Hi,
Thanks for dropping by. Welcome to the home of Sublime food. I'd like to use this blog space to let you know about news, new developments, products I like, links I find interesting - all related to food and health.
I'm Ronan... The owner of Sublime Food Ltd. I'm passionate about food... Always have been. From an early age I watched my Mum prepare food - fascinated by the alchemy of mixing flavours to make something majical, nutritous and tasty. Food is such a great way to share and spread love. There's nothing that brings people together more and lifts spirits than sharing food with friends.
I've been on a bit of a journey with food - becoming more aware of the impact of food on our health. It's been a really interesting story, which I will share with you in this blog. I'll start with how Sublime came about.
How it all began
In 2003, I was working as a web designer - making websites for stock brokers (in a small room with 7 other guys), that I decided something needed to change. I gave up my job and decided to go traveling. Life had to be more than this. I traveled for 6 months - traversing South America. I went with my brother, Cathal. We were going to visit our other brother Ultan who had moved to Brazil 3 years previously and travel across the continent, taking in as much as we could.
We started out in Rio de Janeiro - just in time to catch the end of the Carnival. An amazing sight to behold. While in Rio, we noticed people everywhere eating bowls of what looked like slightly melted dark purple Ice cream. After a night of partying at the Carnival, our overly-enthusiastic German friend, Andre said we should have an Acai - to help us recover.
I wasn't immediately hooked. Don't get me wrong, it was good - I finished the whole bowl. I found my hangover disappeared almost immediately. I spent the day on the beach and wasn't hungry for hours. It wasn't really until my second or third bowl that I realised how much my body wanted this stuff! It was like it was filling some need in me - like the way I feel a craving for fresh juice when I need vitamin C. This seemed to fill a need for something I didn't know I needed until then.
I still get this feeling today when I eat a bowl of acai - or drink a thick acai smoothie - with double servings of acai. After 8 years, this is still something my body craves.
After I returned to the UK, I wasn't sure what I was going to do. I had decided that I didn't want to work for someone else again - that I needed to do something for myself. I didn't care too much about the money - the most important thing was that I would have something for myself.
So, I spent a while researching the options. One of my better schemes was to attempt to grow truffles in Ireland. I reasoned that the climate was warm enough because of the gulf stream hitting the south coast. I even got as far as applying for grants to grow a forest. The truffles would grow in the roots of the trees - and would take at least ten years for anything to bear fruit.
I had decided that I would move back to Ireland and see what I could do from there.
One day, my brother in Brazil suggested that I import acai to the UK. At the time there wasn't any acai available in the UK (someone had just started around the same time). I turned him down - thinking that I was going to move to Ireland. Later that day, a good friend who I had worked with asked me if I knew of anything he could import to the UK. Half jokingly, I said yeah - he could import acai... My brother could send it to him. I didn't think any more of it... Until he came back to me 2 weeks later - really keen on the idea. He even had started to research how to go about importing frozen goods from Brazil... Looking into legal requirements, company set-up, VAT registration... He even went as far as finding somewhere to store a load of frozen fruit.
He even started a dialog with my brother in Brazil about getting things moving there. I worked with him to design a package for the acai. Things looked good. Until the last minute... We had gone as far as ordering some stock... And now the factory wanted money. My friend decided to pull out - he planned to put together a business plan to raise money from the bank... And money was needed now. So we had a falling out - and I was left with 5 tonnes of frozen fruit coming to me on a ship from Brazil!!!! I had never done anything like this before! At least it solved the problem as to what I would do for work! I picked up the phone and started calling. I got on my bike with samples of acai and took them around London and the rest of the country - to get people to buy something they had never heard of. And selling wasn't one of my best skills - lol.
Since then, I have been gifted by what could appear to be extraordinary luck... I have felt that someone or something was looking out for me... Making sure that this would succeed - that acai would get to where it was needed. Luck / synchronicity / Angels - you decide. :)
For the first year, I ate almost nothing but acai - I had spent almost everything I had on stock!
Thanks For dropping by...