Thread: Many tastes of Mexico at housewares show.

Many tastes of Mexico
HOUSEWARES SHOW | Goods for U.S. Hispanic kitchens showcased

March 17, 2008
BY CHERYL V. JACKSON cjackson@suntimes.com
Businesses want to make the molinillo, chocalatera and caldero less foreign to the U.S. kitchen.

New York-based Lifetime Brands Inc. is pushing Vasconia, which makes the Mexican cookware. Lifetime bought a 30 percent stake in the company last year.

» Click to enlarge image Gabriela Hernandez checks out aluminum pots from Vasconia, the top-selling brand in Mexico, at the International Home and Housewares Show at McCormick Place on Sunday. The company?s products will hit store shelves this summer.
(Al Podgorski/Sun-Times)



Lifetime is among several companies exhibiting kitchenware lines aimed at U.S. Hispanic consumers during the International Home and Housewares Show, which opened Sunday at McCormick Place and runs through Tuesday. It is closed to the public.

Companies have recognized that profits can be cooked up by being in U.S. kitchens to serve a growing Hispanic population that wants the tools to prepare authentic cultural cuisines.

Those products include the molinillo, a whisk mixer; the chocalatera, an aluminum pitcher used to make hot chocolate, and the standard caldero, a large pot.

"That's how we make our rice and our black beans," said Alfonso Marimon, territory manager for Miami-based MBR Industries Inc., which handles Bene Casa cookware brand that began stepping up distribution in the Chicago area about 18 months ago. "Makes you speak Spanish."

About 45 million Hispanics made up 14.7 percent of the U.S. population in 2006. About 70 percent of those are of Mexican descent.

The top-selling brand in Mexico, Vasconia, will hit U.S. stores this summer.

"The U.S. Hispanic consumer has a very limited assortment to choose from in terms of Hispanic products," Lifetime spokeswoman Lisa Lochner said.

Lifetime's consumer research indicates Mexican-American women prefer Hispanic-branded cookware to non-Hispanic-branded cookware.

Nashville-based Megatrade International Inc. this year expands a line of food containers it began last year aimed at the Hispanic market.

The kits include separate containers that are designed for, among other, field and construction workers from Mexico who transport tortillas and rice and beans.

"Here, Mexicans don't have that food available to them at their work sites," said Tom Baird, Mega's vice president of international sales.

Its Mega Cocina cookware business, introduced in 2006, accounts for about 15 percent of the 23-year-old company's sales.

http://www.suntimes.com/business/846139 ... 7.article#

Lifetime's consumer research indicates Mexican-American women prefer Hispanic-branded cookware to non-Hispanic-branded cookware.

The racism never stops.

The racism never stops.

Exactly what I thought. Yet we're told to embrace it all, it's a global world....shameful to be a nativist.....yet it's fine for everyone else. Thing is I wonder if they could tell the difference between a Mexican made product and an American one if it didn't have a Mexican name on it.

"That's how we make our rice and our black beans," said Alfonso Marimon, territory manager for Miami-based MBR Industries Inc., which handles Bene Casa cookware brand that began stepping up distribution in the Chicago area about 18 months ago. "Makes you speak Spanish."

What an endorsement in the United States.

"For an American citizen to vote as a German-American, an Irish-American, or an English-American, is to be a traitor to American institutions; and those hyphenated Americans who terrorize American politicians by threats of the foreign vote are engaged in treason to the American Republic." -- Theodore Roosevelt