Interesting. I remember a Steven Spielberg movie about aliens starring Tom Cruise (Edit: Google reminded me that the movie was “War of the Worlds”). In this movie Spielberg makes fun of Hummus. Tom Cruise tries to eat something his children have bought, but spills it out probably due to bad taste. His children then told him that it is Hummus.
Now Hummus is getting popular. Too bad for Spielberg, Challah is still not.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/16/dining/16united.html?pagewanted=2
Holy Land opened in Minneapolis in 1987 as a storefront cafe that sold tubs of hummus as a sideline. Back then, Americans didn’t eat a lot of hummus.
More recently, though, Americans seem to have decided that this low-fat, high-protein snack with a little olive oil stirred in is not so exotic. Industry giants have joined the market, for chips require dips. In 2008 Frito-Lay North America, a division of PepsiCo, became an owner of Sabra Dipping Company, producer of more than a dozen hummus varieties, including one with salsa.
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Ripple effects have been felt on American farms, said Peter Klaiber, marketing director for the U.S.A. Dry Pea and Lentil Council in Idaho, which researches and promotes chickpeas.
“Ten years ago, we shipped 90 percent of chickpeas out of the country,” said Mr. Klaiber, who keeps a tub of roasted red pepper hummus in his refrigerator. “Now we only ship 40 percent. That’s all because of our new American appetite for hummus.”
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If all goes well with Costco and with Target, which is also considering broader distribution, Holy Land will be a national brand, too.
“Muslims care about manners and values,” Mr. Wadi said. “And we are devoted to family, too.” His mother stops in most days to ensure that the production manager, Samer Wadi, younger brother of Majdi, stays true to her family recipe, at least with Holy Land’s baseline hummus product.
At Holy Land, hummus is wholly mutable. The Wadi family sells hummus made with favas to Egyptians accustomed to eating a purée of those beans. They sell Greek hummus in packages blazoned with cucumbers to evoke tzatziki. Soon, the family plans to market hummus mixed with diced habanero peppers to heat-seeking Somalis, a growing local community.
**That adaptability is one reason the hummus sells well in the United States.
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Mina Penna, a brand manager at Sabra Dipping Company, distilled the marketing strategy for hummus this way: “Take something that’s new to the American consumer, like hummus, and then add ingredients they know and love, like sun-dried tomatoes.”
Other reasons, as Samer Wadi reminds Holy Land plant visitors, are his product’s absence of cholesterol, its high fiber count and the fact that his hummus is gluten free.
While the widespread adoption of hummus is hardly news in New York, where hummus-only restaurants have popped up in recent years,** in Minneapolis, as in much of the United States, this reception is remarkable.** A widely embraced stereotype here holds that local people are at once open-minded and averse to unfamiliar tastes.