Simons: 'Healthy' chips taking off

Wednesday, April 18, 2007

Visitors to last year's 9 Health Fair were the first people to taste Corazonas Heart-Healthy Tortilla Chips, the debut product from Corazonas Foods, a California-based company with Colorado roots.

Last year, Corazonas CEO Ramona Cappello had only recently left her Boulder job at Celestial Seasonings to start the new food company, which came out of a California healthy-food business incubator. Cappello decided Colorado's health-food-friendly atmosphere made it the best place to test-market the chips, which are made with fiber-rich whole oats and fortified with cholesterol-lowering plant sterols.

"We were just starting out, and we didn't have any distribution," said Corazonas vice president of sales Bob Gandert, who is based in Denver.

"The response we got was, 'This is great! Where can we get it?' And King Soopers told us they wanted it on their shelves as soon as possible."

The snack chips are now available at King Soopers and at Jamba Juice outlets nationwide. Later this month, they'll reach Front Range Sam's Club warehouses. Gandert said they're also set for national distribution later in the year at Wild Oats and Safeway.

So it's not like Gandert needs to return to the 9Health Fair in order to spread the word. Nevertheless, he'll be visiting locations through Sunday, passing out more than 60,000, 2-ounce bags of the new chips.

• Jennifer Brownell of Denver's Sprouts Extraordinaire wants everyone to know that her family's 18-year-old produce business still is producing broccoli sprouts - just not under the BroccoSprouts label.

"We wanted our independence," said Brownell, who added that she wanted to say "Colorado-grown" on her labels, an option that wasn't available under the auspices of Maryland-based Brassica.

Sprouts Extraordinaire broke away in October, and spent much of the winter remodeling its hydroponic growing facility.

"The feedback from our customers was that they liked to buy Colorado-grown produce, and we wanted to be clearly aligned with local growers," Brownell said.

Besides broccoli sprouts, Sprouts Extraordinaire products include radish and clover sprouts, certified organic alfalfa and mung bean sprouts, sunflower seeds, broccoli, garlic, lentils, peas, onions, shallots and wheat grass.

Sprouts Extraordinaire products are sold at Albertson's, King Soopers, Safeway, Wild Oats and Whole Foods.

Have a tip on a new food product or grocery trend? Contact Janet Simons at simonsj@RockyMountainNews.com, 303-954-2547.