«Individually, with bread, oats, fruit, or as topping of any prepared dish”: this is how Algarve Almond Butter can be consumed, a healthy, regional product that Miguel Rodrigues, a young man from Faro, started to produce, in September 2016, in the basement of his house, in the center in Faro.
Since then, Algarve Almond Butter natural can already be found from North to South of the country, being particularly appreciated by those who are concerned with maintaining a careful diet. However, being a characteristic product, tourists also do not miss the opportunity to take home one of the bottles of this special butter, either creamy, with pieces of almond, or with fig and cinnamon.
«In the beginning, the idea was to make almond butter, simply creamy. I did weight training and had a careful and planned diet, and I should ingest healthy sources of fat. I started to worry about eating nuts and lots of almonds. As my parents have a farm in Castro Marim, with almond trees, I started eating these almonds and taking them to my friends in Covilhã, where I was studying, who said that those were the ones who knew the almonds», Miguel Rodrigues told Sul Informação.
It was at this time that Miguel started consuming almond butter. «It was an unknown product and that's when I thought it made sense to create an almond butter from the Algarve».
After having worked as an aeronautical engineer in Tires, Miguel Rodrigues returned to the Algarve, one of the essential conditions for starting his business. “I started working on this in September (2016) and started selling it in the middle of March, that is, four and a half months ago. The idea had come up a year and a half before».
If, in the beginning, the almonds from the parents' farm were enough for his own consumption, when he started producing almond butter to sell Miguel had to find suppliers, “embarking” on an adventure through the Algarve.
«I made some little pieces of paper with the words “I buy sweet almonds from the Algarve” – because it is necessary, in order to make butter, that it be sweet – and distributed them in October. I rented a motorbike and covered 1250 kilometers in the Algarve, in the space of a week, looking for someone who would produce and transform it, who would break it, because only those who have few almonds break them at home with a hammer», he explains.
The entrepreneur found the necessary suppliers and, in four and a half months, Miguel Rodrigues managed to find points of sale all over the country, with the largest concentration in the Barlavento Algarve.
In Loulé, it is for sale at Bio(é)lógico, in Portimão at Armazém Integral and at Mercearia do Algarve, in Lagos, it can be bought at Mar d'Estórias and, in Faro, at Tertúlia Algarvia, at Liquid, at Aqua Health Club and at Retratos da Aldeia. Outside the Algarve, Algarve Almond Butter is for sale in Lisbon, in two locations, Coimbra and Póvoa do Varzim.
The manufacturing process is lengthy and the daily production capacity is 25 bottles of 300 grams, which «for now, have been sufficient for demand. O stock it has gone down many times, but it has been enough».
Considering the first months of activity, Miguel Rodrigues says that his main customers «are people who avoid having processed foods in their diet, they can be vegans or vegetarians, or people with a Paleolithic diet, especially women between 25 and 45 years old".
According to Miguel Rodrigues, his butter «is having good acceptance. It is a product that arouses curiosity. People are consuming more and more dried fruit butter and health food products. At the same time, it is a product of Algarve origin and is a meeting of two characteristics that go well together».
Despite having thought of this butter as a product for those who care about healthy eating, the founder of Nutural says that “one of the places that is selling more butter is in Lagos, in Mar d'Estórias, which has many tourist buyers. There, more butters are sold than bars [which Miguel Rodrigues also produces]. The bars, on resale, cost 1,70 euros, it is a more affordable purchase, but at retailers, the butter costs between 7 and 8 euros».
It is with this type of customer in mind that Miguel Rodrigues is preparing a novelty: packs, with smaller jars, with three varieties of butter. «I want to make three vials, packaged together, with a story, a legend, it can be from almond blossom, for example, to be sold as a regional product. I think it will work well», he predicts.
After the butter and the bars, come the "paleo-bonbons"
Currently, Nutural produces and sells almond butter and mango and cashew bars, cocoa and coconut, and cinnamon and goji, but Miguel Rodrigues has news on the way.
In addition to a new flavor for butter, with coconut, which should be on sale within a month, the entrepreneur wants to bet on a “paleo-bonbon”.
«It will be figs stuffed with almond butter. The idea is to show that, in the Paleolithic, there were chocolates and that they were like this: a dried fruit with almond butter», he concludes.
Photos: Nuno Costa|Sul Informação
Comments