The century-old French bakery chain Paul opened its Taiwan flagship store at a spot on Renai Circle in Taipei on Saturday, despite the bad weather brought by Typhoon Sinlaku.
“Despite the typhoon last weekend, our flamand were completely sold out before 10am,” Daphne Lai (賴郁芬), chairperson of Bon Paul Co (邦保羅), who is in charge of the store’s operations, said by telephone yesterday.
SPECIAL EDITIONS
One of the bakery’s exclusive items — and its most expensive at NT$600 each — are the double cheese flamand, which weigh 400g and are only made on Saturday and Sunday, six per day.
Company officials say 95 percent of their ingredients are imported directly from France.
Only fresh vegetables are provided by Taiwanese suppliers, they said.
Paul will offer up to 104 types of bread, with prices ranging between NT$48 and NT$600. The breads are pre-baked in France and frozen immediately for shipment to Taiwan, where they are defrosted and baked at the store.
The Renai store combines a restaurant, bakery and tea room, and nearly NT$30 million (US$939,000) was spent on the decor.
EXPANSION PLANS
The company expects the store’s annual sales to reach NT$100 million, as it is rather upbeat about the strong spending power in the area.
In the next five years, the company plans to open up to 20 outlets at department stores and shopping malls.
Founded in 1889, Paul now owns 350 stores in France, with a total of 500 stores in 25 countries.
‘SWASTICAR’: Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s close association with Donald Trump has prompted opponents to brand him a ‘Nazi’ and resulted in a dramatic drop in sales Demonstrators descended on Tesla Inc dealerships across the US, and in Europe and Canada on Saturday to protest company chief Elon Musk, who has amassed extraordinary power as a top adviser to US President Donald Trump. Waving signs with messages such as “Musk is stealing our money” and “Reclaim our country,” the protests largely took place peacefully following fiery episodes of vandalism on Tesla vehicles, dealerships and other facilities in recent weeks that US officials have denounced as terrorism. Hundreds rallied on Saturday outside the Tesla dealership in Manhattan. Some blasted Musk, the world’s richest man, while others demanded the shuttering of his
ADVERSARIES: The new list includes 11 entities in China and one in Taiwan, which is a local branch of Chinese cloud computing firm Inspur Group The US added dozens of entities to a trade blacklist on Tuesday, the US Department of Commerce said, in part to disrupt Beijing’s artificial intelligence (AI) and advanced computing capabilities. The action affects 80 entities from countries including China, the United Arab Emirates and Iran, with the commerce department citing their “activities contrary to US national security and foreign policy.” Those added to the “entity list” are restricted from obtaining US items and technologies without government authorization. “We will not allow adversaries to exploit American technology to bolster their own militaries and threaten American lives,” US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick said. The entities
Minister of Finance Chuang Tsui-yun (莊翠雲) yesterday told lawmakers that she “would not speculate,” but a “response plan” has been prepared in case Taiwan is targeted by US President Donald Trump’s reciprocal tariffs, which are to be announced on Wednesday next week. The Trump administration, including US Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent, has said that much of the proposed reciprocal tariffs would focus on the 15 countries that have the highest trade surpluses with the US. Bessent has referred to those countries as the “dirty 15,” but has not named them. Last year, Taiwan’s US$73.9 billion trade surplus with the US
Prices of gasoline and diesel products at domestic gas stations are to fall NT$0.2 and NT$0.1 per liter respectively this week, even though international crude oil prices rose last week, CPC Corp, Taiwan (台灣中油) and Formosa Petrochemical Corp (台塑石化) said yesterday. International crude oil prices continued rising last week, as the US Energy Information Administration reported a larger-than-expected drop in US commercial crude oil inventories, CPC said in a statement. Based on the company’s floating oil price formula, the cost of crude oil rose 2.38 percent last week from a week earlier, it said. News that US President Donald Trump plans a “secondary
RSS