SuperSeedz

Bridging The Gap Between Snacking And Health

By Nancy K. Crevier

If pumpkin seeds make you think of the dried out, fibrous pellets your mother made from the jack-o-lantern to combat all of the Halloween candy, Kathie Rosenschein of Kathie’s Kitchen wants you to think again.

“These are not the seeds of your childhood,” said the creator of SuperSeedz dry-roasted pumpkin seed snacks. The soft and tender, flavorful seeds are “tasty, crunchy fun,” Ms Rosenschein said, and the reaction she receives from people sampling her products at demonstrations is a testament to that. “I love it when people try my seeds and discover they love them. It’s wild! It’s a good feeling,” she said.

QVC, the multinational shopping channel, agrees that SuperSeedz are super special, too. The four flavors of SuperSeedz — Original Curry, Salty, Somewhat Spicy, and Cinnamon & Sugar — have been selected as part of the February “Food of the Month” by QVC. “I sent my first sample to QVC in November of 2008 and again in February of 2009,” she said. In August and November of 2009, Ms Rosenschein was provided with two 6-minute segments on QVC to promote her product. “I just found out in January that we would be one of the snacks featured in February,” said Ms Rosenschein. “QVC gives me good reach; they have a lot of viewers. We’re ‘sowing the seeds” of recognition,” quipped the Newtown entrepreneur.

SuperSeedz will be part of the February “Snack Attack (20) Bag Nutorious, Sensible Foods and SuperSeedz Assortment,” which includes eight, one-ounce bags of the four SuperSeedz flavors, as well as samplings from Nutorious Nut Confections, and Sensible Foods.

SuperSeedz began in her Ridgefield kitchen in 2003, developed as a novel salad ingredient. “I wanted something different, so I made these curried pumpkin seeds. I’ve always loved food, and have always loved to cook and bake from scratch, and play around in the kitchen,” said Ms Rosenthal.

She was additionally inspired to create the healthy snack in response to one of pet peeves: “There are so many products out there that are unhealthy.” As a parent, she had always tried to provide her own children with good options for snacking, and was not averse to sneaking something healthy into their diet. Then she discovered that her children (three daughters and two sons) and their friends would devour the flavorful pumpkin seeds.

“I brought them to parties and people would ask where they could buy them. Enough people asked that I decided in 2004 to sell them,” said Ms Rosenschein. “The name for them just came into my head. I like to play with words, and I think we ‘supercede’ all other seeds. This is a snack food that tastes like junk food, but is good for you. It’s a great source of magnesium and zinc, as well as protein and iron,” said Ms Rosenschein, “and it tastes good. The Cinnamon & Sugar is great in yogurt, or as a cereal or dessert topping.”

By the time she moved to Newtown in 2005, she had moved beyond her original fair and farmers’ market venues, developed three additional flavors, found several businesses willing to carry SuperSeedz, and was roasting and packaging them at licensed kitchens from which she rented space. In late 2008, she began renting space at a facility in Poughkeepsie, N.Y.

What began as a cottage industry producing cups of flavorful snacks has grown into a business producing hundreds of bags for distribution in the region and nationally. While most of her business is local, she has had customers from outside New England ask her to get the product into a store in their area. Currently, she ships to stores in California, Wyoming, Oklahoma, and Florida to accommodate SuperSeedz aficionados.

Thousands of pounds of raw pumpkin seeds are roasted and flavored by Ms Rosenschein and a small staff each month, and packaged in six-ounce bags on site at the Poughkeepsie plant. Two-ounce bags of SuperSeedz are packaged off-site for distribution to special markets. “We just roasted 5,000 pounds of seeds for QVC and packaged them in 160,000 one-ounce bags. It was intense,” she remarked.

In 2007, SuperSeedz “Salty” flavor won the National Gallo Family Vineyards Gold Medal Competition in the fruit and vegetable division, as well as the Connecticut Specialty Foods Competition. In 2008, SuperSeedz won the NIBBLE Outstanding Artisan Award from The Nibble Specialty Food Magazine.

Ms Rosenschein is currently is working on a new look for SuperSeedz packaging, and two new flavors, Mocha and Super Spicy. She is also promoting new tag lines, like “Bridging the gap between snacking and health,” and “Kids love them….MOMS love them more.”

“I eat, breathe, and sleep pumpkin seeds,” said Ms Rosenschein. “Between the process of making them and marketing them, I’m full-time now. But I love it.”

SuperSeedz by Kathie’s Kitchen are available locally at Well Baskets on Glen Road, Kathryn’s Kitchen in Sandy Hook Center, Lexington Gardens on Church Hill Road, The General Store on Main Street, Newtown Deli on South Main Street, McLaughlin Vineyards on Albert’s Hill Road in Sandy Hook, Chamomile Natural Foods in Bethel, and New Morning and Labonne’s IGA in Woodbury. As February “Business of the Month” at the Queen Street Webster Bank in Newtown, samples of SuperSeedz are available there through the end of the month.