KALE IN TAIWAN
A KALE STORY by UNIVERSE.CAFE
Universe.cafe is founded to promote true foods and healthy diet via high-quality RAW foods and super juices, Europe style. We use the best available ingredients from around the world, except fresh produce must be obtained locally. Kale has been a very difficult and expensive ingredient to obtain, until now.
Respectfully and gratefully, we are proud to announce the successful harvest of kale crops in 2017, several varieties grown locally in Taiwan. This is a 2 year journey against the challenges of organic farming in Taiwan, namely bugs, lots of bugs.
Universe.cafe team from U.S., Czech Republic, Germany, Vienna and Slovakia landed in Taipei 2 years ago to start the franchise development, where Taipei is selected the most difficult market benchmark in Asia, since the best of foods from around the world is in Taipei fighting for the limited market. We set our pricing to be 50% of the US and Europe markets, to be affordable given the RAW foods concept is very new to the Taiwan market where we want to provide to the general public not just the social elites. This pricing policy is subsidized by our founding partners,not in anyway affected the quality.
We found many critical ingredients such as kale and other greens simply not grown or only grown in LED green house in Asia.
Others juicers use “Chinese kale” to substitute (widely used by juicers in Taiwan, Hong Kong and China), but dude it tastes and smells so nasty Chinese kale is simply not acceptable by our chefs. Short term alternative was to buy LED green house grown kale, but its not our variety and not meeting our ideal quality (smaller and softer), and cost over $1000 per kg (this is really what I paid!!!).
The only logical long-term solution is to grow our kale locally in Taiwan. However, it’s easier said than to do. We brought in our US and EU farming experts in 2016, after the huge process of selecting over 20 certified organic farmers to start the program, we soon found growing kale in Taiwan and Asia is a monster project on its own, it all failed to various reasons and most local farmers quit. In 2 years we lost over 10,000kg of kale to typhoons and bugs! (Taiwan bugs love our delicious sweet kale)
Stressful as is, we continued with this Taiwan kale mission, even after so many failures and losses. We recognized this is an important environmental exercise to find solutions against the very real food security challenges post by the extreme weather.
Working with farming experts from US, Europe and Taiwan, combining various growth methods such as organic soil growth, green house, LED green house technologies, including utilizing a proven Self-Cleaning nanocoating technology developed by XTIO2 INC and Cleancoating LLC USA (with up to 100% antimicrobial efficiency tested by SGS USA), to coat the green house, water system and environment, to promote growth and healthier crops.
2 years later, finally we’ve secured enough kale crops, up to 300kg per week with less seasonal impact (some varieties are seasonal), at least for now. Still very expensive compare to normal soil grown greens but at least we now have sufficient supply to be able to expand on our product lines and to provide our clients LIVE JUCING and SMOOTHIES, to start in August.
With profound respect and deep appreciation to the awesome power of nature and thankful to many contributing partners in making this possible, this benchmark represents our commitment and attention to quality.
When in Taipei please pop by our cafes to try our kale juices and salads, enjoy this beautiful gift from earth. We need your help to keep kale growth continue – demand encourages supply, important for partnering famers.
We recommend 2 special new products now on special, in celebration of this kale harvest:
G1X and G11X: this is W Hotel class VIP product previously not available at our cafe, due to limited kale supply. It's the essence of several varieties of kale. Delicious and healthy.
X2 KALE SMOOTHIE or KALE ICE-BLEND: made with several varieties of kale. Can be made with or without ice (ice made from nano water).
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宇宙客市府店 (CITYHALL MTR Exit 4)
台北市捷運市府站B2,4號出口櫃位
(02) 2729 9113
週一~ 週五 7:00 am ~ 11:30 pm
週六~ 週日 11:00 am ~ 11:00 pm
宇宙客微風南京店 ( BREEZE NANJING 1F)
(02) 2175 0999 分機 6889
週日 ~ 週三 11:00 am ~ 09:30 pm
週四 ~ 週六 11:00 am ~ 10:00 pm
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