When life gives you lemons, make lemonade. But what if life handed you dragon fruit – and quite a lot of it – as a substitute? This is a matter that Vietnamese entrepreneurs have been pondering for weeks and it seems they’ve found the reply.
Pink has taken over the Southeast Asian country since February, with baguettes, pasta and rice paper turning bubblegum pink and restaurants serving up local favorites with dragon fruit.
While millennials could also be surprised by the brand new offerings, the trend reportedly serves a purpose more necessary than racking up Instagram likes: keeping farmers afloat amid the Covid-19 outbreak.
The novel coronavirus halted Vietnam’s exports to China last month because the outbreak forced authorities to temporarily close border crossings between the 2 countries, disrupting overland fruit and vegetable trade.
Local farmers growing magenta fruit are in a difficult situation. Their crops are perishable, and the major recipient is China, which accounts for 80% of the quantity intended for export. Due to produce delays to China and native demand unable to maintain up with excess supply, prices as reported by CGTN, it fell by 87.5% in February.
According to reports, many farmers have chosen to go away their crops within the fields to rot to scale back losses.
“In the past, farmers sold red dragon fruit for 40,000 dong per kg, but now that they had to sell it for six,000 dong per kg,” which is the equivalent of the value per kilogram falling from $1.72 to only 26 cents, Angela Kao, ABC Bakery’s chief marketing officer, told Business Insider. “Yet no one [was] willing to buy and fruit [were] everything is ripe.”
To support farmers, Kao Sieu Luc, founding father of ABC Bakery in Ho Chi Minh City, added pink dragon fruit to his bread to enhance its taste while also helping to buy unsold fruit. The idea got here to him during a recent trip to the Mekong Delta region, where he saw many ripe fruits left unharvested on dragon fruit farms.
“After much trial and error, I found the perfect recipe for delicious dragon fruit bread loaves by replacing 60% of the water used to prepare the dough with dragon fruit smoothie,” said Luc. Nhan Dan.
The result was a loaf of bread with a pink crust dotted with specks of black seeds. Online reviews say that the baguette has a rather sweet taste with a slight hint of fruitiness.
The latest invention led to block queues amid reports, people lined up for over an hour to get their hands on the runaway banh mi.
The bakery’s initiative bore fruit. According to Business Insider, greater than 30 tons of dragon fruit were transported between mid-February and early March. The bakery even shared its recipe online in order that other bakeries could become involved and forestall product waste.
Other firms across the country also incorporated the fruit into their products. A milling company developed pink noodles, and a manufacturer of rice-based products produced purple rice paper and watermelon vermicelli.
In an indication of the trend’s success, KFC can be reportedly jumping on the pink food bandwagon, debuting a brand new pink bun burger on March 20 in select stores for a limited time.
