truly endless, I have so much fun experimenting!
What is your mostmemorable meal? Being in the specialty food industry we get to travel to some of the best cities and dine at the greatest restaurants, as a result I have been fortunate to have several memorable meals. I love getting fresh sushi as that is something I don’t make at home.
What is your favorite food or food trend? I personally love the shelf stable “open and eat” trend that we are seeing more and more of. I love that I can get high quality products in a jar ready to use for a quick meal or an appetizer with absolutely no prep work involved. By the time I go to the store and buy all the products to make one of our bruschetta’s or pesto I would spend a lot of money and then have to go home and spend more time making it.
What is your biggest (food) guilty pleasure? Being a total “foodie” I have several! I love the savory flavor profiles, flatbread pizzas are one of my favorites. I’ve been using our new Crostini Spreads and adding different artisan cheese’s and our grilled vegetables as toppings, delish! Any of our pestos, bruschettas, tapenades, grilled vegetables and crostini spreads can be used with flatbreads and pasta, experimenting is half the fun!
What's next for Elki? We have several exciting things “in the hopper” so to speak!!! We will continue on our path of creating the finest products with high quality ingredients for our loyal customers!
