This market is accelerating. Even so, there are still more potential new customers who want to see how the oils taste and how to use them. Designing ways for the customer to sample the product is a top priority in the specialty food business. Sometimes it's both at once, but regardless of the flavor, it's moved right to the top of the customer's grocery list. From the aficionado who attempts to research the 3,000 kinds of mustards to be found in the Mount Horeb Mustard Museum in Mount Horeb, Wisconsin, to the home cook who swears by one kind of mustard and orders it by the case, everyone's a mustard lover.
Projections are for sales to continue their meteoric rise.
Many specialty stores, according to Jennifer Strailey in The Gourmet Retailer , stock more than a hundred varieties of mustard and sell out of them all. Low fat, no cholesterol, only five calories per teaspoonful, terrific taste. Mustard is even older than vinegar and flavored oils, having been cultivated as early as 5000 B.C., says Michele Jordan in Natural Foods Merchandiser . Like oils and vinegars, mustards have roots in interesting cuisines throughout the world. Julie Applegate, a native of Florida and owner of Mrs. Dog's Products, Inc. in Grand Rapids, Michigan, says that her Disappearing Mustard evolved from a sauce for stone crab claws.