Two of Hawaii’s favorite condiments have been combined for sale in a single bottle by the 125-year-old Lee Kum Kee company.
Sriracha Mayo is the latest product from the company that started in China, has since come to the U.S. and is a familiar product line on Hawaii store shelves.
"Hawaii is a place with very diversified demographics, which is a perfect place for an ‘East-meets-West’ item like Sriracha Mayo to gain acceptance," said Elaine Thai, Lee Kum Kee director of marketing.
The obvious observation is that given what’s in a plurality of Hawaii fridges, people can just mix up their own, so why would the company go to the trouble?
Buying it premixed "has several benefits," she said, noting it will be consistent each time, that it is "the perfect blend of both sauces … (and) is more than just simply adding the sriracha with mayo."
Also, she said, "from economical perspective, you don’t need to keep two bottles of sauces at your pantry anymore. You could just buy our Sriracha Mayo to serve the need."
Of course, one doesn’t always use sriracha with mayonnaise, and vice versa.
The Lee Kum Kee news release announcing the product and its availability at Don Quijote, Foodland, Times Supermarkets and other stores said the Sriracha Mayo would be available "exclusively at well-known retailers throughout Hawaii," similar to Hormel’s Hawaii-first launch of Teriyaki Spam.
Asked when the product would be launched elsewhere, Thai said "it’s actually available in the mainland already at this moment, given the fact that there are so many people interested and have been looking for it for a while already."
Your mainland family and friends can find it at Cost Plus World Market and some Asian retail chains, she said.
Milburn back to TV
Patti Milburn, recently released as general manager of the Summit Media Corp.-owned radio stations in Honolulu, will become general sales manager of KHON-TV on Dec. 2.
She is "is known for being a collaborative team leader with great ideas," said KHON General Manager Kristina Lockwood in an email sent to staff Monday that mentioned Milburn’s previous roles in radio and television.
Milburn excitedly told friends on Facebook, "This will indeed be a very happy holiday season."
Help for gift givers
You are a thoughtful person. You also are a busy person, and the holidays are a-comin’.
Enter entrepreneurs Mark and Tiffany Quezada, creators of Minded, an online gift-giving, personal shopping site (www.giftminded. com) that officially goes live Thursday.
The husband-and-wife team figured out how to link loved ones and what they like to Amazon.com via the site.
Still, why wouldn’t people just go to Amazon?
There are so many products on Amazon with different ratings, and Minded discerns "the best stuff on Amazon, all rated four stars or higher, usually curated by us, so it will be unusual, unique or interesting," said Mark.
That feature is combined with the aforementioned smart-matching. Minded will know about users’ intended gift recipients via its linkage with Facebook, Tiffany said.
The couple also is working on new features so the site will be customizable for intended gift recipients who are not on Facebook.
The site is essentially an advertiser of the Amazon service, so Minded users will pay the same price they would on Amazon itself, and Amazon pays the Quezadas a commission.
The site is optimized for desktop computers and mobile devices, and "we will be launching a native app in the future," Tiffany said. It will enable app users in a physical store to snap a picture of a UPC code and save it to a gift idea list.
"What’s great about the app is, we’ll remind you in the future (with a message like) ‘You saw this six months ago, and your mom’s birthday is coming up,’" she said.
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Reach Erika Engle at 529-4303, erika@staradvertiser.com or on Twitter as @erikaengle.
