Zero waste foods brand, Cream Of The Crop, has announced an official sustainability-focused partnership with Fyffes – one of the world’s leading distributors of tropical produce, and currently Europe’s largest importer of Fairtrade bananas.
Fyffes actively integrates sustainable practices into all areas of its operation to respond to climate change and ensure that natural resources are efficiently managed, conserved and enhanced for future generations. The company has set itself a global target of reducing food waste by as much as 80% by 2030 and the new exclusive partnership with Cream Of The Crop will go some way to helping Fyffes achieve this.
Cream Of The Crop helps battle food waste by using surplus ingredients that would otherwise end up in landfill or, in this instance, be converted into biofuel to create a range of delicious zero waste products. Each month Fyffes will donate up to two tonnes of perfectly ripe bananas, only deemed as surplus because they don’t meet the supermarkets’ stringent specification criteria, from its Ripening Centre in Balbriggan, Dublin to Giselle Makinde’s pioneering enterprise.
Commenting on the exclusive partnership with Fyffes, Cream Of The Crop’s Founder, Giselle Makinde, said: “I couldn’t be more excited about this partnership with Fyffes. The amount of food that we are going to save will make a huge difference and it’s just the beginning of what will be a fruitful long-term partnership. I hope other food companies will realise the benefits of this type of collaboration and see that it is possible to fight food waste as well as creating a great product.”
Speaking about the positives of the partnership with Cream Of The Crop, Fyffes’ Head of Marketing, Emma Hunt-Duffy, said: “We are thrilled to be partnering with Giselle and her team at Cream Of The Crop. Seeing our fruit being turned into delicious products is not only very exciting, but also helps us in achieving our goal of reducing food waste in our supply chain. We have set ourselves the target of finding one new application for each of our core products by 2030 and this innovative new partnership with Cream Of The Crop helps us go a long way towards realising this.”
In order to be able to store and process this vast quantity of fresh fruit and meet growing demand for her products, Founder, Giselle, has had to relocate her zero waste business to new larger premises for the second time in less than a year. From Cream Of The Crop’s new state-of-the-art 1,700 sq. ft production facility on the Ballycoolin Road, Dublin 11, Giselle estimates that she and her passionate team will have the capability of saving twenty-four tonnes of surplus food from landfill in 2022 – three times as much as in their previous home on Cork Street, Dublin 8.
To boost her chances of achieving her ambitious targets for this year, Giselle has launched a Kickstarter.com crowdfunding campaign – titled ‘Bananitas – made with surplus bananas’ – and is looking for the support of her customers and sustainably-focused consumers to help raise €14,500. The crowdfunding campaign, which will run for 30 days ending on Thursday 16th June, will help fund the purchase of the specialist equipment (dehydrators and chocolate coating machines). These will enable Cream Of The Crop to process three times as many bananas in 2022 as last year and launch a brand new zero waste snack called ‘Bananitas’, inspired by Giselle’s childhood memories of growing up in Brazil.
Bananitas, healthy dried banana bites coated in 70% dark chocolate, which are gluten-free, vegan friendly and high in fibre, will become the first product in the Cream Of The Crop range to be available for nationwide delivery. The Bananitas are available to pre-order online as part of Cream Of The Crop’s Kickstarter.com campaign in 130g fully compostable packs. Giselle also plans to make use of the vast amounts of leftover banana skins by dehydrating them to create her own banana flour – often used in Africa and Central America as a popular gluten-free replacement for wheat flours.
In return for their financial support, fans of the brand will be able to select from a range of limited-edition Cream Of The Crop merchandise and money can’t buy experience rewards, including spending a day one-on-one with Giselle to create your own batch of bespoke-flavoured gelato. These rewards will be fulfilled once the €14,500 target has been achieved with an expected delivery date of August 2022.
Rewards:
€25.00 – 6 x packs of Bananitas with shipping to anywhere in the world
€40.00 – 10 x packs of Bananitas with shipping to anywhere in the world
€50.00 – 10 x packs of Bananitas plus 1 x Cream Of The Crop-branded limited-edition ‘Zero Waste Fighter’ fan t-shirt with free shipping to anywhere in Ireland
€75.00 – 15 x packs of Bananitas plus 1 x Cream Of The Crop-branded limited-edition ‘Zero Waste Fighter’ fan t-shirt with free shipping to anywhere in Ireland
€100.00 – 25 x packs of Bananitas, 6 x 300ml gelato/sorbets of your choice, and 1 x Cream Of The Crop-branded limited-edition ‘Zero Waste Fighter’ fan t-shirt with free shipping to Dublin, Kildare, Wicklow or Meath.
€200.00 – A year’s supply of Bananitas (x52 packs), 5 x litres of gelatos/sorbets of your choice, plus 1 x Cream Of The Crop-branded limited-edition ‘Zero Waste Fighter’ fan t-shirt with free shipping to Dublin, Kildare, Wicklow or Meath
€350.00 – 70 x packs of Bananitas, 3 x Cream Of The Crop-branded limited-edition ‘Zero Waste Fighter’ fan t-shirts (with free shipping to Dublin, Kildare, Wicklow or Meath), and a money can’t buy experience at Cream Of The Crop spending a day one-on-one with Founder, Giselle Makinde, creating and producing your own bespoke gelato Cream Of The Crop’s full range of over 30 different flavoured zero waste gelatos and sorbets are available to purchase online at www.creamofthecropgelato.com. They can be ordered either for collection (Monday to Friday, 8:00am to 4:00pm) from their premises at the Premier Business Park on the Ballycoolin Road, Dublin 11, or for delivery to counties Dublin, Kildare, Meath, and Wicklow. They are also available from a range of leading independent artisan food stores across the country.
About Giselle Makinde (Cream Of The Crop):
Giselle Makinde, who only moved to Ireland with her family in June 2018, completed specialist courses at the Carpigiani Gelato University in Anzola dell’Emilia near Bologna, Italy to help hone her gelato making skills before launching Cream Of The Crop.
When she started selling online in September 2020 with a range of innovative flavours that change on a weekly basis, all of Giselle’s products were created in a spare room in her Portmarnock home that she had converted into a food production ‘lab’. Following a hugely successful first six months in business, in Spring 2021 Cream Of The Crop relocated to a new 1,600 sq. ft state-of-the-art premises on Cork Street, Dublin 8. This move increased Giselle’s ability to process and make use of ten times the amount of surplus food than she was able to before – equating to as many as eight tonnes of food waste in 2021 alone. A recent relocation to the new premises on the Ballycoolin Road, Dublin 11 will increase the amount of surplus saved in 2022 to twenty-four tonnes.
Previous to launching Cream Of The Crop, Giselle held roles at Dublin’s As One restaurant and Cloud Picker’s cafe (Head Chef) on Pearse St – eateries that both put a sustainable ethos and a zero waste approach to food at the forefront of their businesses.
These experiences ignited Giselle’s own personal passion for battling food waste and opened her mind to the possibility of launching her own range of products that could help extend the shelf life of, and make the most of, surplus produce – something that was fast-tracked as a direct result of the COVID-19 pandemic. This was fuelled further by a week spent staging at Amsterdam’s InStock restaurant late in 2019, allowing Giselle to better understand exactly how they were able to run a successful business built around a model of turning surplus food into delicious meals.