SmartGourmet is the first and only Healthy ready-to-eat line of products, where raw ingredients are cooked inside a plastic bag, under vacuum, with a uniquely-designed cooking machine and process. With no preservatives, conserving all vitamins, killing all bacteria, and achieving a long shelf life. In only 1 year, the product is available in the biggest 600 supermarkets in Lebanon and we have extended the reach to Dubai with spinneys, Carrefour, zoom, and almost 400 grocery stores. SmartGourmet can be shipped all around the world, tapping into the $204 billion ready-to-eat market.
DID YOU KNOW?
You can pick up ready to eat fawaregh from the supermarket and enjoy it for up to a year of its production without ingesting any preservatives?
WHAT’S THE INNOVATION?
Smart Gourmet is producing a line of healthy and authentic Lebanese food that is rich in vitamins and is bacteria free. It has no preservatives and yet it has a one-year shelf life. They were the first in the world to develop this technology for extending the shelf life of food products without using preservatives through a cooking process and technique.
WHAT’S THE STORY BEHIND THE INNOVATION?
Like all Lebanese, Jad Atallah, one of the founders of Smart Gourmet, takes pride in our local cuisine. Whenever he was abroad on one of his many trips, he would invite his friends to Lebanese restaurants and be disappointed in the quality of food served.
At the same time, his wife who has a restaurant in Jbeil was lamenting food waste in her line of work. This encouraged the duo started thinking of how to provide gourmet tasting Lebanese food that would last for a long time and not have to be thrown away. As such, Jad’s wife and his partner,Charbel Kyrellos, a well-known executive chef (and works with Jad’s wife in the Jbeil restaurant) began experimenting with cooking techniques which would achieve long lasting ready to eat foods with no preservatives. Jad used his background in technology to help them develop the machine that is the basis of the cooking technique.
WHY IS IT IMPORTANT?
Because of their vacuum style cooking technique, Smart Gourmet is able to produce ready-to-eat meals which are healthy in that only one third the amount of salt used in conventional cooking techniques is used. Their technique also preserves the food’s vitamins and eliminates bacteria as everything is cooked at over 70 degrees Celsius.
When Smart Gourmet reaches a 100 products, it will launch an online shop. This would add to its convenience since consumers would be able to order their meals for the month online, keep them in their fridge and heat them when needed- thereby eliminating the time spent cooking while still obtaining a nutritious meal with no preservatives.
WHO IS BENIFITTING?
Consumers are enjoying healthy gourmet food which can be shipped worldwide because of their long shelf life without sacrificing quality or taste.
