Media Note: Images of Bisharo Ali and her Najah brand natural sauces can be viewed and downloaded here:https://cornell.box.com/v/NajahFoods.

Newswise — ITHACA, N.Y. – Bisharo Ali has a dream – to get her Najah brand natural sauces and juice drinks on the shelves of every grocery store in the U.S. What began as family recipes from her native Somalia are now commercial products, thanks in part to help from the Cornell Food Venture Center (CVFC).

The Geneva, New York-based center informs and advises small food manufacturers about food safety standards and regulations and provides tools, techniques and solutions for meeting those codes.

The center is the only one of its kind in New York state to offer affordable help navigating the complicated world of food safety regulations. It provides a resource to small business owners like Ali, who arrived in the U.S. as a refugee in the mid-1990s.

“With any kind of food business, people are working and creating their own jobs, creating their own opportunities, and there are roadblocks. Regulation in food safety is certainly something that they need to navigate to bring a product to market,” said Bruno Xavier, a food microbiologist and extension associate at the Cornell Food Venture Center.

Ali makes an apple fenugreek drink, and marinade and dipping sauces that have either a fenugreek or a tamarind base, traditional ingredients known for their health benefits in Somalia. Since coming to the U.S., Ali lived in Minnesota for 16 years before she, her husband and nine children settled in Buffalo in 2010. It was there that friends, family and business advisers who tasted her sauces encouraged Ali to start her own company.

After testing her sauces, CVFC recommended that she create a standard recipe and adjust the concentration of vinegar she used to establish the acidity to keep the sauces stable on the shelf.

“You know how experienced cooks work, they add a little bit of this, a pinch of that, so we have to translate those traditional recipes into a scheduled process to get an exact and reproducible formula,” Xavier said.

Now, Ali sells her healthful sauces, which come in mild and hot varieties, in eight stores in the Buffalo area. “My goal is to move my product through every store in America,” she said. Along with running Najah, a Somali word for ‘success,’ she manages a household and children.

Her next step is to find investors and scale up, she said. The CFVC’s Pilot Plant has all the necessary equipment to adjust the formula and process to scale up to 100-gallon batches.

“Her tamarind sauce is really good,” Xavier said. “It has a surprising flavor twist that blows your mind.”

Cornell University has television, ISDN and dedicated Skype/Google+ Hangout studios available for media interviews. For additional information, see this Cornell Chronicle story.

 

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