- Ho Chi Minh City-based ABC Bakery began selling pink bread made with dragon fruit that had gone unsold due to the coronavirus outbreak in mid-February.
- The pink bread, as well as dragon fruit buns and cakes, quickly became hugely popular in Vietnam, with crowds lining up outside ABC Bakery locations hoping to buy products before they sold out.
- In the last three weeks, the bakery chain has used more than 66,000 pounds of dragon fruit, going through more than 4,400 pounds a day to make its popular pink baked goods.
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ABC Bakery's pink dragon fruit baguettes were just the beginning.
Since mid-February, the Vietnamese bakery chain has used more than 30 metric tons of dragon fruit, the equivalent of more than 66,000 pounds, ABC Bakery marketing executive Angela Kao told Business Insider this week. Crowds have flocked to ABC Bakery to buy pink loaves of the chain's instantly iconic red dragon fruit bread, dragon fruit buns with yam and durian filling, and red dragon fruit cake.
Kao Sieu Luc, the founder of ABC Bakery, was struck with inspiration for the dragon fruit-centric baked goods in early February when he was returning from a trip to source local durian. According to Angela Kao, the founder overheard farmers in Vĩnh Long and Long An areas discussing their struggles selling red dragon fruit, as Vietnam had closed its borders with China due to the coronavirus outbreak.
"The red dragon fruits were sold in the past 40.000 dong per kg from farmers, but now they had to sell at 6.000 dong per kg," the equivalent of the price per kilogram dropping from $1.72 to just 26 cents, according to Angela Kao. "Yet nobody [was] willing to buy, and the fruits [were] all ripe."
Kao Sieu Luc decided to develop recipes using dragon fruit that he could sell at ABC Bakery. The baguette, a subtly flavored and impressively pink loaf, was an instant hit, with lines quickly forming outside of ABC Bakery locations after the bread's debut on February 9.
Now, Kao Sieu Luc is far from finished with his work with red dragon fruit. Here are some of the other new offerings that ABC Bakery is developing as the coronavirus outbreak continues to take a global toll.