Regalis Foods

Regalis is among the country’s most esteemed purveyors and distributors of exceptional, elusive ingredients. In early 2021, I was hired to be their Lead Copywriter — a role that entailed writing and rewriting hundreds of short-format product descriptions in addition to ongoing odd-job marketing assets and campaigns. About a year later, I took over direct-to-consumer e-mail marketing (~32,000 subscribers) as well as weekly wholesale communications (~3,000 restaurants/markets/distributors), spheres I continued supervising until late 2023.

Short/Medium Format Marketing Samples

Haskap Berry Preserves — Product Label

Haskap berries are the fruit of Japanese Blue Honeysuckle, a cold-hardy shrub found in boreal forests throughout the Northern Hemisphere. Bursting with raspberry sweetness, wild blueberry tartness, and mouth puckering tannins, Haskaps evoke familiar fruits while coming together with a unique, electric flavor profile all their own.

Hokkaido A5 Wagyu Striploin — Web Product Description

Wagyu from Japan’s northernmost prefecture is often called “snow beef,” a nickname well suited to the vivid white marbling adorning this cut. As with all of our A5 Japanese Wagyu, this selection represents the finest quality beef anywhere in the world, with classification standards rigorous and honest enough to truly let each prefecture’s sense of place shine.

Due to the region’s comparatively cold climate, this beef maintains a uniquely fatty texture and soft sweetness, “as delicate as a snowflake.” Harvesting only one or two cows each month, snow beef is a rarity among rarities, seldom available at more than a tiny smattering of restaurants in the United States at any given time. To make the most of yours, we encourage a hard sear on high heat, or paper-thin slices warmed with a blowtorch. Packing enough flavor on its own to vividly saturate a palate, we recommend simple, elegant accompaniments that keep the Wagyu in its proper spotlight.

Sazae Horned Turban Shell Snails — Web Product Description

Sazae are turban shell sea snails found in waters near Japan and Korea, with ornately beautiful shells distinguished by jagged little horns dotting their perimeter. They pack strong, fresh fragrance and the brisk salinity of the ocean, often enjoyed either raw or grilled over charcoal. When raw, they present a satisfying crunch that gives way to a chewy interior, best balanced by slicing very thinly and serving cold. For grilling Tsuboyaki style, the entire shell can be placed directly onto hot charcoal, eventually coaxing juices to boil from the shell’s interior, at which point soy sauce and sake are poured directly into the shell to yield a complex, supremely satisfying finished arrangement.

Sazae Snails are typically fished from late spring through summer, when they can be retrieved from relatively shallow coastal waters, feeding on all sorts of algae and seaweed. In Japanese folklore, the Sazae Oni (turban shell demon) exists as an amusingly menacing human/sea snail amalgamation that pilfers testicles from pirates, perhaps deservingly, depending on which variation of the tale is favored. Our catches, from Japan’s Chiba Prefecture, are known to do no such thing.

Long-Format

Excerpt from “Redefining the Perfect Product: Exploring Vanilla's Potential in Western Colombia”

Just two main roads pierce into Chocó, Colombia’s vast western Pacific region. A bird's eye view of this landscape shows lush swaths of green and blue and brown – rainforest, water, mud, and very little else. Zooming in, most accounts of the place either dwell upon its Edenic natural beauty or its intense poverty, two viewpoints that are inextricably linked, but fail to provide a fair or nuanced understanding of the people who call it home. With little access to the country’s modern interior, many rural communities here rely upon what they are able to forage and produce to sustain their families, rarely with opportunities to explore more lucrative partnerships. But amidst the dense, rugged rainforests of Chocó, some of the land’s naturally occurring foliage presents a compelling opportunity for commerce, without the deforestation, commodification, and exploitation that typically come with it. Of particular interest, this area is one of very few in the world where endemic bees pollinate gorgeous, vining orchids with fragrant fruiting bodies that may eventually be hand-harvested, cured, and finished into one of the planet’s most prized spices.

B2B

Excerpt from mid-November 2022 wholesale dispatch

Thanks to a hot, dry summer, it's already been a wild year for truffles, and that shows no signs of stopping. Nonetheless, quality has been stellar, and that continues to be the case for both our White Truffles and Burgundies. This week, we have a slight price reduction for Whites, happily coinciding with a sustained ascent in aromatic intensity. For our money, we'd say the most recent batch of arrivals from Italy are a 9 out of 10 aromatically, and though we hope this keeps going through the year's end, there's no way to know just how long their season will last. Compared to this time last year, supply is roughly 60% slimmer, so we expect prices to climb while this quality remains. Long story short — this is the time to buy White Truffles.

Burgundies are similarly fantastic right now, with prices about the same as last week. As their season coasts to a close over the next few weeks, we're looking forward to what will be a competitive but undoubtedly excellent Périgord Truffle season. Last week, we cautioned against too-good-to-be-true prices and availability for Périgords from our peers, and we'll double down on that sentiment today — presently available Périgords are guaranteed to be pale and bland, and foraging them at such a vulnerably immature time is simply an unsustainable practice. It may be another 2 - 3 weeks, but we promise this year's Périgords will be worth the wait, and worth the inevitably lofty price points they'll fetch thanks to the very same climate conditions that have driven up the costs of their earlier-season counterparts.

Brand Deck Introduction

Somehow, through incessant, borderline obsessive commitment to a niche of thoughtfully curated foods, we’ve carved out a space that feels earnest, exciting, and poised to be amplified to a far wider audience than I could ever have imagined when I started this journey, throwing Exotic Food parties for my high school in Arkansas. Today, as proud as I am of what Regalis has become, I have even higher hopes for where we’re headed next.

Additional samples available upon request.