The century-old French bakery chain Paul opened its Taiwan flagship store at a spot on Renai Circle in Taipei on Saturday, despite the bad weather brought by Typhoon Sinlaku.
“Despite the typhoon last weekend, our flamand were completely sold out before 10am,” Daphne Lai (賴郁芬), chairperson of Bon Paul Co (邦保羅), who is in charge of the store’s operations, said by telephone yesterday.
SPECIAL EDITIONS
One of the bakery’s exclusive items — and its most expensive at NT$600 each — are the double cheese flamand, which weigh 400g and are only made on Saturday and Sunday, six per day.
Company officials say 95 percent of their ingredients are imported directly from France.
Only fresh vegetables are provided by Taiwanese suppliers, they said.
Paul will offer up to 104 types of bread, with prices ranging between NT$48 and NT$600. The breads are pre-baked in France and frozen immediately for shipment to Taiwan, where they are defrosted and baked at the store.
The Renai store combines a restaurant, bakery and tea room, and nearly NT$30 million (US$939,000) was spent on the decor.
EXPANSION PLANS
The company expects the store’s annual sales to reach NT$100 million, as it is rather upbeat about the strong spending power in the area.
In the next five years, the company plans to open up to 20 outlets at department stores and shopping malls.
Founded in 1889, Paul now owns 350 stores in France, with a total of 500 stores in 25 countries.
When Lika Megreladze was a child, life in her native western Georgian region of Guria revolved around tea. Her mother worked for decades as a scientist at the Soviet Union’s Institute of Tea and Subtropical Crops in the village of Anaseuli, Georgia, perfecting cultivation methods for a Georgian tea industry that supplied the bulk of the vast communist state’s brews. “When I was a child, this was only my mum’s workplace. Only later I realized that it was something big,” she said. Now, the institute lies abandoned. Yellowed papers are strewn around its decaying corridors, and a statue of Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin
UNIFYING OPPOSITION: Numerous companies have registered complaints over the potential levies, bringing together rival automakers in voicing their reservations US President Donald Trump is readying plans for industry-specific tariffs to kick in alongside his country-by-country duties in two weeks, ramping up his push to reshape the US’ standing in the global trading system by penalizing purchases from abroad. Administration officials could release details of Trump’s planned 50 percent duty on copper in the days before they are set to take effect on Friday next week, a person familiar with the matter said. That is the same date Trump’s “reciprocal” levies on products from more than 100 nations are slated to begin. Trump on Tuesday said that he is likely to impose tariffs
ELECTRONICS BOOST: A predicted surge in exports would likely be driven by ICT products, exports of which have soared 84.7 percent from a year earlier, DBS said DBS Bank Ltd (星展銀行) yesterday raised its GDP growth forecast for Taiwan this year to 4 percent from 3 percent, citing robust demand for artificial intelligence (AI)-related exports and accelerated shipment activity, which are expected to offset potential headwinds from US tariffs. “Our GDP growth forecast for 2025 is revised up to 4 percent from 3 percent to reflect front-loaded exports and strong AI demand,” Singapore-based DBS senior economist Ma Tieying (馬鐵英) said in an online briefing. Taiwan’s second-quarter performance beat expectations, with GDP growth likely surpassing 5 percent, driven by a 34.1 percent year-on-year increase in exports, Ma said, citing government
HELPING HAND: Approving the sale of H20s could give China the edge it needs to capture market share and become the global standard, a US representative said The US President Donald Trump administration’s decision allowing Nvidia Corp to resume shipments of its H20 artificial intelligence (AI) chips to China risks bolstering Beijing’s military capabilities and expanding its capacity to compete with the US, the head of the US House Select Committee on Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party said. “The H20, which is a cost-effective and powerful AI inference chip, far surpasses China’s indigenous capability and would therefore provide a substantial increase to China’s AI development,” committee chairman John Moolenaar, a Michigan Republican, said on Friday in a letter to US Secretary of
RSS