Sustainable restaurants and shops

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Sustainable restaurants and shops

These companies attach great importance to sustainable working practices - to the delight of the customers and the environment!

My green Portugal

Sustainable Tourism

All these companies are situated in the Algarve and their goal is to offer their customers sustainable alternatives.

They opened their doors especially to us.

Cajual Vegan Foodsters

We discovered the café “Cajual Vegan Foodsters” by chance, and we are very happy that we did.

The two owners Pavla and Nuno created a lovely place with 32 indoor and 16 outdoor seats in the city of Loulé. The idea of “Cajual” is that it is a vegan café and restaurant with a different way of cooking traditional Portuguese food.

“We would like to be a vegan place – but not just for vegan people but for everybody – locals and tourists. We constantly are looking for new products, new ideas and new combinations of dishes. ‘Cajual’ would like to differ from the usual vegan restaurant.”

How it all started

Pavla, from the Czech Republic, came as a volunteer to Portugal in January 2021. She was looking for a more relaxed lifestyle and she also had in mind to start her own project.

While working in rural tourism in the Algarve, Pavla met Nuno. Soon after, they developed a project that was focused on sustainability and they sold home-made raw cakes, plant-based butter, nut butter (e.g. almond, cashew, hazelnut) and cream cheese at local markets and online. They also worked at an organic quinta (farm) which used a lot of self-grown vegetables. “We were introducing more and more vegetarian and vegan dishes as the demand was growing. The quinta’s residents asked us to do catering for a birthday party including a raw cake, and Pavla had experience in that field.”

“We did not particularly look to open a restaurant. The business idea just developed naturally and the opportunity came up.” So “Cajual Vegan Foodsters” opened in mid-April 2022. Nuno is also the chef in the kitchen. He learned cooking from his grandmother and used to work at some restaurants.

The name “Cajual” is a play of two words: the English word “Casual” and the Portuguese word “Caju” meaning cashew nut, as they work a lot with this kind of nut.

Portuguese specialities in a sustainable way

“When people are on holiday, even if they are vegan, they would like to try Portuguese specialities. We decided to create these specialities on a plant-based approach. Instead of meat, we use different healthy ingredients – mainly mushrooms, tofu, seitan, rice and beans which provide complete protein and many other nutrients.”

So, the meals are more balanced and more nutritious compared to meat or dairy dishes. Whether you are vegan or not, you will be amazed.

“That is the big challenge. We would like to show non-vegan people that vegan food is just like any other food – but with different ingredients resulting in a healthier way of eating. Given the fact that the preparation of vegan food has less impact on the environment and no animals are harmed, there are more and more ingredient alternatives these days.”

“We have the burgers that taste exactly like meat as they are based on pea protein. Now you can have the same flavour and the same experience – without eating animals.”

At the moment, there are five dishes, a special and a soup on the menu. Among them, breaded chicken based on soya and gluten as well as salmon made with pea protein, seaweed, Omega-3 oil and vitamin B12; created with the help of 3D printing technology: “If you close your eyes and give a bite, you would not realise that it is not salmon.” There are also four different kinds of sourdough bread served with home-made butter and home-made spreads, such as cream cheese, hummus and guacamole. The probiotic and healthy bread is from Loulé, with a fermentation of 48 hours. To round a meal off, home-made banana bread with lemon-orange curd or other seasonal desserts are offered.

“We always try to buy local, organic and certified vegan food as much as possible. For example, we have a fixed supplier of mushrooms and vegetables, a farm near the Algarvian village of Esteval. At specific supermarkets, we have to buy some other products because they are not easy to find, e.g. the herb of dill. The salmon comes directly from Austria as there is not any distributor in Portugal yet. Unfortunately, it is the only way to have this product. We have organic local beer, made between Loulé and Faro, and also organic coffee and organic lemonade from Portugal.”

A place for everybody

Besides locals, many foreign residents also visit the restaurant. In summer, a lot of tourists visit the café, mainly from the United Kingdom but also from the Netherlands, France, Spain and Germany. “Many people find us on Happy Cow, Google and social media providing good feedback. If you are vegan and want to eat out, it is really very difficult to find a restaurant serving vegan dishes. There are not many options.”

Due to the energy crisis, there are no fixed product prices from the suppliers. They change or increase every week, sometimes by about 20 %. It is really difficult. Pavla and Nuno also try to reduce energy as much as they can.

“This is more than a business, it is also a mission. It is like a duty to non-vegan people to understand the vegan movement. Our goal is to make it a part of the classical restaurant options like you would go to any other restaurant.”

