A Bit About Wow! Foods From Karen, The Proud Owner Why Wow! Café? So why would a seemingly sane person give up a well paid, secure job to open yet another café in the ‘Café Central’ of West Yorkshire, Holmfirth? The answer is simple…to follow a dream. For me Wow! has never just been a café. As a health conscious vegetarian, I struggled to find good, home cooked food. After twenty years of soggy veggie lasagne, I realised that the only way to stop my gripes of ‘how hard is it to give the veggie diner choice?’ was by doing it myself. Why Organic? I suppose like many people, I used to ‘dabble’ in organics. I would buy the odd bag of knobbly, pesticide free carrots here and the luxury organic ice cream there, but never really took it that seriously. My experience of organic boxes made me feel virtuous, but truth be told, a little disappointed. I was quickly frustrated by the lack of choice and poor quality on offer. When I complained to my supplier, the response was ‘it’s organic, what do you expect…..’ I expect more. Yes, organic produce doesn’t look pretty and has the odd freebie creepy crawly thrown in, but why do we have to settle for sub standard, battered produce at the very end of its life? We don’t. So once again I faced the prospect of if you don’t like it, do something about it….the rest is history! Opening Wow! Café as 100% organic gave me the opportunity to use my larger buying power to demand good quality food. Ideally, I would have gone to farmer A for my carrots and farmer B for my potatoes, but the practicalities of such prevented me from doing so. Instead, (after lots of searching), I found a wholesaler of high quality organics, who encouraged the consumption of local produce. Which brings me onto another issue….food miles. It’s all very well buying one organic passion fruit from the supermarket in the middle of winter…you could feel that you are doing your bit for the environment by reducing the amount of pesticides used in the production of fruit…but what about the damage the journey has caused? The fumes from the aeroplane…the packaging to ensure the fruit arrives in a saleable condition…the list is endless. So how does Wow! deal with it? We have passion fruit cheesecake in the middle of winter….without the passion fruit! With regards to the box scheme I decided to adopt a similar policy to the wholesalers. Wow! actively encourages the purchase of local produce by not offering goods from abroad, when local varieties are available. I recognise however, that modern tastes do require a little variety, so will buy from abroad if local stock is not available. But, only if there is enough demand from customers. If Mr Smith is the only person who wants green peppers, for example….sorry Mr Smith we won’t buy them. Why Specialist Food? A few years ago, I had health issues and was advised cut wheat
from my diet. This resulted in a whole new set of obstacles. Vegetarian and
wheat free…no lasagne for me then! I began to experiment with wheat
free and gluten free cooking and through many hours of experimentation,
finally hit on a winning flour formula and technique. Thankfully, my health
restored, I can now eat anything I like (I am sure as a result of having a
pesticide free diet), but I am now more aware of the problems faced by the
specialist dieter. My intention is never to lecture people or tell them how to
conduct themselves.
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