Cheng Yu-hsuan (鄭畬軒) has become the first Taiwanese chocolatier to be included on 50 Next’s list of 50 Gamechanging Producers, which honors “farmers, artisans, and makers powering the supply chain in innovative ways.”
Cheng was ranked No. 34 for developing a “sustainable model for the chocolate and pastry industry in Taiwan, sourcing his ingredients responsibly and improving worker conditions in terms of salary and working hours,” the organization said.
Cheng founded his company, Yu Chocolatier (畬室巧克力), in 2015.
Photo courtesy of Yu Chocolatier via CNA
“As a creator of taste, I believe it is our duty to foresee the unimaginable, to explore the unknown,” Cheng says in his profile on the Next 50 Web site. “People can only decide if they like a taste or not once they have tasted it. It is up to us, the innovators, to imagine and realize the never-ending explorations of the human mind.”
In his acceptance speech at Friday’s ceremony at the Palacio Euskalduna in Bilbao, Spain, Cheng said he fully recognized how many people were supportive of his native culture, and that he was grateful to be able to imbue his creations with the flavors of Taiwan.
Cheng was born in Tainan and his family moved to Texas when he was a child. Returning to Taiwan for university in 2007, he dropped out to pursue a career as a chocolatier.
“I still remember my first bite of decent chocolate — a fruity, Madagascan dark chocolate,” Cheng’s profile says. “That experience has been echoing throughout my entire career.”
After dedicating a few years to teaching himself how to make chocolate, he moved to Paris to study at the Ferrandi school and interned at Alleno Paris au Pavillon Ledoyen.
Cheng’s company has received international recognition, and he was the only Taiwanese chocolatier invited to the Salon du Chocolat Paris, one of the world’s most renowned chocolate expositions.
His success also prompted him to write a book about his time in France, with plans under way to open a shop in Paris.
50 Next is an annual series of lists compiled since last year by the creators of The World’s 50 Best Restaurants and Spain’s renowned Basque Culinary Center.
The curators select 50 individuals to be featured in each of its seven categories, including Tech Disruptors, Empowering Educators, Entrepreneurial Creatives, Science Innovators, Hospitality Pioneers, Trailblazing Activists and Gamechanging Producers.
Meta Platforms Inc offered US$100 million bonuses to OpenAI employees in an unsuccessful bid to poach the ChatGPT maker’s talent and strengthen its own generative artificial intelligence (AI) teams, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has said. Facebook’s parent company — a competitor of OpenAI — also offered “giant” annual salaries exceeding US$100 million to OpenAI staffers, Altman said in an interview on the Uncapped with Jack Altman podcast released on Tuesday. “It is crazy,” Sam Altman told his brother Jack in the interview. “I’m really happy that at least so far none of our best people have decided to take them
BYPASSING CHINA TARIFFS: In the first five months of this year, Foxconn sent US$4.4bn of iPhones to the US from India, compared with US$3.7bn in the whole of last year Nearly all the iPhones exported by Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團) from India went to the US between March and last month, customs data showed, far above last year’s average of 50 percent and a clear sign of Apple Inc’s efforts to bypass high US tariffs imposed on China. The numbers, being reported by Reuters for the first time, show that Apple has realigned its India exports to almost exclusively serve the US market, when previously the devices were more widely distributed to nations including the Netherlands and the Czech Republic. During March to last month, Foxconn, known as Hon Hai Precision Industry
PLANS: MSI is also planning to upgrade its service center in the Netherlands Micro-Star International Co (MSI, 微星) yesterday said it plans to set up a server assembly line at its Poland service center this year at the earliest. The computer and peripherals manufacturer expects that the new server assembly line would shorten transportation times in shipments to European countries, a company spokesperson told the Taipei Times by telephone. MSI manufactures motherboards, graphics cards, notebook computers, servers, optical storage devices and communication devices. The company operates plants in Taiwan and China, and runs a global network of service centers. The company is also considering upgrading its service center in the Netherlands into a
Taiwan’s property market is entering a freeze, with mortgage activity across the nation’s six largest cities plummeting in the first quarter, H&B Realty Co (住商不動產) said yesterday, citing mounting pressure on housing demand amid tighter lending rules and regulatory curbs. Mortgage applications in Taipei, New Taipei City, Taoyuan, Taichung, Tainan and Kaohsiung totaled 28,078 from January to March, a sharp 36.3 percent decline from 44,082 in the same period last year, the nation’s largest real-estate brokerage by franchise said, citing data from the Joint Credit Information Center (JCIC, 聯徵中心). “The simultaneous decline across all six cities reflects just how drastically the market
RSS