Cajual Vegan Foodsters, Loulé

Rua Serpa Pinto 2,

8100-714 Loulé

Monday: Closed
Tue - Thu: 12:00 - 15:00
Friday: 12:00 - 15:00 19:00 - 22:30
Saturday: 11:30 - 15:00 19:00 - 22:30
Sunday: Closed

+351 961 051 951

cajual.eatbu.com

CAFÉ & ONLINE STORE

Mercearia Bio Café

If you are looking for an organic grocery and having a nice coffee while shopping, then “Mercearia Bio Café” is perfect for you. What started with an online store in 2007, developed into two shops with cafés in the cities of Lagos and Portimão.

About 15 years ago, the owner Pedro Castro Gonçalves was driven by the motivation to create something new as he was starting to have a family and wanted to have a work-life balance.

Due to his experience as a food and beverage manager in the hotel business, he put his main focus on organic food in order to provide better nutrition to his family and to other people, hence the brand description “from our family to yours”.

From our family to yours

“We opened an online store with a warehouse situated in Portimão. I myself went around the regions of the Algarve and of the Alentejo, collecting organic products from the producers and selling them online within the Algarve area only. My partner and I found out very early that many people would never buy online as they were not used to it in 2007.”

They realised that it would be good to have an open door for people to come in. So they kept the online store but the warehouse started to open up for selling goods directly to customers. At that time, there was not much availability of organic fruit and vegetables so that especially, young parents and middle-aged women – wanting to provide better food quality to their families – became the main customers.

In 2014, the point was reached to open a proper small shop and café in Portimão. As time went by, they focused on their aim of having a warehouse, a shop and a café together at one spot – a larger second place in a more central location of the Algarve.

“Unable to find a central location in the Algarve, we opened our base in Lagos in April 2022 which is divided into two areas. One is the grocery with a café and the other one is the warehouse with the online logistics centre which moved from Portimão to Lagos.”

Nowadays, the online store delivers nationwide, and Senhor Pedro and the Mercearia Bio team are continuously working to get the best organic products and make them available to all customers.

Sustainable future projects

In addition, “Mercearia Bio Café” tries to create a place where various activities and projects are offered. One example is an area for exhibitions of local art and handicrafts. Another example is a kitchen that can be used for workshops – e.g. by the local handicraft project “TASA” – or for presenting producers and new products.

For the future, a lot of other developments are planned. One of those is a project for generating solar power that will give them independence from the electricity companies, probably within the next few months. They also want to buy an electric van for the distribution of online orders in the Algarve, with the aim to reduce their carbon footprint and to make the costs of deliveries more affordable. Contrary to what people think, the operation and delivery costs of an online store are very high. The delivery amount charged to the customer does not pay for the manpower, the delivery van and the fuel.

“This issue is very important to us as well as the introduction of more sustainable practices. We have been a Green Key establishment since 2019, and we are in a project about natural climate control – without using an air-conditioning unit, only inflating and deflating air according to the seasons.”

“Furthermore, we pay attention to ‘Refrigerants, Naturally!’ – a European project that wants to make refrigeration more sustainable – as we want to invest in cooling chambers that are more environmentally friendly. These chambers contain gases that do not generate any pollution.”

“The way that we face the market is that we try to get every product from local producers or suppliers. Unfortunately, there is not much variety in the Algarve. So we also go to other regions nationwide. As Portugal does not produce a lot of organic processed products (pasta, dairy, etc.), we feel obliged to import products. We only search outside the country if there is not any production in Portugal, e.g. we only offer Portuguese honey and Portuguese organic wines with a wide variety and with good quality.”

The focus is put on fresh fruit and vegetables as they are sold the most. There is also a high demand for 100 % Portuguese organic beef, chicken, turkey and occasionally lamb. The two ranges that are growing rapidly are gluten-free and vegan products.

“Mercearia Bio Café” always pays attention to new trends and things that they could develop within the context of organic agriculture and sustainability. So they have just started a kind of farm shop where customers can buy products, such as seeds, soil, etc., to grow their own vegetable garden at home. The products are always certified for use in organic farming.

In future, there might be the possibility to deliver fresh fruit and vegetables to countries outside of Portugal due to the development in the logistics area.

Sustainable work-life balance

Both cafés are open all year around, except Sundays and most public holidays. “It is very important to us that we are a well-balanced business with personal life for our staff. Our philosophy is that we do not only care about ecological sustainability but about social sustainability as well. It is important to balance what you eat but also your activities in life. We would like to share these values with all our customers and people who work with us. A lot of ecological and social practices implemented here actually came from examples given by our customers, business partners, friends and family.”

The company’s profit margin is just enough to keep it going. Due to the energy crisis, they had to increase some prices but only if the suppliers did. Otherwise, “Mercearia” would incur losses soon.

“We keep our structures simple, allowing us to face any inconvenience that there might be in society and in the economy.”

“We believe in what we do – our business is not just a business or a profit for us, it is the way that we see ourselves in the world. The practices at our work are the ones that we take home to show to our children.”

“Probably, that is why we have been surviving all these years.”