Combine this with the hectic schedule and relative wealth of today's consumers and the result is more people eating in restaurants or bringing prepared food home, where they become exposed to new ethnic food options and develop a comfort level with them. For these consumers, ethnic foods provide adventure and evoke memories of vacations to exotic locations. Because it's often difficult to create from scratch the flavors of these ethnic foods, prepared foods such as spices, dried soup and rice mixes, and frozen appetizers and entrees are among the strongest selling ethnic food products. From sauces to sushi, condiments to couscous, today's consumers can tour the world's foods while wheeling their way through grocery store aisles. Among the hot products from the Mediterranean Rim are pastas and pasta sauces, fresh garlic and cilantro.
Caribbean cuisine includes chilies, curry cloves and ginger, as well as goat and pork.
And popular from the Pacific Rim are condiments, sauces, noodles, curry and sushi. In the U.S., many manufacturers such as General Mills, ConAgra, Quaker Oats and Hormel Foods now are offering ethnic food products. Hormel acquired House of Tsang in 1992, joined forces with Patak Spices to form Patak's Foods USA in 1995, and also formed a licensing agreement with ChiChi's and a joint venture with Grupo Herdez, one of Mexico's largest producers of authentic Mexican food products. As consumption of international foods has risen at home and in take-out, many grocery stores, such as Treasure Island in Chicago, are responding with an entire aisle dedicated to imported ethnic foods. All rights reserved.