People can now enjoy “extra toum” with confidence thanks to the award-winning Lebanese product, Garlidoux, which is forever changing the way the world eats and enjoys garlic.
It’s “garlic without a trace” meaning that it leaves no bad smell nor indigestion that many people suffer from. But having never been done before, the task to create it seemed nearly impossible.
Speaking to The961, the CEO of Garlidoux, Khalil Abourrousse, said, “A lot of scientists from around the globe have invested years in research to break the garlic’s side effects mystery with no success, but eventually we did it.”
After more than 6 years of research and development, the creators behind Garlidoux finally made a breakthrough in the world of garlic!
“We have designed a technology that reduces raw garlic’s side effects to none while preserving 100% the raw garlic’s shape, taste, flavor, benefits…” Abourrousse told The961.
“From now on, raw garlic can be eaten without having to suffer the consequences of bad breath, stomach pain, indigestion, thirst, all kinds of discomforts associated with raw garlic, Our objective is to have a share from the garlic global market.”
“To do our proof of concept, we decided [to use] our converted raw garlic to create a delicious garlic paste, 100% natural. Garlidoux was born.” And it’s changing the game for garlic eaters everywhere.
Two months after winning the Asia Food Innovation Award, a very prestigious international food innovation award in Singapore, Garlidoux was ready to launch in Lebanon in October 2019.
That was around the same time the Lebanese Revolution began, which prompted the creators to hold off on a proper product launch that would get a decent advertising campaign on social media.
“Then we saw that this situation is becoming the new normal, we decided then to give it another go and launched in March 2020, and took 44% market share from the garlic paste category from the first 2 months,” Abourrousse said.
Shortly after, the pandemic surged, and Lebanon went into its economic meltdown. It was all made worse by the Beirut explosion which entirely destroyed Garlidoux’s factory and warehouses.
Luckily no one was hurt because, by chance, they left earlier than usual, but they have been rebuilding for the past 9 months.
“Garlidoux is a state of the art ISO certified garlic paste factory with 18 months of hard work in the making,” Abourrousse said. “It was extremely tough on all of us processing what just happened.”
“But with the resilience of my business associates, the Garlidoux wonderful team, and the unconditional help of many NGO’s which we will always be grateful to, we rebuilt it all. We will be back in the market this summer.”
“Lebanon is such a beautiful country with so much potential and we should never give up fighting to make it a better place, and we are extremely proud Garlidoux innovation is made in Lebanon,” expressed Abourrousse.
Just last month, Garlidoux won its second international food innovation award, the Lausanne Index Prize for “Best Product of the Year 2021”. It was a needed morale boost that made the team realize that only through perseverance and hard work we can achieve the impossible, Abourrousse said.
After contacting the Lausanne Index Prize team, The961 was told that the key to the award of the yearly best product for Garlidoux is that (1) it has a strong aroma and rich taste, (2) it is smooth, fresh, tasty, and not greasy, and (3) the packaging is concise and easy to carry out and eat.
“Especially [since] this product’s content [is] 100% pure natural, no additives, the Anti Additive Clean Label Organization hereby nominated this product to the jury,” added the team.
Since winning the awards, Garlidoux has received dozens of requests from around the globe wanting to distribute the product. Abourrousse explained that exporting the product is their short-term strategy for now.
“We’re also working on opening a much bigger factory in South East Asia and/or MENA region to be able to supply the Asian market where almost 90% of garlic is grown and then consumed,” he said.
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