A Tony for Taste

Local goods at awards

BY PATRICK BURNS
Intelligencer Journal Staff

Lancaster County residents aren’t likely to mingle with Broadway talent at Sunday’s Tony Awards, but the stars attending the awards will go home with products made by a small Lancaster city company.

Attendee gift baskets will include Enduring Sun specialty food products, made by Myron D. Stoltzfus Sr.’s Lancaster International Trading Co., 454 New Holland Ave.

“We have an interesting and unusual business,” Stoltzfus, the company’s president and chief executive, said Wednesday. “I think that helped us be chosen.”

What’s interesting and unusual about the business isn’t necessarily what Stoltzfus produces — a selection of jams, salsas, tapenades and candied apricots — but where and how those products originate.

Tony Awards personnel in New York Tuesday received Lancaster International’s shipment of 2,000 jars of Stoltzfus’ products, made from sun-dried apricots and tomatoes from Central Asia.

Established in 2003, the company combines Stoltzfus’ interest in top-quality international foods with a desire to help those in less-developed nations.

Stoltzfus helps people develop small fruit-drying businesses in Kyrgyz Republic, Uzbekistan, Pakistan and Tajikistan.

Joan Joffa, the Tampa, Fla., publicist responsible for deciding what goes in Tony gift baskets, said she was impressed when she sampled Stoltzfus’ products.

“I read about Myron’s company and tried their products. The apricots were incredible, even the color was brighter,” she said Wednesday.

Joffa said she chooses high-end, high-quality products as well as “green” items sold by companies that give back to the community.

“I’m very interested in green and fair trade and natural products, and interested in products from companies who could be called good corporate citizens, and (Lancaster International) certainly are that,” Joffa said.

Stoltzfus said he is happy with Lancaster International’s growing success in attracting farmers in Central Asian mountain regions, who, in partnership with his company, gain a steady source of income.

“In Kyrgyztan, we went from zero drying businesses to establishing a few. Last year, we had 10. This year, I believe we’ll have 31,” Stoltzfus said.

The businesses in Central Asia provide employment, markets for local farmers and other suppliers, and a model for those who might want to start businesses of their own.

“It can alleviate the crushing and debilitating poverty that exists in so much of the agricultural sector of the developing world,” Stoltzfus said.

Lancaster International is rewarded through imports of superior-quality tomatoes and “heirloom” apricots, he said.

“Heirloom varieties are old varieties that are not known in the U.S.,” Stoltzfus said. “The apricots are extremely flavorful and sweeter than those from Turkey or California.”

The company spent a few years training its Central Asian partners and launched its retail line in November.

Packaged by Intercourse Canning Co., the Enduring Sun line has 11 products, including its popular apricot- jalapeno jam with sun-dried tomato, candied dried apricots and a basil-and-garlic tapenade.

Stoltzfus also sells a gourmet apricot line called CandyCot Apricots.

Available locally for about $6 a jar at Darrenkamps, S. Clyde Weaver and Stauffer’s of Kissel Hill, Enduring Sun products were introduced last week at Fairway stores in New York City.

“If your product is available at Fairways, every other specialty store in New York just lines up to get it,” said Will Mullin, Lancaster International vice president of sales and marketing.

The jars in the Tony gift bags will include labels informing recipients that Enduring Sun products are available at Fairway.

“We scored twice in one week with the Tonys and getting in the Fairway stores,” Stoltzfus said.

Mullin said placing the company’s products in the hands of such Broadway stars as Matthew Broderick, Kevin Spacey and Angela Lansbury can create tremendous buzz.

“You have so many people from so many different places at the Tonys, getting our product out there can create a buzz as far away as L.A.,” he said.

Reprinted from the Lancaster Intelligencer Journal.