Celebrating The Flora Blend Bar
Welcoming Spring in a little earlier this year, the team from Flora are delighted to invite South Africans to discover the Flora Blend Bar and its delicious world of seeds, blends and melt-in-your-mouth taste experiences. Based at The Zone @Rosebank in Johannesburg, the Flora Blend Bar opened its doors on the 18th of August and will be open to the public for 5 weeks, closing on the 25rd of September.
Charmingly designed and modernly fitted, the Blend Bar is a sensory rich, experiential pop-up store that celebrates the facts behind heart-healthy spreads like Flora, and explores the masterful transformation of plant and seed oils into margarine. As an educational and entertaining journey, the Blend Bar’s activities, interactive screens and engaging crew, all guide guests through the story of margarine – from seed to spreads. Beyond its informative features the Blend Bar’s Tasting Bar offers an array of mouth-watering Flora-inspired tapas that will satisfy your taste buds and inspire cooks of all abilities with the versatility of Flora.
Visitors to the Blend Bar can experience first-hand the simple and real ingredients used to make margarine and observe the masterful blending process. Guests can watch as the Flora Masterblender – a trained margarine creator – transforms plant and seed oils into delicious margarine spreads, using ingredients found in your pantry. After witnessing the creation of freshly homemade margarine, guests can taste exotic margarine flavours that they wouldn’t get elsewhere. The Masterblender demonstrates how Flora’s unique oil blend – made from pressed Sunflower seeds, Canola seeds and Linseeds – are the cornerstones of the Flora recipe and explain how these oils help give the delicious spread its heart healthy benefits.
Alongside the seed and oil experiences, and marg-making demo, the Flora Tasting Bar will leave you and the family salivating for more. Offering guests a variety of Flora-inspired tapas, the menu showcases a wide variety of culinary uses for spreading, cooking and baking with Flora.
From mini crumpets, quiches and banana breads to soups, chicken pate, salads and scones, the menu offers guests scrumptious, melt-in-your-mouth options to satisfy any sweet or savoury craving. The freshly made popcorn flavored with melted Flora-based drizzles is an exceptionally moreish snack.
Celebrating Flora’s Unique Oil Blend
Core to the purpose of the Blend Bar is the demonstration and celebration of Flora’s simple blend of plant and seed oils; Sunflower seeds, Canola seeds and Linseeds. Crushed and pressed together these seeds release oils that are naturally high in Essential Fats, which contribute to a heart-healthy diet. Sunflower oil is chosen for its naturally high content of Omega 6s, Linseed oil is particularly high in Omega 3s, and Canola oil contains both Omega 3 and 6s. These good vegetable fats help maintain normal cholesterol levels, contributing to a healthy cardiovascular system. We require these essential nutrients on a daily basis but as our bodies cannot produce them, we need to acquire them from our diets. Flora can therefore help us meet our daily requirements of these essential nutrients. The Omegas found in Flora are polyunsaturated fats also known as ‘good fats’, which play a vital part in a healthy diet.
Celebrating the Flora Facts
The education on what makes Flora heart healthy is one of the main goals behind the newly opened Blend Bar in Rosebank. “The Blend Bar was created to help educate people on making informed choices for a heart healthy diet,” explains Christine Van Niekerk, Marketing Director of Spreads and Dressings at Unilever. “We wanted to provide consumers who are curious about spreads, with the knowledge to better understand margarine and Flora, to share with them the real ingredients that make up our products and to do so in an engaging, interesting and memorable way,” says Van Niekerk. “Our team hopes the store’s interactive and educational format will inform South Africans on the truth about margarine and about the healthy fats contained in Flora, making it good for your heart health…naturally,” says Van Niekerk. A main point that the Blend Bar highlights, is that choosing Flora, with its plant and seed oils and their vegetable fats, is a better choice for a heart healthy diet. “Only with real facts can people make better choices for their diets and this was a key consideration behind the creation of the Flora Blend Bar,” completes Van Niekerk.
Celebrating Heart Awareness Month
Opening in time to celebrate Heart Awareness Month in September, the Flora Blend Bar articulates the facts behind what makes a heart-healthy spread like Flora and encourages people to make educated decisions for their own diets. All Flora products are approved by the Heart and Stroke Foundation South Africa (HSFSA) to carry the Heart Mark logo. This is due to all Flora products adhering to their requirements. To elevate the message of looking after ones heart, the Blend Bar experience includes a built-in, retrofitted bicycle with a hearty kilometer tracker. Building on its longstanding association with the HSFSA, The Heart Health Cycle encourages guests to jump on and show their support and commitment to heart health. Every kilometer completed on The Heart Health Cycle sees R1 donated to the HSFSA from Flora.
The Blend Bar will be open from 10am – 6pm from Monday to Saturday and from 10am -5pm on Sundays and was officially opened to the public on the 19th August. Entrance is free of charge with margarine tastings and demos on the house. Tasting Bar treats are made to order and prices available in store. Everyone is welcome and you do not want to miss out on the chance to learn, experience, taste and share.
Find out more online at www.florastrongheart.co.za
