HAVERHILL — And to think it all started with the lowly chick pea — a legume ensconced in a seed-pod growing beneath several inches of soil and harvested in countries like India and Turkey.
But that protein-packed pellet has spawned a multimillion dollar business right here in the Merrimack Valley as heart-healthy dieters seek a source of nutrition and energy that doesn't come from red meat.
The chick pea, you see, is the primary ingredient in hummus. And hummus is the primary product sold by Cedars Mediterranean Foods, located in the Ward Hill Business Park off Interstate 495 in Haverhill, as well as several other companies in the area.
But chick peas are really nothing more than garbonzo beans until mixed with tahini paste and flavor-enhancers like roasted red pepper, garlic, artichoke and spinach. Then, they become award-winning foods.
Cedars recently celebrated victory in the American Masters of Taste competition, in which a panel of chef-judges did blind taste tests of various hummus products and then rated them based on taste, texture and other criteria.
Medals went to the company's smooth and creamy versions of classic hummus, roasted red pepper hummus and artichoke spinach hummus. The company also won for a new product, Tzatziki Greek Strained Yogurt Dips and a new line of pita chips, which are actually made by Bagel Boy in Lawrence.
"These are very prestigious awards," said Aimee Tsakirellis, director of marketing at the company, which is presided over by partners Charlie Hanna and Aimee's father, Steve Tsakirellis.
The awards were actually granted in July during a series of blind, third-party taste tests in Napa, Calif., said Brian Miller, vice president for sales and marketing at American Masters of Taste, which does taste tests and product endorsements for hundreds of its clients. In addition to Cedars, other clients include well-known companies like Beech Nut, Betty Crocker, Campbells soups, Boston Coffee Cake, Sunbeam Bread and Tyson foods, to name a few.
During a recent tour of the company's Ward Hill plant, the front of which can be seen from the northbound side of I-495 as an imposing glass edifice adorned with enormous Cedars signs, it became clear that the company, which employs about 115 people in its Haverhill building, takes painstaking efforts with its product.
Founded 25 years ago by Abe Hanna in Salem, N.H., the company operated from plants in Lawrence and Plaistow, N.H., before moving to a plant Ward Hill in the late 1990s. Five years ago, as demand for Mediterranean foods grew, the company built the 100,000-square-foot plant it now occupies.
Quality Control Technician Jonathan Bell explained the process, in which bags of chick peas are emptied into a washer, then soaked for eight hours in enormous, rolling bins. They are then steam-cooked in huge, round, stainless steel "retorts" for just over an hour — one of the factors that gives the hummus its fresh taste, Tsakirellis said. Some other hummus companies use precooked, canned chick peas.
The chick peas are then mixed with tahini paste and various flavorings depending on the product, then held in giant stainless steel tanks before being pumped through an array of pipes into the filling room, where the final product — hummus — is pumped in pre-measured amounts into round, plastic containers of varying sizes.
After going through a dizzying maze of conveyor belts which affix a top label on each container and a safety seal around the edges, each package is plopped into a box which, when filled, is placed on a pallet for delivery to an adjacent warehouse.
Then, within a few days, the product is trucked off to its final destination, which now is pretty much the east and west coasts and everywhere in between, as well as Puerto Rico, Mexico, Brazil and Panama, company officials said.
In addition to hummus, the company also makes, sells or packages tzatziki, wraps, pita chips, salsas, bruschetta, taboule, halva, baklava, grapeleaves, chick pea, black bean and lentil salads, and Greek yogurt.
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