Kosherfest New Product Winner Literally Goes Nuts

(Louisville, KY) by Sarah Cohen... No sooner was the announcement made that Najla’s Gone Nuts has won this year’s best new product at Kosherfest 2006 that the phones at the company were ringing off the hook. Najla Aswad could hardly contain her excitement that the judges in the Best Product Competition picked her blend of nuts for the Best Snack Food and Best In Show categories. Ms. Aswad had discovered the value of coming up with a new kosher product and looks forward to taking advantage of her big win at the upcoming Kosherfest, November 14-15 at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center. The Gone Nuts product is a blend of macadamia nuts, pecans, walnuts and almonds, with a mix of sweet and spicy seasonings. The product contains no butter, oil or trans fat and is pareve, certified by the Orthodox Union(OU). “We named our product ‘Gone Nuts’ because most companies focus on one particular nut. We decided to “go nuts” and focus on four different kinds of nuts,” says Ms. Aswad. Najla is not new to the food business. In fact, her career spans two decades that include catering in Binghamton, NY. It was the catering that gave rise to her first idea, Najla’s Cookies, and now her award-winning Gone Nuts product. The nuts idea came to her after relocating to Louisville, KY when she decided to devote all her attention to her product lines. Her new manufacturing facility is certified kosher by the OU and alternates between the pareve products like the nuts and the dairy products like the Gone Chunky cookies. Ms. Aswad is pleased that she made the move to kosher. “It opened up my whole business to a much broader market,” she says. And with the recognition she received at Kosherfest, that decision looms even larger.

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