Specially compiled by The Jerusalem Post
PRODUCT
— $1 EQUALS 2.8580 NIS (shekels) - Close Price 7/21193 ---
There's A Secret
To Slimmery's Success
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KIMBERLY LIFTON STAFF WRITER
•
Mitch and Marty Benson show off their specialty, Slimmery.
A
merican Bulk Food
owner Marty Benson
wants to share his
secret about. Slim-
mery ice cream.
"Slimmery is whipped,"
says Mr. Benson, who creat-
ed the fat-free, sugar-free
product seven years ago
with help from his wife,
Sandy, and son, Mitch.
"When you buy most soft-
serve ice creams and frozen
yogurts, the products come
from gravity-fed machines,"
Mr. Benson says. "This is
different. We have pumps
that whip the product like
cream, making volume big-
ger and offering fewer calo-
ries per ounce.
"It's the grand illusion,"
he says.
Volume on sales at the
West Bloomfield store is cer-
tainly no illusion. On any
day, between 1,200 and
2,000 customers stand in
line waiting for Slimmery.
Phone lines are flooded with
would-be customers wonder-
ing what Mitch Benson has
created, as the flavor of the
day. Slimmery sales com-
prise 20 percent of the
store's volume.
"No one comes in and
asks, 'How much does this
cost?' " Marty Benson says.
"Customers just want to
know how many calories are
in it."
Slimmery is 30 calories
for each four-ounce serving,
fewer calories per ounce
than most fat-free frozen
yogurt. Even more appeal-
ing to the weight-conscious
customer, new flavors come
out on a regular basis. The
product is kosher.
New flavors come
out regularly.
customers can purchase
Slimmery at one of three
area stores. It also is
available at a franchised
store in Los Angeles, a
place, • Mitch Benson
notes, that celebrities fre-
quent. (He says actress
Kim Basinger is a regular
in the Slimmery line.)
The younger Mr.
Benson is the man
behind the many
Slimmery flavors.,
"If I can taste it, I
make it," he says.
- To date, he has created
more than 100 varieties
(all flavors are not avail-
able each day). And he
constantly is working on
new innovations, tasting
candy and blending vari-
ations into his ice cream
product until "it is just
right."
"I visited three or four dif-
ferent coffeehouses to come
up with the Cappuccino for-
mula," he says.
Once a flavor is complete,
the recipe is written into
Mitch Benson's Ice Cream
Bible, a collection of his
recipes. His best-selling fla-
vors are Cappuccino,
Peanut Butter Fudge and
Mackinac Island Fudge.
"It's a fashion food,"
Mitch Benson says. EJ
The hot-selling ice cream
is the final product of an
experiment by the Bensons,
who were looking for
an ice
cream to satisfy the
sweet tooth of dia-
betic family mem-
bers.
They
were
searching for some-
thing without
sugar, with texture
and good taste.
They came up with
a patented sugar-
free ice cream
made with
Nutrasweet, milk
powder and a nat-
ural stabilizer to
hold it together.
Shortly after
the product came
out, the Bensons
discovered that
their audience
was not just dia-
betics. Women
love the stuff.
The formula
Customer T anya
is locked up in no
sugar treat. Wasko enjoys the no-fat,
a safe. No one
can copy it, but
-
Th e country's economic
growth between 1980 and
1991 was lifitWilian in
most western nations
according to a survey
released by the Federation
of Israeli Chambers of
Commerce.
Israel's Gross National
Product grew an average of
3.7 percent annailliPaiir-
ing this time, surpassed
only by Japan, which
achieved a 4.3 percent
average.
'
trta countries.
Israel's standard of liv-
ing. has risen 2 percent
annually over the last
decade and now stands at
about 60 percent of that of
western countries, corn-
pared to 30 percent to 35
percent in 1984-1985.
Israel's exports account
for 28 percent of GNP , a
ratio which is higher than
that of Finland but lower
than in Denmark, both of
which ha ve
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